Sure, but other employers won’t put their costs on employees W2. Universities obviously spend some money in the overhead, most likely way too much, but this is

Sure, but other employers won’t put their costs on employees W2. Universities obviously spend some money in the overhead, most likely way too much, but this is a topic for another discussion. The question here is why this overhead is in the form of tuition waiver, and the answer is so that they can take this money from federal grants, on top of the overhead they already take from these grants explicitly.