Campuses Complete New Student Residency Verification

Following May and June directives from the Board of Regents and Chancellor Erroll B. Davis Jr., as of August 1, 2010, University System of Georgia (USG) institutions have reported that out of a projected 50,000 new (incoming) students for fall 2010, 242, or .48 percent (just under one-half of one percent), were undocumented students.

Committee Chair Regent Jim Jolly, who presented the report to the board, noted that all 242 students are being charged out-of-state tuition, which is set to recover the full cost of instruction.

The report was submitted to the regents as part of an update by the board’s Residency Verification Committee, which has been meeting over the summer to review the USG’s current residency verification processes.

In addition to the check of new students, USG institutions were instructed to check the residency of returning students. As of today’s report to the board, 26 institutions had completed this check – the remaining institutions will complete residency verification once the final payment date for the fall semester has past. Preliminary numbers of returning students show 230 undocumented students enrolled for fall semester, with all being charged out-of-state tuition.

“While we are still awaiting reports on returning students from a few institutions, if the trends continue, we do not expect to see any significant change in the final percentage of undocumented students enrolled in the University System,” said Jolly.

Jolly said that undocumented students might include students who are in the country legally, but whose documentation is incomplete. As fall registration concludes, some of these undocumented students would either be able to provide needed documentation or would fail to complete registration and dis-enroll, so that the final numbers should actually be lower, he said.

In reviewing student applications, institutions had been charged in the chancellor’s directive with ensuring that “no undocumented students are receiving or about to receive any prohibited benefits or tuition assistance.”

The process institutions followed to conduct the review was three-fold:

Determine the documentation status of non-citizen students and verify proper residency coding.
Verify that students classified as “Georgia Residents” for the purpose of tuition rate assignment were properly classified, entitled to receive and being charged the correct tuition rate.
Verify that students receiving “out-of-state” tuition differential waivers were doing so in accordance with current policy.

The Residency Verification Committee is expected to make its final report and potential recommendations at the regents’ October meeting.

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