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When the School of the Art Institute of Chicago laid off 20 employees in November, citing financial strain, Joe Behen, dean of student wellness, was among them. He\u2019d worked at the institute for more than 30 years. Though he\u2019s made peace with losing his job\u2014\u201cI\u2019m moving on,\u201d he said\u2014one question lingered: What will happen to his daughter\u2019s tuition-exchange scholarship? <\/p>\n
Chloe Behen is a sophomore at the University of Southern California, and she can\u2019t imagine going anywhere else. \u201cUSC has been the best school ever,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd I\u2019m not just saying that. I\u2019ve met the best people, I have the best roommates. I love everything I\u2019m involved in. I love the [cognitive science] major, I love the weather, I love the people, the teachers, the resources here.\u201d <\/p>\n
Eighty\u00a0percent of Chloe\u2019s USC tuition\u2014or about $60,000\u2014is paid via a tuition-exchange scholarship, a program that matches higher education employees and their dependents with scholarships to attend participating institutions at a steep discount. She is one of 7,800 students nationwide participating in the tuition-exchange program this year. Eligibility criteria are set by the export institution\u2014in other words, the institution where the beneficiary is employed decides which employees are able to apply for tuition exchange. In the Behens\u2019 case, that was SAIC. The scholarship is provided by the institution where the employee or their dependent is enrolled\u2014Chloe\u2019s USC. Tuition Exchange, a nonprofit that counts more than 700 member institutions, connects the two of them.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a give-and-take between colleges that ultimately benefits students and employees at all member institutions, explained Kristin Tichenor, president of Tuition Exchange. \u201cThe reciprocity at the heart of the exchange program rests on the notion that students are being swapped from one TE campus to the next,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Joe reached out to SAIC officials on March 14 to ask what will happen to Chloe\u2019s scholarship, but didn\u2019t hear anything back. He followed up on March 21 but still hasn\u2019t received a response.<\/p>\n
A spokesperson for SAIC told Inside Higher Ed <\/em>that the tuition-exchange scholarship benefit \u201cis reserved exclusively for our active, current employees and their qualifying dependents.\u201d<\/p>\n Any regionally accredited nonprofit institution is welcome to join the Tuition Exchange network. Members must pay a $500 one-time initiation fee and $750 in annual membership dues. In addition, the college or university pays Tuition Exchange an annual $55 fee per export student\u2014a cost they may pass along to the participating families. All member institutions commit to offering at least three tuition-exchange scholarships each year, and they are not required to balance those scholarship offerings with their number of export students. <\/p>\n Most scholarships equal either the total cost of tuition at the import institution or at minimum, Tuition Exchange\u2019s annual \u201cset rate,\u201d a running average of tuition prices across all member institutions, Tichenor said. For the 2025\u201326 academic year, the set rate is $43,000. Next year, it will be $44,000, according to the Tuition Exchange website.<\/p>\n Without her scholarship, Chloe wouldn\u2019t have enrolled at USC. <\/p>\n Tuition Exchange \u201cchanged my entire decision,\u201d she said. \u201cI applied to 18 schools. In the end, I was deciding between USC and [the University of California, Los Angeles]. If I had stayed closer to Chicago, I probably would have gone to Illinois, Wisconsin, Indiana, but out of all of those schools, even with Illinois in-state tuition, USC was cheaper.\u201d <\/p>\n In total, American colleges and universities cut at least 9,000 jobs in 2025. Given the scale of the layoffs and the number of tuition-exchange beneficiaries, Joe estimates that at least dozens, maybe hundreds, of students have had their education similarly thrown into limbo.<\/p>\n On March 11, Tuition Exchange sent a new protocol to member institutions to provide clarity on this issue. <\/p>\n \u201cOver the past year, we have received inquiries from several member institutions asking, \u2018How can we extend scholarship eligibility?\u2019 specifically in anticipation of a reduction in force,\u201d Tichenor said. \u201cOur answer to them has been: Good news. You have always had the ability to support affected employees and their student scholars in these situations.\u201d<\/p>\n That means institutions that laid off employees with dependents currently using tuition exchange can decide whether those employees should remain eligible for the remainder of their student\u2019s education\u2014a decision that comes at no extra cost to the institution, Tichenor explained. If the institution affirms a former employee\u2019s eligibility, the family may purchase extended eligibility from Tuition Exchange for $300 per semester. <\/p>\n \u201cOnce a family does so, TE Central will take responsibility for certifying scholarship eligibility for the remainder of the student\u2019s degree program, in accordance with their original Tuition Exchange Scholarship offer,\u201d the protocol states. But without the green light from the export institution, Tuition Exchange\u2019s hands are tied. <\/p>\n To Joe, deciding to extend eligibility is a no-brainer. A lifetime mental health advocate, he\u2019s been on a mission to raise awareness about how the uncertainty and scholarship loss is affecting students\u2019 mental health. He started a petition in early March that calls on college presidents to commit to upholding tuition-exchange benefits for laid-off employees. <\/p>\n \u201cTo the outside observer, it\u2019s clear what the right thing to do is\u00a0\u2026 Don\u2019t cut people\u2019s scholarships,\u201d Joe said. \u201cThe idea that these students\u2019 parents lose their job and they lose their scholarship, it\u2019s like the worst nightmare.\u201d <\/p>\n He has connected with many other parents on Facebook who are in a similar spot. One user shared that they were laid off from a private institution last year. During their child\u2019s out-of-state college orientation weekend, they learned that they had lost the tuition-exchange scholarship. <\/p>\n Lara DeRuisseau, another Facebook user who connected with Joe, is waiting to hear what will happen to her daughter\u2019s potential tuition-exchange scholarship next year. The Missouri university that her husband, a tenured faculty member, works at was acquired, and he will lose his position within the next year. <\/p>\n \u201cIt was like a lot to take in,\u201d she told Inside Higher Ed<\/em>. \u201cHe had a job loss, and then my daughter\u2019s tuition exchange could be gone.\u201d <\/p>\n DeRuisseau doesn\u2019t know whether the university will maintain her daughter\u2019s tuition-exchange eligibility. Her daughter is currently a senior in high school, and the tuition-exchange option \u201cdominated\u201d her college search, DeRuisseau said. It was a competitive process.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is not a guarantee by any means,\u201d DeRuisseau said of the scholarships. \u201cIt turns out many of the schools were only giving three to four [tuition-exchange] scholarships, and these are schools that have tens of thousands of students.\u201d <\/p>\n Still, her daughter was accepted with a tuition-exchange scholarship to three institutions. If she doesn\u2019t get to keep it, she may have to attend the state flagship, DeRuisseau said. <\/p>\n Joe said he will \u201cborrow, beg and steal\u201d before pulling Chloe out of USC.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re going to figure it out somehow or another,\u201d he said. \u201cWe\u2019ll get her through, but not every family is able to do that.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" When the School of the Art Institute of Chicago laid off 20 employees in November, citing financial strain, Joe Behen, dean of student wellness, was among them. He\u2019d worked at the institute for more than 30 years. Though he\u2019s made peace with losing his job\u2014\u201cI\u2019m moving on,\u201d he said\u2014one question lingered: What will happen to<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":47806,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[3332,2622,146,1235,5803],"class_list":{"0":"post-47805","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-education","8":"tag-employees","9":"tag-jobs","10":"tag-kids","11":"tag-lose","12":"tag-scholarships"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47805","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=47805"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47805\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/47806"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=47805"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=47805"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=47805"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\u2018The Worst Nightmare\u2019<\/h2>\n