WIRED: AMANDA COSTON WAS preparing for a meeting with her advisor Monday afternoon when her friend, another first-year PhD student in Carnegie Mellon's machine learning department, knocked on her door. Had she seen the email? A few minutes earlier, the university's Graduate Student Assembly had sent a Google Doc to department representatives across the university, and those reps had forwarded the document to their grad students.
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It is this kind of blind ignorance that our current administrations has that absolutely infuriates me. All they are worried about is helping their friends out with no regard as to who else might be majorly affected by the outcome. As a student who is looking towards a large amount of debt in my very near future, anything of this nature scares me immensely. It seems to me like the amount of student debt that is being incurred on a national scale right now is going to create another bubble that is going to pop and take our economy with it yet again, and the leadership in our country right now is woefully unqualified to handle this issue and make policy regarding it. I am afraid that this is going to be what we tell our children that we had to suffer through when we were young.
EDUCATION IS A RIGHT, NOT A PRIVLEDGE. There is no reason to count tuition waivers as taxable income. All that does is create a further financial barrier for people from under-privileged backgrounds. I understand that taxes are important, and I gladly pay my share on whatever legitimate income I make. But tuition waivers aren’t income. It’s not like they are earning $40,000 a year. This is a devastating blow to higher education, and people need to push back. It makes no sense to tax sad tired grad students just trying to make the world a better place when mega-corporations get millions of dollars worth of tax exemptions. It’s becoming increasingly obvious this tax plan, and much of the rest of the GOP agenda, only serves to isolate the lower and middle class. I do wonder, however, if universities could work around this by simply making tuition cost $0 or something really low, like $1. I mean, it seems like the only reason tuition exists for grads is to ensure they complete their office hours, but you could offer them their living stipend in exchange for that.
I have to say, this article set me more on edge than the previous one I commented on about this issue. "removing the promise of a living wage would dramatically affect people's ability to pursue a graduate degree," and I really don't know what will happen to current students if this is passed. "You want talented people to study and contribute to what they're passionate about—not what they can afford." If we have to worry about making a living, we are going to suffer in our studies. Many of us are already in debt for graduate school, and further reducing the amount we receive is cost prohibitive to many. Faced with the option of being more in debt or having to get a job, many students will choose not to pursue higher education. As Alex Edeleman says, "The more debt students graduate with, the less likely they are to pursue relatively low-paying or financially risky jobs—in academia and elsewhere. That means fewer educated people teaching, experimenting, and innovating at research institutions, sure, but in other places, too." It is a cycle that will cause more harm than good, and limit the pool of teachers and educators, and thus could impact all levels of education.
Why. Why why why WHY. Why does our government continue to make plays that will financially destroy those who have the least amount of money. Really, talk to any grad student in the drama department at CMU; none of us are rich. In fact, since we can't work most of us are honestly living summer to summer since those are the only times we get paid. Some odd jobs a=can be found throughout the year, but not enough to pay rent with. Our tuition deductions aren't even income! We see absolutely none of that money because WE DON'T HAVE A JOB. WE MAKE NO INCOME FROM ATTENDING GRAD SCHOOL. Come on, COME ON this does not only have the potential to ruin current grad students, but also those considering grad school, and were relying on the tuition wavier/ stipend to help them get through their program. I'm really looking forward to graduating in a few years with an MFA, but no job, as well as financial ruin from my non-income being taxed. Horray.
I’ve been following this from the beginning and it just spells disaster for so many people. When taken in context with the whole tax plan, this is just another way to tax poor and middle class families so that the top 1% can get an even bigger tax cut. Where the failure occurs is that someone at the white house or in congress decided that tuition waivers are income. Clearly neither of the two offices have ever been to grad school. Most likely this proposed cut comes from the brain of some staff flunky who never went on to grad school after completing their BS in Political Science or some grad student rejected them for a date and now they want payback. Either way, there is no logic being used here. Now this will start with grad students and then very quickly roll down to undergrad students. Here’s why; because if it means more tax cuts for the wealthy, why not just make everyone pay? Taxing credits, scholarships, grants, waivers and so forth is only the beginning of the destruction of higher education. Any economist can tell you that cutting business taxes does not cause the employer to higher more, only to hoard more of the money they don’t have to spend. The current administration is all about making it easier for businesses to do business and that means finding ways to pay for government spending while reducing the tax burden for the President’s buddies in the business. Everyone should be worried.
You know every day I wake up and I think “there couldn’t possibility be another thing that the current administration could do to piss me off even more” and yet I am constantly unpleasantly surprised. Obviously I am not a grad student myself but I still think that this is just fundamentally wrong. Ask any of the grads in the school of drama and they will tell you that they really don’t have time for an outside job with the intensity of this program. How the hell are they going to be abel to afford these new taxes? It literally drives me up the wall that the super rich continue to get tax cuts while people in school and the middle class are being targeted. Higher education is already so inaccessible to low income families, and by introducing this new tax you’re making a PhD even more unobtainable to so many people. I’m honestly shocked that the universities themselves haven’t fought back against this in a major way, because the sad reality is that this may cause them to lose some of their students.
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