Fee Remission in Special Circumstances

Fee remission is about getting your money back for subjects you could not complete due to exceptional circumstances.

If you were unable to complete a subject or failed a subject due to ‘special circumstances’, you may be eligible to apply for fee remission. If your application is successful, your fees will be refunded or HELP debt reversed, whichever applies.

This is where it can get tricky. According to the legislation, special circumstances are defined as circumstances that:

• Are beyond your control in that they are not due to your action or inaction, either direct or indirect – and are unusual or uncommon or abnormal
• Make their full impact on, or after, the census date, and
• Make it impracticable for you to complete the subject requirements.

Your circumstances must meet ALL the above criteria for a successful fee remission application.

The criteria can be difficult to understand, so we've broken it down for you. Each criterion is explained in detail below and we've outlined the University’s approach to assessing them.

Once you understand what the criteria mean, you should be in a good position to start gathering supporting documentation and drafting your accompanying personal statement.

You can then send your draft application to us for feedback, and we can help you to finalise it.

Sound like a plan? Then read on...

To meet this criterion, your circumstances must not be due to your action or inaction, either direct or indirect and be unusual or uncommon or abnormal.

Why?

The University expects its students to be proactive in their course planning and to withdraw from subjects before the census date if a student believes that their circumstances will not allow them to be fully committed to their studies. This is why the University asks you to demonstrate that the circumstances that stopped you for completing or undertaking your studies were beyond your control.

When deciding on whether the series of events that stopped you from passing the subject was ‘beyond your control’, the Fees Team assesses whether a reasonable person would consider what happened to be not your responsibility. That is, not because of any action or inaction, either direct or indirect, that can be attributed to you.

When determining this the Fees Team will also consider whether the situation was unusual, uncommon or abnormal.

Circumstances that are generally accepted to be ‘beyond your control’ include things like a serious medical condition, a death in the family or a family member suffering from severe medical issues, unforeseen financial difficulties, and similarly, unexpected employment status or arrangements changes. When describing your circumstances in your application, you need to make it clear that they were such that it is not reasonable to expect a person to be able to continue studying.

When assessing your application, the Fees Team will check the dates of the circumstances that hindered you from completing the subject against the census date for the subject. What this means is that you will need to demonstrate that either your circumstances made their full impact on you:

• before the census date but worsened after it,
• before the census date but the full effect doesn’t become apparent until after the census date, or
• after the census date.

It is very important that your supporting documentation verify these dates. Without this evidence, the Fees Team is unlikely to be satisfied that your circumstances qualify for fee remission.

If you are applying for fee remission on medical grounds, the Fee Remission in Special Circumstances: Medical Circumstances form includes very specific questions about the timing of your circumstances that your health professional will need to comment on, such as:

• The date(s) the student consulted you regarding their special circumstances,
• The date(s) the student’s special circumstances began,
• The date the special circumstances impacted the student to the degree that the student was unable to continue studies and complete the subject(s) requirements.

‘Impracticable’ is essentially another way of saying ‘impossible’. To demonstrate that you meet this criterion, your application needs to outline how your circumstances made it impossible to pass and/or complete your subject(s).

This is a high bar, so it’s important that your application is very specific about how you were unable to meet the requirements of your subject(s). The Government provides some guidelines around this, which are helpful to keep in mind when putting together your application:

A person is unable to complete the requirements for a unit if the person is unable to:

• undertake the necessary private study required, or attend enough lectures or tutorials or meet other compulsory attendance requirements to meet compulsory course requirements; or
• complete the required assessable work; or
• sit the required examinations.

The Government guidelines set out some examples of circumstances that may have hampered your ability to complete your studies. These include:

• Medical circumstances where your medical condition has changed to such an extent that you were unable to continue studying.
• Family or personal circumstances where there has been a death in the family or a family member has suffered from severe medical problems and this has affected you or you and your family have experienced unforeseen financial difficulties that made it so that it would be unreasonable to expect a person to be able to continue with their studies.
• Employment related circumstances where your employment status or arrangements have changed so that you’re unable to continue with your studies and this change was beyond your control.

In assessing fee remission applications, the Fees Team looks at all your results for that teaching period. So, if you successfully completed any subjects (even if you just passed them or got a lower grade than usual) in the same teaching period as the subject(s) you failed/did not complete and are seeking fee remission for, you will need to explain this in your application.

For example, perhaps one of your subjects only had in-semester assessments and your special circumstances did not occur until the exam period. Whatever the reason is, it’s important to outline this in your application and even better, have your supporting documentation verify this. There is a question about this in the Fee Remission in Special Circumstances: Medical Circumstances form:

If the student successfully completed other subjects during the same period/semester in which the special circumstances impacted, please explain the reason(s) the student was unable to complete the requirements only for the subject(s) for which student is seeking fee remission.

If you have passed other units but you’re not sure how to address this in your application, you can always contact us, and we will be happy to discuss your circumstances in more detail and provide guidance.

This depends on the category of ‘special circumstances’ you are applying under. The University publishes recommended (but not required) forms of documentation for each of the four categories of special circumstances on their website.

When providing documentation, you need to consider the criteria for fee remission. That is, the documentation must reference a situation which was outside of your control, clearly state the period you were impacted by the special circumstances (this must be after the census date) and adequately describe how the impact of your circumstances made it impracticable for you to complete the subject requirements.

Family/personal reasons

The University’s recommendation is that if applying under this category you provide a statement from a doctor or counsellor stating:

The date your personal circumstances began or changed;

How your circumstances affected your ability to study; and

When it became apparent that you could not continue with your studies.

