§ 103.054.Payment of Certain Tuition and Fees

Money replaces the lost years. This section tries to replace the lost start.

Up to 120 credit hours of tuition are paid on the claimant’s behalf at a career center or a public institution of higher education. One hundred twenty hours is the length of a typical bachelor’s degree.

Mandatory fees associated with attendance are covered too, which keeps the benefit from being eaten by charges that are tuition in all but name.

Discretionary tuition rates are included. The section names tuition charged under Section 54.0513 of the Education Code and under any other law letting an institution set its own rate, so a school’s higher posted price does not fall on the claimant.

The request has a seven-year window, measured from the same date Section 103.003 uses — the pardon, the grant of habeas relief, or the signing of the dismissal order.

That window is longer than the three years for filing the claim, and for good reason. A person released after years inside has more urgent business than enrolling, and the benefit stays open while life is put back together.

The payment is made on the claimant’s behalf, to the institution, and not as cash in hand.