Supporting PhD Student who is outside US

[kerprof]

I have a PhD student, who is currently in Europe and is planning to start the PhD coursework starting Fall 2020.
He still has not stamped his F1 visa yet. He is requesting full tuition waived, while he would want to take courses remotely from Europe, due to COVID-19 situation.

Would it be OK for him to enroll in courses without F1 visa stamped.

I would like to have him come to US sooner rather than later. Please advise if it is a good idea to provide him full tuition waiver from my grant funds, while he is not inside the US.

[Puget]

These are legal and university policy questions, which no one here can answer for you-- you need to contact your international students office, who will definitely be able to answer them.

Here we've been told out of country international students will be paid their stipends with university funds as a scholarship, but cannot be paid off grants at all. But like I said, you need to contact the experts on YOUR campus to figure this out.

[Hibush]

Like Puget said, this is going to vary a lot by university. The one question that devolves to faculty is whether the incoming PhD student can make satisfactory academic progress by taking the first semester courses remotely. That will vary by program, by the online offerings, the expectations of the major professor and the goal of the student.

At my place, all courses will have remote capability, so we are having a lot of international grad students start where they are if they can't get here.

[mleok]

I am generally wary of supporting a graduate student on a research grant when they're primarily doing coursework. Unless the student is doing research with you, I don't think there is a justification to support them with a tuition waiver funded by a grant, unless that grant is specifically for the training of students, and such grants in the US are typically restricted to US citizens and permanent residents.