Tuition program: a pondial difference?

Question

I'm under the impression that tuition program in American English refers to a scheme relating to tuition payments, whereas tuition programme in British English means a course or training program. If this distinction is valid, why the difference?

Answer 1

Yes, there is such a difference, but it is not specific to the phrase ‘tuition program(me)’; it follows from the underlying difference between the British and the American uses of the word ‘tuition’. While in the rest of the English-speaking world, the word continues to stand for the instruction itself, in the U.S. it is rarely so used. Using it in that way in the present-day U.S. would probably be understood, but perceived as quaint. In the majority of its occurrences in American English, the word stands for the money that a school charges for the instruction it provides. The regulations of a university outside the U.S. would thus tell you that, to attend it, you have to pay such-and-such amount of tuition fees (i.e., fees for the tuition that the university provides), while the analogous regulations of a university in the U.S. would tell you that you have to pay such-and-such amount of tuition (the word ‘tuition’ itself standing for the fees). In view of such use of the word ‘tuition’, it is not surprising that a ‘tuition program’ in the U.S. would be some kind of a program for the payment of the fees, rather than a programme of studies.

Answer 2

In Australia, a tuition program (or rarely programme) is a course of study. The idea of programming payments is unlikely. A payment schedule or perhaps a payment plan would be more familiar.

Mind you this overlaps with the names used for tertiary study, which include programs, courses, subjects, units, streams, field... different institutions may have their own semantics here