Meghan Heater, 46, heads to the commissary at the University of Dayton in Ohio most weekday mornings to start assembling sandwiches and tossing salads for hundreds of hungry college kids.
"It's a lot of time on your feet and hard work," Heater said.
But that effort yields more than a paycheck. As a college staff member, Heater gets deeply discounted tuition at the private Marianist Catholic college with approximately 8,000 undergraduate students.
Tuition at the university is around $47,000 a year, plus board, although 96% of the students receive some financial aid.
Heater has now been working at the school for four years, enough to qualify for the highest tuition benefit — 95% off — by the time her eldest daughter, now 15, graduates from high school. Her two youngest daughters, 13 and 10, are waiting in the wings.
Employee tuition perks draw parents
The price tag of college can be daunting, but less so at some schools if parents work there — and that is what appeals to Heater and a growing number of parents.
"I had been a stay-at-home mom for several years, so I didn't have a professional career. I was trying to think of a way to have a job that I could still be with my kids a lot of the time, like during the summer, and work the same hours as they are in school and still make good money," Heater said.
That's when Heater, whose husband works at a local steel mill, thought about working at a college. She compared universities in her area and their benefits and decided on University of Dayton, which offers tuition benefits for staff workers and their dependents.
Troy Washington, the University of Dayton's vice president for human resources, said that about 616 of the school's nearly 2,900 full-time employees take advantage of its tuition remission for themselves or their dependents.
Washington said that workers and their dependents can also use a tuition exchange program, which allows them to transfer their tuition benefits within a pool of participating schools.
How college employee tuition benefits work
Jacob Channel, senior economist at LendingTree and a student aid expert, says that while these employee benefits have existed for years, with the spiraling cost of higher education, working for a college has growing appeal.
"With how expensive college has gotten, it is something that probably a lot of people are trying to take advantage of," Channel said.
In fact, 90% of colleges and universities offer tuition benefit to children of full-time employees, according to the College and University Professional Association for Human Resources.
Half of those institutions have a waiting period to get that benefit, with the median waiting period being one year of service for the employee. Most institutions, 73%, don't limit the number of credit hours children can apply the benefit to, so there is no ceiling on the number of classes they can take.
Still, as attractive as the programs are, Channel said, they have drawbacks. For instance, once the tuition benefit exceeds the IRS' guidelines of $5,250 annually, the rest is generally considered taxable income. The University of Dayton's Washington recommends checking with a tax preparer, because there can be exceptions and case-by-case variations.
"While the tax won't offset the benefit of the waiver, it is still something to keep in mind so you aren't blindsided by a tax bill," Channel said.
Channel says that students also usually have to make the grade. The tuition waiver often isn't granted if the student doesn't meet the school's admission requirements. With University of Dayton, for instance, students have to satisfy admission requirements.
'A lot of people don't know about these programs'
Sherry Kirkland, 71, is retired after a 17-year career as a financial aid and academic advisor at Wilmington University in Delaware. While her husband worked full time, Kirkland started at the school in a secretarial role and leveraged the tuition benefit for herself first.
The mother of four sons only became aware the benefit could be used for her dependents once she got deeper into her time at the college.
By the time Kirkland's youngest son was old enough for college she was aware of the tuition benefit, so he was able to take full advantage of it, she said.
"Had I known that I would have done that for my other sons," Kirkland said, adding that the family took out loans for their older children's education. "If you can get your education free or at a big savings, that is the way to go," Kirkland said.
She said she thinks a lack of awareness about tuition benefits programs keeps them from being more popular.
While it is a lot of hard work for parents, in the end, she said, it was worth it for her to see her youngest son graduate from college without a pile of bills.
"I can't tell you the wonderful feeling I had when he graduated, how good it felt," Kirkland said.
How to make the most of employee tuition perks
Tuition benefit packages for employees' children vary greatly from school to school, with some offering no benefits, while others, such as Wilmington University, offer 100% tuition benefits.
The amount of time before the benefits kick in also varies. While Heater had to work four years at the University of Dayton to get the maximum tuition break, new hires at Southern New Hampshire University can take full advantage of the tuition benefit for dependents only six months after starting.
"Higher education is extremely expensive and not affordable; as a parent, how do you look to help your children through that?" said Danielle Stanton, SNHU's chief administrative officer.
Stanton's daughter is currently using the free tuition benefit at SNHU, but Stanton said there are a lot of factors to consider before taking a job at a college just for the tuition break.
"There are a lot of 'ifs' to work out, like trying to find out where your child wants to go, what benefit does the college offer, and are they eligible?" Stanton said.
Meanwhile, Heater will continue to head to the mess hall at University of Dayton each morning, an endeavor she considers very worthwhile. She figures if all three of her daughters attend the college, she and her husband will have snagged $500,000 in education for their daughters at a fraction of the cost.
And if the daughters don't want to go to University of Dayton? They can look into the tuition exchange program, but Heater said she doesn't think that will be an issue.
"It's been drilled into them that they are going to UD," Heater said.
