All education stuff is reported on one return or the other. But understand that EVERY SINGLE WORD in IRS Pub 970 is carefully chosen and is intended to be interpreted for it's literal meaning. In other words, it leaves no room for doubt. The hard part was assembling my above from the IRS publication, so as to ensure none of the literal meaning was lost. For example, it's not a requirement that that parent provided more than 50% of the students support. The requirement is that the STUDENT did NOT provide MORE than 50% of the STUDENT'S own support - keeping in mind that scholarships and grants do not count for student provided support.
Also, there is no requirement that the parents MUST claim the student. THe requirement is for the student. The requirement reads if the parents "QUALIFY" to claim the student, then the student MUST select the option for "I can be claimed on someone else's return", even if the parent's do not claim the student as a dependent.
There are rare situations for example, where the parents will claim everything except the 1099-Q, and the student will claim/report the 1099-Q. (or everything vice-versa). But it's rare that there's any tax advantage to doing that. I've only seen it once so far, this tax season.
