All ASEs are entitled to receive a remission (or refund) of a portion of their fees to offset the cost of attending college. Fee remission is governed by Article 11 — Fee Remission and Article 35 — Workspace and Instructional Support of our union contract and Section I — Fee Remission of the EECS/DS local agreement.
Fee remission has been an important priority of ASEs since unionization. ASEs won remission in our first contract in 2000. Since then, the university has quadrupled the cost of attendance, but our guaranteed fee remission has insulated ASEs from the rising cost of higher education.
Contents
Readers and Tutors/UCS1s
Under Article 35 — Workspace and Instructional Support of our union contract, tutors/UCS1s are entitled to receive a partial fee remission of the instructional resilience and enhancement fee (IREF) each semester they are appointed. 100% of the IREF is remitted when working 10+ hours per week, and $35 is remitted when working <10 hours per week.
| Hours appointed | Fees remitted |
|---|---|
| 12 | $130 |
| 10 | $130 |
| 8 | $35.00 |
| 6 | $35.00 |
If you are appointed below 10 hours but end up working, on average, more than 10 hours per week, your appointment should be adjusted upward and you should receive a higher amount of fee remission.
TAs/UCS2s
Fee remission for undergraduate TAs/UCS2s includes in-state tuition, the student services fee, the Berkeley Campus Fee, and the Class Pass fee, in addition to the instructional resilience and enhancement fee. Fee remission for undergraduate TAs/UCS2s excludes non-resident supplemental tuition and SHIP healthcare premiums.
The percentage of these fees that is remitted is based on the total appointed hours across all TA/UCS2 positions:
| Appointed hours | Fee remission percentage |
|---|---|
| >12 | 100% |
| 12 | 60% |
| 10 | 50% |
| 8 | 40% |
If you have two 8-hour TAships, you are appointed at 16 hours and should receive 100% fee remission. The exact dollar amount of fee remission you receive is dependent on how much you pay in fees according to your tuition cohort (that is, the first year you entered Berkeley). For example, an 8-hour UCS2 who entered Berkeley in Fall 2021 is in the 2021-22 cohort and should receive a refund of $2,948.20 in fees.
| Hours appointed | 21-22 Cohort | 22-23 Cohort | 23-24 Cohort | 24-25 Cohort |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| >12 | $7,370.50 | $7,637.50 | $7,961.50 | $8,303.50 |
| 12 | $4,474.30 | $4,634.50 | $4,828.90 | $5,034.10 |
| 10 | $3,750.25 | $3,883.75 | $4,045.75 | $4,216.75 |
| 8 | $2,948.20 | $3,055.00 | $3,184.60 | $3,321.40 |
How fee remission is calculated
Fee remission for UCS2s is calculated via the following method:
- Add together the Resident UG tuition, Student services fee, Berkeley campus fee, and Class Pass fee – transit. These are core fees. Multiply these core fees by the applicable fee remission percentage (see above table) to get the core fee remission.
- Determine the amount of the instructional resilience and enhancement fee (IREF). For UCS2s at 10+ hours per week, the IREF remission is equal to 100% of IREF, currently $130. For UCS2s at 8 hours per week, the IREF remission is the greater of a) 40% of IREF or b) $35.
- The total fee remission is the core fee remission plus the IREF remission.
Explanation:
The vast majority of fee remission for TAs/UCS2s exists under the Fee Remission article of our union contract as modified by the Fee Remission section of the EECS/DS local agreement. This guarantees a percentage remission of in-state tuition, the student services fee, the Berkeley Campus Fee, and the Class Pass fee.
However, IREF is a campus fee that was created to fund various classroom technologies, such as email, bCourses, and Google Drive. Since these services are necessary to perform our jobs, the Workspace and Instructional Support article of our union contract also says that the university must provide (no cost) access to these services. Due to enforcement action in 2023, the university agreed to remit a portion of the IREF to all workers, not just those who are typically eligible for remission under the Fee Remission article of our contract. The settlement was that, under the Workplace and Instructional Support article, 100% of IREF would be remitted to workers at 10+ hours per week, and $35 to workers at <10 hours per week.
