By Kristal Fehring and Andy Brantley, President and CEO of CUPA-HR

While NIRSA focuses on advancing student learning through recreation, we work very closely with other related higher education organizations in order to share resources and, ultimately, better serve our members.

NIRSA’s membership in the Council of Higher Education Management Associations (CHEMA) is one such avenue.

Recently, fellow CHEMA members, in particular the College and University Professional Association for Human Resources (CUPA-HR), raised concerns with the IRS regarding issues of coverage for student employees under the Affordable Care Act (ACA). The resulting guidance, issued by the IRS, is a resource we wanted to share with the many NIRSA members who employee adjunct faculty and students in any capacity, but especially graduate assistants, to help them understand when these individuals are entitled to employer-provided health coverage under the ACA.

The new guidance issued by the IRS helps clarify questions on when employers need to provide coverage for students.

Below is a summary of this guidance, provided by CUPA-HR. The IRS has also provided a fact sheet, with important information about changes in employers’ responsibilities under the ACA for 2015. We encourage you to look at this fact sheet as well as the information below. You can view a full copy of the rule here.

Student Employees

  • To avoid having the application of section 4980H interfere with financial aid through work study programs, the IRS states that service performed by students in positions subsidized through the federal work study program or a substantially similar program of a state or political subdivision do not count as hours of service for section 4980H purposes. However, “[a]ll other hours of service for which a student employee … is paid … are required to be counted as hours of service for section 4980H purposes.”
  • The rule does not specifically address exemption of graduate research and teaching assistantships, so institutions will have to carefully manage working-hours expectations of these roles to determine whether or not the assistantships qualify as full-time in accordance with the ACA.
  • With respect to internships and externships, the IRS states, “services by an intern or extern would not count as hours of service for section 4980H purposes … to the extent that the student does not receive, and is not entitled to, payment in connection with those hours.” Some paid interns or externs, however, may nonetheless qualify for exemption from the 4980H requirements as seasonal employees. The rule has a full section detailing the various factors used to determine whether an employee qualifies as seasonal.