Your institution’s Turnitin license allows up to a specific number of active students to use the service. When this student limit is reached, the system automatically blocks new students from joining your account or submitting papers.
If your account unexpectedly reaches its student capacity, it is usually driven by one of two common scenarios outlined below.
Common causes for reaching the student limit
1. Inactive classes remain open
A student occupies a license as long as they are enrolled in at least one active (unexpired) class. If older classes are not regularly expired, past students remain active in the system and unnecessarily consume your license count.
The fix: Instructors must manually expire classes that are no longer in use.
Data request: If you are an administrator and need help identifying open classes across your institution, please submit a ticket to Turnitin Technical Support. Request a spreadsheet of all active classes created on or before a specific date. You can then distribute this list to your instructors to close out old classes.
2. Duplicate student accounts
When accessing Turnitin directly via turnitin.com or turnitinuk.com, students may create completely new accounts if they forget their passwords, rather than using the password reset tool. If a student joins the same class under two different email addresses, they will consume two student licenses.
-
The fix: Instructors can prevent duplicate accounts by adopting these enrollment best practices:
Direct enrollment: Manually add students to the class roster via email rather than letting them self-enroll. This keeps the class ID and Enrollment Key hidden.
Rotate the enrollment key: If you must use self-enrollment, instructors should change the class Enrollment Key as soon as all legitimate students have joined. This prevents students from reusing the key later with a duplicate account.
When an instructor expires a class or removes a duplicate student, the system does not update instantly. Please allow up to 48 hours for enrollment changes to reflect in your administrator student limit count.
Next steps and additional resources
Further guidance: For detailed steps on how to view your current usage data and reduce active student counts, please see our guide on Managing your student limit
Expanding your license: If your student population has grown and you need to permanently increase your enrollment capacity, please contact your Turnitin Account Manager directly to discuss purchasing additional seat licenses.