gcuser

The math isn't that simple . At my institution (Stanford) the tuition they charge to external fellowships can easily exceed the stipend, and external funds are applied before internal tuition deductions. Since the ndseg pays full tuition, that's $44-64k per student that the ndseg pays for tuition, on top of the $34-38k stipend, depending on how many units are required (and most of these units aren't classes - they're empty units required to retain "full time student" status). Tuition also significantly decreases for fifth and sixth years in some programs (because they've accumulated enough units to not be required to enroll in any units), so that fourth fellowship year can be cheaper. But not sure about this - if the ndseg requires full time student status then it'll still have to pay full tuition. Essentially the dod needs to budget $75k-100k per student per year, most of which goes to tuition, but it can get much cheaper on the last year of funding This is also probably why the NSF fellowship caps tuition payments at $12k per year, and a main reason why the ndseg was considered to be much better even if the stipend was the same -- the tuition difference can easily save your advisor over 20k per year in grants and the department 10k per year in tuition deductions.