Since IREF is covered by the Workplace and Instructional Support article and the Fee Remission article, the university must provide the maximum amount of fee remission under the applicable articles to each UCS2. For UCS2s at 12 and 10 hours, this means that they get 100% of IREF remitted. For UCS2s at 8 hours, 40% of IREF is remitted.
Logistics
Fee remissions for undergrads are processed manually by the department. In the past, fee remissions have been remitted as late as several weeks into the semester. While there is no set date for fees to be remitted by, fee remission must be remitted before it would cause you hardship — that is, before it goes to collections, or you are canceled for nonpayment, or a hold is put on your account. Should you experience any hardship because of the university’s failure to remit fee remission in a timely fashion, it is a violation of the contract and is cause for a grievance.
Fees for undergraduates are remitted as a departmental award in your financial aid portal in CalCentral, similar to other forms of financial aid. Fee remission can only be applied toward tuition and student fees. You can see your tuition charges, fees, refunds, payments, and other transactions in My Finances > Transactions. You can even see the specific fees that your fee remission has paid for by viewing the “Charges Paid” by the fee remission.
It should not be necessary to pay tuition and fees that are covered by fee remission, even if your account in CalCentral shows that “payment is due.” If you want to avoid giving the university an interest-free loan by paying them for your tuition and then getting a refund of your payment, use the above tables to determine the amount of fees that will be refunded to you and simply pay the balance of your account less your owed remission.
If you or other financial aid pay for your tuition preemptively, your payment will be refunded to you when your fee remission hits your financial aid account. This process involves several steps. First, the fee remission will be disbursed, which is when it shows up as an available credit in your CalCentral transactions portal. Then, the fee remission will be used on (applied to) your tuition and fees, which will displace the payment/aid you have already used on the fee remission. The extra payment/aid is said to be “unapplied.” After some time, the university will generate a “Payment refund” or “Financial Aid refund” item in your Transactions in CalCentral for the unapplied payment/aid. Upon processing the refund, the university will send you an email from check_eft@berkeley.edu describing that either the money will be deposited into your bank account or that a paper check has been issued. The university will also mark that refund item in your CalCentral transactions as having been “paid.” After several days, or perhaps a week, of the refund being marked “paid” in CalCentral, the funds should appear in your bank account. You should make sure that your CalCentral direct deposit is set up so that your unapplied aid/payments are refunded to your bank account; otherwise they will be mailed to you as a check.
Note that all of these steps – disbursal, application, refund, and payment – must occur before you see the refund in your bank account. There is a known issue in some cases where the tuition remission has not been coded to displace payments, which results in the fee remission award sitting “unapplied” in your financial aid account. This prevents you from getting a refund. This is a violation of the contract and is cause for a grievance.
Interaction with financial aid
Fee remission is a form of financial aid associated with your appointment with the university. As such, its effect is confounded with other forms of financial aid. In general, you should receive the full monetary benefit of fee remission (i.e. it pays for your tuition or it gets fully refunded to you) unless you receive other financial aid that can only be applied to tuition and fees.
To understand fee remission completely, it is necessary to understand financial aid more generally. Fee remission can only be applied to tuition and fees and is therefore not refundable — this places it in the same category as Cal Grant A. Some other forms of financial aid, such as the Pell Grant, can be used to pay for your living expenses and other “costs of attendance” — they can be refunded to you, up to your cost of attendance. Payments that you make for your tuition and fees are fully refundable.
| Only tuition and fees — non-refundable | Refundable up to cost of attendance | Fully refundable |
|---|---|---|
| Cal Grant A Fee remission | Pell Grant Middle-class scholarship Berkeley scholarship | Payments |
The university is generally obligated to structure your financial aid, payments, fee remission, and other awards in a way that maximizes your benefit. Generally, this means that more restrictive awards (like fee remission) must be used to pay for tuition “first,” and then other, less restrictive forms of financial aid should be used. This notion of being used “first” has nothing to do with when the fee remission is disbursed; your fee remission can be applied to your tuition/fees even if other financial aid, or your own bank account, has already paid them. In this case, the extra payment/financial is said to be “unapplied” and will be refunded to you (see “Logistics” for the details of getting a refund). When you get a “tuition remission refund,” you are actually getting a refund of other financial aid/payments that your tuition remission displaced.