If you do not have a doctor or counsellor who can verify the timing and impact of your personal circumstances, we recommend you get in touch with us so that we can advise what alternative documentation you may be able to provide in support of your case.

Download the checklist here

Employment-related reasons

For this category, you will need a statement from your employer stating:

Your previous work hours and location;

Your current work hours and location; and

The reason for changed hours and location

Download the checklist here

This can make things a little tricky, but not impossible. It is essential that you provide independent - that is from your doctor, counsellor or employer - supporting documentation to support your application. Your application will not be approved if you only provide a personal statement and/or statutory declaration.

If you didn’t see a health professional at the time your medical circumstances occurred it’s important that you act quickly. You can make an appointment with the University’s health service or free counselling service for the purpose of seeking documentation to support your fee remission application. If you have some supporting documentation but you’re unsure whether it’s enough for a successful application, we recommend you get in touch with us for advice.

This can often happen with applications under personal circumstances. We find that many students that have had personal circumstances impact their studies don’t have access to contemporaneous supporting documentation. The University has rigid documentation requirements for this category of special circumstances; they recommend that students provide a statement from their doctor/counsellor verifying their personal circumstances. This may not always be possible, and we have been actively advocating for more flexibility. If you are applying under this category of special circumstances and are unsure that your documentation meets requirements, we recommend that you get in touch with us to seek advice on your options.

We suggest starting by gathering supporting documentation.

Download the process map here

Then, you will need to draft a personal statement. You can use our template.

Fee Remission applications are submitted via an online form.

You must apply within 12 months of of the date you withdraw from a subject, or if you fail, from the date your fail grade was applied. If you are unsure of the date a fail grade was applied, you can contact Stop 1.

You may still apply for fee remission, but you will need to explain how it was not possible for you to make a timely application, and this should be supported by documentation. This is known as an application for a waiver of the 12-month application period.

It’s important to note that the University is very strict about this 12-month timeframe for applications, and they consider a fee remission application to be an “administrative task”. This means that when assessing your application for a 12-month timeframe waiver, the University looks at your student record to determine whether you have completed any administrative tasks during the 12-month application period in question. This includes things like enrolling in a subject, submitting a reinstatement request, or applying for a leave of absence. If they find that you have completed an administrative task at any point in the relevant period, they may cite this as evidence of your capacity to submit a fee remission application and decline your request for a waiver.

We have assisted many students to argue against this characterisation of fee remission as an “administrative task”, so we encourage you to get in touch with us if you are seeking a waiver of the 12-month application period so that we can help you to frame your application in the best possible way.

You can send your draft application, including personal statement and supporting documentation, to us for feedback.

This is hard to say. The University webpage dedicated to fee remission gives an indication of current processing times so we suggest checking it to get a sense of how long it will take to receive an outcome.

If your application for fee remission is unsuccessful, you can submit an internal appeal within 28 days of being notified of the result. We recommend getting in touch with us as soon as possible to seek advice regarding an appeal as 28 days is not a long time.

In your appeal you must respond to the reason why the initial application was assessed as ineligible. Some common reasons applications are rejected are:

• the circumstances are considered to be within your control, or their impact is not considered to be profound enough to have been impractical to complete your subject requirements.
• the date or period that your special circumstances impacted you is before the census date or did not worsen after the census date
• the documentation you provided does not verify your claims to fee remission
• the University has found that you completed “administrative tasks” during the timeframe in which you undertook the subject(s) you are seeking fee remission for and considers this evidence of your capacity to submit a fee remission application (we can help you to argue against this characterisation of fee remission as an administrative task in an appeal)
• your supporting documentation is not detailed enough in explaining how it was impracticable for you to complete the subject(s)

You may use our template for your appeal letter.

In your appeal, you need to address the reasons that your application was not approved. This often means gathering more specific supporting documentation. We suggest you read the outcome letter carefully to determine what arguments need to be made in your appeal.

Although generally internal appeals should be submitted within 28 days of the date of the outcome of your initial application, there is some scope in the Higher Education Support Act 2003 (Cth) that allows the University some leeway when considering applications outside this time frame.

Our suggestion would be to include an explanation detailing why you are submitting your internal appeal late at the beginning of your letter and if you can, include supporting documentation that verifies the reason why your appeal is late.

If you are within the 28-day timeframe to appeal but don’t think you can get your appeal in on time, we generally find that the Fees Team are open to giving students extensions if you email them directly to request one at appeals-remission@unimelb.edu.au

The University publishes the current average turnaround time for appeals on their website.

Unfortunately, if your appeal is dismissed, the decision is not subject to further review within the University. This means if you wish to dispute the decision further, you will need to seek a review or lodge a complaint with an external body.

There are two ways you might dispute your fee remission appeal outcome – either through ART or the NSO.

The ART is the Administrative Review Tribunal. The role of the ART is to conduct independent reviews of administrative decisions made under a wide range of Commonwealth laws.

If you disagree with a decision made by an Australian Government department, minister, or agency, the Tribunal gives you an opportunity to have that decision independently reviewed.

The National Student Ombudsman (NSO) is a free and independent service for students to resolve complaints about their higher education provider. You can read more about this process and how we can help here.

This will largely depend on the particulars of your case. There may be laws and legal options that apply to your rights in respect of fee remission once you have completed the internal complaint process of the University. To obtain independent legal advice on your legal rights and whether escalating your matter to ART is the right option for you, please contact the UMSU Legal Service.