A financial tangle.

IN THE WAKE OF A DISASTER LIKE HURRICANE KATRINA, WHO IS responsible for paying tuition? Should institutions charge the enrolled students displaced by the storm? And should those schools remit tuition dollars to damaged schools?

These are just some of the complicated questions being raised in the wake of August's devastating storm. The answers, at least so far, vary from institution to institution.

The University of Central Florida is among the many schools asking for tuition from visiting students displaced by Katrina. For UCE a public institution, budget restrictions guided the decision to extend the in-state tuition rate of $1,500 to visitors, says spokesman Tom Evelyn.

UCF is giving students leeway in terms of when and how they pay their bill. "We already work with some of our students, for instance some who are called up for the National Guard, to resolve their situations," says Evelyn. "In this case we are willing to go above and beyond to help these students make it work."

Like UCF, many state institutions chose to reduce tuition to in-state levels for visiting displaced students. The University of Houston system enrolled about 1,600 students after the hurricane using that option. The school also set up a Katrina Student Assistance Fund to help defray costs for students.

Whether on principle, or due to financial ability, dozens of campuses opted to waive tuition entirely. The joint campus in Indianapolis for Indiana University and Purdue University identified institutional funds of $4,000 per visiting student.

One issue has proven particularly sticky: What to do about tuition dollars that were paid pre-Katrina? Tulane University (La.), which closed its New Orleans campus for the fall semester, has received scores ore-mailed tuition questions from students and parents. Some people want their fall tuition dollars back.

Yet Tulane, like other schools in the devastated region, needs funds to pay faculty and staff and recover from the hurricane. On September 9, President Scott Cowen began leading a weekly online chat to deal with the situation.

Associations and government have played some role in clarifying tuition matters. The presidents of several higher ed associations put out a letter in the beginning of September encouraging schools to waive tuition for students who already paid tuition to their home institutions. If a student had not paid tuition, the letter asked schools to charge the home institution's rate of tuition and remit the amount to the damaged school.

To assist IHEs, the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators has posted policies and guidelines on its Katrina resource page (www.nasfaa.org/linklists/katrina.html). The federal government has stepped in to ease financial aid bureacracy for students and schools alike, and some private lenders have helped, too.

Still, the tuition issue ultimately falls to schools, students, and family members. Whether things will go more smoothly this fall--or become more tangled--will soon be seen.