Tuition Exemption for Firefighters vs Peace Officers

[sanantone]

Although one nursing program and one PharmD program are listed, there is no motivation for a school to classify a nursing or PharmD program as fire science because they will lose revenue. An administration burden to lose money is not something schools want to do despite these two exceptions. What a firefighter cannot do is go to a pharmacy school other than TSU and demand free tuition elsewhere. Just because TSU declared PharmD as fire science doesn't mean UT Austin must provide free PharmD tuition to a firefighter. It is up to each individual school to declare a course of study as fire science and do without the revenue.

This is a great find if someone is interested in one of the listed programs. If a student wants to enroll elsewhere, it may by a losing uphill fight.

The schools have no incentive to grant any exemption. The most expensive exemption is for children of veterans. If I remember correctly, this has cost schools in Texas almost $200 million in less than 10 years, and Texas does not give the school additional money to cover this exemption. A firefighter did successfully go to a school that did not have public administration listed and challenged it with the AG. If you thoroughly read the AG's opinion, it was said that students have been erroneously denied tuition exemption for programs such as safety engineering. Just like with the law on transferring the core and certain major courses, schools are obligated by law to grant a tuition exemption for anything related to fire science, emergency management, public administration, and emergency medicine. I don't think pharmacy is related to emergency medicine, but that means it shouldn't be listed at all.