Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Universities and Colleges React to Budget
WDUQNews: "Pittsburgh Mayor Luke Ravenstahl today introduced a 2010 budget proposal that includes a 1% tax on all tuition paid to Pittsburgh based schools. The “Post-Secondary Education Privilege Tax” would be used to help meet the city’s ongoing pension fund obligations."
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6 comments:
I'm sorry, but I don't see why I need to pay an extra $500 dollars to the city of Pittsburgh. Don't the universities already have to pay taxes to the city that should cover some of this? And what is this $500 dollars really going to cover? Besides, the article even mentions that this could be illegal, some one should really look into that. According to this article the University of Pittsburgh is already providing a fair share of cost to and services for the city. I don't know where Carnegie Mellon stands, but my guess is we are paying more since we are a private university and don't receive money from the state government.
I think it's crazy that the city of Pittsburgh wants to tax University students in the area. We are already paying enough to go to college, and all of the students in the area are pouring a lot of money into Pittsburgh's economy already. The universities are so helpful to the city, they employ a lot of people in the area. We are also supporting the Pittsburgh economy already because we are shopping, eating, doing everything around here. I don't think it's fair that just because we are going to college here we should have to pay extra taxes!
I went to the student senate meeting about this and they really want to fight this. As Allegra pointed out, college students do a lot for the economy of a city. The student senate may run with this idea and ask for a boycott of downtown business to show the buying power of the student body in Pittsburgh.
The reason that the city of Pittsburgh is targeting colleges for more money is because they see it as the easiest way to get the money. They see how much our tuition cost and they figure "what is another 500 dollars for someone that is already paying 50,000 a year?" I'm sure that CMU is going to fight this along with all the other colleges. I can actually imagine CMU leading the fight since we are a private institution and we would be hit the hardest.
As a member of student Senate I can assure everyone that senate is not just brushing this off. I receive more e-mails on this subject than anything else. People are bombarding our D-list with their opinions and we are on top of things. We are petitioning to make people aware, and our hope is that cmu students will bombard to the offices of city officials with letters urging them to vote against this.
I also have to say that I agree with the president of Duquesne that for a city that prides itself on being forward thinking, I think a regressive educational tax is idiotic, and hopefully illegal.
There are so many issues with this proposal I'm not even sure where to start. If the claim is that the students don't pay their fair share for the use of community resources then why does a student at CMU use 4 times the resrources of one at Pitt? And if they don't, then why is their fair share 4 times as much? What about those who live off-campus and pay (indirectly as a part of their rent) property tax? Or those who work in the city and pay income tax on that? Why are students asked to pay to support the police department when the school has its own police force? What about those of us living in houses we own that are already directly paying property tax?
In the end I can see one main reason to tax the students rather than someone else - the majority of students going to college in the city are not from the city, therefore they're not registered to vote in the city so the government won't upset the people voting in the next election. It's the same reason that they like parking and hotel taxes - those who use those services and pay the taxes come from outside the group that votes for you (or against you, if you do this to the wrong group).
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