tuition
- 1The money paid for instruction at a school, college, or university.
The university raised tuition by five percent this fall.
Many students take out loans to cover tuition and housing.
Similarfees
Note
In American, Canadian and Philippine usage the fee is simply tuition. It is usually a mass noun that schools raise and families pay or cover, often paired with housing or other fees. Where bare tuition means the teaching itself, as in Australia, New Zealand, Ireland and the UK, the same charge is called tuition fees.
- 2The teaching or instruction given to a student by a teacher or tutor.
The college offers small-group tuition in addition to lectures.
Years of careful tuition under a master craftsman shaped her skill.
Similarteaching, instruction, tutoring, coaching, schooling
Note
British and Irish English use the word for the teaching itself, so small-group tuition or years of tuition under a master describe lessons received, not money spent. American and Canadian speakers mostly hear the fee for schooling instead. In a British sentence, praise for a school's tuition is praise for its teachers. On a page meant for both audiences, instruction or teaching avoids the ambiguity.
- 3Paid private classes or tutoring that students take outside their formal education.
Many families invest in private tuition to boost exam results.
Her weekend tuition classes in chemistry are fully booked until the exams.
Similartutoring, coaching, lessons
Note
Across India, Malaysia, Singapore and Australia, tuition is after-school coaching, something a child is sent for or goes to. It readily stands before another noun, as in tuition classes or a tuition teacher. Its reputation has shifted: Qiu Guanhua, writing in 2021, recalls that tuition was once like taking medicine, reserved for children doing poorly in a subject, where it has since become routine.
Less common meaning
- 4Care or guardianship, the keeping and protection of someone or something.
Upon her father's death, she passed into the tuition of her elder brother.
During the siege, the abbey's relics and records were placed in the tuition of the bishop.
Note
The oldest meaning stays closest to the Latin tuitio, "guard, protection," from tueri, "to watch over," the family that also gave tutor and intuition. In Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing, Claudio commits a friend "to the tuition of God," meaning God's keeping, not God's lessons. Modern readers will hear instruction by default, so the word works today only in deliberately old-fashioned writing.
Practice
Can you tell the meanings of tuition apart? Answer 4 quick questions from this page, or write your own sentence and AI will check it.
Origin
From Old French, from Latin tuitiō ("guard, protection, defense"), from tuēri ("to watch, guard, see, observe"); compare intuition and tutor.