For example, consider an ASE with a $7500 tuition bill and the following forms of financial aid:
- Cal Grant A: $4700
- Pell Grant: $3500
- Fee Remission: $3000
Because Fee Remission and Cal Grant A can only be used for tuition and fees, they are used first. The full $4700 Cal Grant A award and $2800 of the $3000 fee remission is applied toward tuition and fees, paying the full $7500 tuition bill. The remaining $3700 in financial aid — $3500 from the Pell Grant and $200 from the tuition remission — remain unapplied. Of the $3700 in unapplied aid, only the Pell Grant is refundable. The ASE will get a financial aid refund to their bank account of $3500. The $200 in unapplied tuition remission cannot be used by the ASE and is returned to the department, allowing the department to use it to pay for other instructional costs.
Note that if you receive a very large amount of financial aid, your fee remission and other financial aid may exceed your total cost of attendance. If this is the case, the overpayment/extra aid may not be refunded to you, even if the aid would usually be refundable. If this applies to you, you should make sure your cost of attendance is accurate so that you receive the full benefits of your fee remission.
In the event that the university has not applied your tuition correctly, and that error has reduced the benefit of your tuition remission (i.e. increasing your tuition obligation, or reducing your financial aid refund), the university has violated the contract. In the past, the university has incorrectly administered tuition remission (e.g. by not having it be applied “first”), and union members have been successful in getting that money back through the grievance process.
If some portion of your tuition remission is unapplied, the university will often retroactively modify the remission to remove the unapplied portion. This will reduce the apparent size of the tuition remission award in CalCentral. Since this typically will not hurt you, it is not worth filing a grievance over. However, sometimes the university incorrectly performs the reduction; you should carefully check to make sure that the reduction had no effect on your refund/debt.
In some cases, fee remission may affect eligibility for some forms of need-based financial aid. The cases where this happens are rare and are typically unique for each individual. With that being said, the Middle-Class Scholarship should almost never be reduced by receiving fee remission.
The Middle-Class Scholarship is a state-instituted, need-based financial aid program that is meant to cover the gap between a student’s existing need-based financial aid and their “available resources.” Therefore, receiving new forms of need-based financial aid will often result in a one-for-one dollar reduction in the amount received from the Middle-Class scholarship.
However, fee remission is not a form of need based financial aid. Fee remission, for the purposes of determining eligibility for the MCS, is lumped in with private grants, emergency assistance, and merit scholarships. Therefore, your fee remission should only reduce your MCS if your private grants, emergency assistance, merit scholarships, and fee remission together exceed the sum of your self-help expectation ($8,154 as of Spring 2025) plus 33% of your expected parent contribution (if you have a household income over $100,000). (See the relevant statute; this methodology current as of 24-25.) Most ASEs do not get such a large amount of merit aid and private grants, so most ASEs should not have their MCS award reduced because of fee remission.
The university is known to have misclassified fee remission as need-based aid, which has resulted in some people’s MCS award getting reduced. This mischaracterization of fee remission is a violation of our contract and is cause for a grievance.
In some cases, ASEs have had their MCS reduced because their fee remission was disbursed even though it was unapplied. This is bad because the ASE is getting an amount deducted from their MCS award because they have more “available resources,” even though the available resources have not actually increased. The solution for this is for the university to reduce the fee remission award to remove the unapplied amount. The university will sometimes do this at some point during the semester, but you may ask them to reduce the tuition remission award if you would like it to be done more quickly.