Tuition Fee waiver (or tuition assistance) entitles eligible CSU employees (and in some cases their spouse, domestic partner or dependent child) to enroll in courses at any CSU campus and have fees waived or reduced to $1. Tuition Fee waiver applies to CSU general fund courses only. Courses in self-support programs may not be taken through Tuition Fee waiver.  

There are two tuition fee waiver types:

1. Staff and Faculty which requires approval from your manager
2. Dependent, which requires no approval from your direct supervisor, but additional information is required to verify the tuition fee waiver is not currently being used by you or another dependent concurrently.

When a Tuition Fee Waiver form for a Faculty or Staff is submitted, a supervisor must approve the form. The systemwide tool to approve a tuition fee waiver is Optimize. The steps below explain how the employee’s manager can approve the tuition fee waiver.  

• An email will be sent to the approver (manager) for approval.
• Click on the link in the email to be taken to the Optimize Employee Center, My Tasks page.
• Alternately, you can go directly to https://optimize.calstate.edu/ec to access the Optimize Employee Center. Once there select My Tasks.  

• Select the Approval Request in the left column.
• The most recent forms will be seen first.
• Verify the form number being reviewed.

• Select the Details tab to review information about the tuition fee waiver request.
• Select the Attachments tab to view any attachments.

• Select the Activity tab to type a message to the requester if needed.
• An attachment can also be sent by clicking on the paper clip.
• Click Post to send the message.

• Go to the bottom of the form and select either Approve or Reject.

• The employee will receive an email upon approval or denial.

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