Guidelines for Graduate Students Petitioning to Take Undergraduate Language Courses
1. The Graduate Office will consider petitions to cover language courses only if those courses
are advanced, upper-level classes, and thus can count as graduate-level work. NO
introductory or lower level classes will be considered for either graduate credit or tuition
coverage. Restating that, the Graduate Office will not provide tuition coverage for classes
which are ineligible to count for the degree.
2. Tuition coverage for language classes is not related to transferring credit into a program,
which is solely an academic process and not a financial one meant to increase or decrease a
doctoral package. The transfer of credit should not be treated as a bargaining chip to obtain
tuition coverage for extra classes.
3. The language should be uncommon, defined as one not easily taken elsewhere at a lower
cost. For example, we would expect that students should be able to find lots of alternatives
for languages like Spanish or French.
4. All petitions must be submitted in advance of the start of a semester – late or retroactive
petitions will not be considered.
5. The Department should include with the petition a justification which explains how the
class forms a central part of a student’s research. The petition also needs to address
whether the language class credits will count towards the doctoral degree.
6. Any petitions related to language courses must clearly state whether the petition includes a
request for tuition coverage for a course. In any positive decision, we will cover no more
than 3-credits for any one course.