Armenian parliament allows universities to reimburse tuition fees of larger number of students

YEREVAN, May 4. /ARKA/. By a vote of 69 the Armenian parliament has passed today in the second and final reading a set of amendments to the Tax Code, which allow universities to compensate for tuition fees of a larger number of students who participated in the 2016 and 2020 wars in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict zone.

Under the current law, Armenian universities can compensate for the tuition fees of 10% of their students, but in fact the benefit is provided to a greater number. The Yerevan State University, for example, pays part of tuition fees of about 26% of students. Because of this, the universities accumulate additional income and other tax obligations.

Now, universities have to choose between providing tuition fee benefits to students who are not within the established 10% quota and accumulate tax liabilities, or provide them with partial or zero reimbursement.

With the above in mind, the amended law allows the universities to reimburse tuition fees of 20 percent of students through July 31, 2024.

The law will not apply to students who will enroll after August 1, 2024. Under the new system the government will fund them directly.

Sisak Gabrielyan, the head of the Parliamentary Committee on Education, Science, Culture, Sports, Diaspora and Youth Issues, said the changes raise the number of students eligible to tuition reimbursement from the current 7,000 to 14,000. -0-