5 ms·

Grad students protest GOP's tax hike and prepare to fight about tuition

pks016 9y ago
I wanted to apply for graduate schools in US this semester, last date of application is around 15 Dec. (I am from India) But now I am confused. With this kind of uncertainty, I don't know what to do.
- chriskanan 9y ago
  If you can afford it, I'd still apply. The senate version of the bill doesn't tax tuition waivers, unlike the house version. That means the final bill may not include that provision. Even if it does include that provision, the universities will probably find a way to get around this, I assume. Otherwise, they would face enormous problems paying PhD students enough money to live on. Also, you may want to apply to some schools outside of the US as well, e.g., Canada, UK, etc.
  - jernfrost 9y ago
    People forget that you can do graduate programs in english in plenty of non-native english speaking countries. All graduate programs in the Netherlands e.g. are offered in english. A reason to not forget this is that anglo-saxon countries usually have high tuition fees, while outside the anglo-saxon world you can frequently find tuition free or schools with very low tuition. It is not like lower tuition means worse quality. I've a master partly both in the US and the Netherlands, and the dutch university was much better. Better facilities, better professors, better designed programs. Of course top American universities are the best in the world, but once you go below that level, American universities are not necessarily that good. University quality varies much more widely in the US and UK e.g. In Scandinavian countries, the Netherlands, Germany etc, quality will be more even.
- buildbot 9y ago
  Depending on what you are studying, both the University of British Columbia and the University of Toronto are great graduate schools to consider. UBC has the added bonus of being fairly inexpensive for grad school. After getting a graduate degree it is also fairly straightforward to become permanent resident, if that’s important to you.
mankash666 9y ago
Let's face it - this is a dubious tactic adopted by schools. The latest leaks show universities stashing money offshore. Just clean up your act - Phds are free labor, don't swallow federal grants for exploiting them
- aub3bhat 9y ago
  This isn't about dubious tactic at all, if the government thinks its dubious it could simply direct NSF/NIH to disallow amount from being used to pay tuition and lower overhead allowed. You don't even need any legislation for that. In fact PhD's are merely a collateral damage in ending tution tax exemption which affects all students (and represents a much larger chunk when you account for number of undergrads). It's just that in other cases "per-student" effects are much lower, since either the student has no income or the lack of exemption mere dissuades parents from filling jointly.
- irq11 9y ago
  So, your logic is that it’s fine to tax tuition waivers as income, because the schools should be paying more? How does that work? This is a dubious tactic adopted by a sleazy political party to ram a bill through congress by taxing literally everything they can in order to make their other tax cuts look revenue neutral.
  - gruturo 9y ago
    I don’t think that’s what the parent post means. Rather, they advocate slashing the tuition price, because universities are already paid - by the government! - and they get to benefit from a PhD student’s labor. Actually - Not merely slashing. Money should actually flow, but in the opposite direction.
    - azeotropic 9y ago
      Exactly. In the natural sciences, PhD students are typically required to register for a 'thesis' course, and their lab is billed for the 'tuition' for this course. The lab is already providing all the instruction and paying for facilities for research through overhead charges. The tuition is in fact a naked money grab by the universities, out of a lab's personnel budget, on top of what's already budgeted for overhead. If these tuition charges are merely overhead, then universities need to dispense with this accounting fiction and re-negotiate their overhead rates with the granting agency, who may decide they get better value at other institutions. If tuition is really a charge to cover some services a graduate student directly receives from the university, then the waiver is income to the graduate student and ought to be taxed the same way tuition remission is taxed for other university employees.
IIAOPSW 9y ago
Makes sense. Grad students don't vote Republican anyway so why wouldn't the current admin fuck em'.
jernfrost 9y ago
Seriously American students should consider studying abroad. PhDs is a paid job in many countries. Also graduate and undergrad programs are tuition free, even for Americans in many European countries. I think a problem is many Americans think they have the top universities in the world, but you forget that is really only the ivy league which most Americans will not be able to attend anyway. I went to a decent university in the US, before going to the Netherlands instead. I got to say it was much better in the Netherlands for several reasons: 1. Most of my professors shockingly spoke BETTER english than at the US university. WHY? Because in the US there is an abundance of professors/teachers from foreign countries, especially from India and various asian countries. These professors often pronunciations of the english language which is hard for an American or European to understand. Dutch professors in contrast speak very clear english. Yes dutch is the native language, but at Master level all courses are taught in english if you don't speak dutch. For undergrad there are several special schools which do english only teaching. 2. More modern facilities. They had better equipped university library. Newer computers in the computer labs etc. 3. They teach you more about how to think. I felt US university was closer to a high school experience. A lot of hand holding and focused on learning lots of stuff. In the Netherlands it was less workload but harder problems. You spend more time thinking than doing. 4. More time with your professor and less time with student assistants and other non-professionals. 5. Easer to be a student in general. You don't need a car to get around. Dutch cities are very walk and bike friendly, and there is lots of public transportation. 6. More FREEDOM! For young people there seems to be way too many restrictions in the US. Can't drink until 21. Gender separated dormitories etc. I find that in the Netherlands and Europe in general you are treated more as an adult. You live in apartments with other students on campus (or off) and there are nobody going around enforcing lots of stupid rules.
- bob_theslob646 9y ago
  I agree with most of your points but does a European PhD hold the same exact weight as an American PhD, on average? I know that might sound silly, but I'm genuinely curious.
  - sytelus 9y ago
bob_theslob646 9y ago
>Until the tax bill drew national attention to these tuition waivers, many graduate students didn’t spend much time thinking about them. “I knew my tuition was being waived,” says first-year anthropology PhD student Levi Vonk. “I had never thought about the political implications that meant that someday Republicans would try to tax my waived tuition. I just assumed that would never be taxed.” Unfortunately, with this guy at the helm for the next couple of years, nothing will be sacred.
sytelus 9y ago
This is truly abomination in my view. Everyone knows how graduate students live on shoestring budgets and that in itself is non-incentive to take graduate studies. Today US thrives because of its research output and lead in technology. This singular measure can change that. On the top of this, the bill makes religious education more accessible.
- betterunix2 9y ago
  "Everyone knows how graduate students live on shoestring budgets" Actually, people do not know this, because a lot of people have never met grad students. That is one of the reasons Republicans can get away with this: their base has no clue what this is about and will probably not be affected by it.
  - obmelvin 9y ago
    And the people who are affected by and large won't vote for Trump, so they know they can make this political move to offset the 'cuts' to those who will vote Republican. Very sad.
puppetmaster40 9y ago
Dear Berkeley U.: Students don't have income. Also 40% of lowest paid pay $0 taxes. PS. Is it OK to post right articles on HN, or no dissenting allowed? Ex: Would this make it to the home page or nah? Asking for a friend. http://twitter.com/TheEconomist/status/933013221824397312 http://twitter.com/TheEconomist/status/933013221824397312
- detaro 9y ago
  That article was on the front page, yes.
  - puppetmaster40 9y ago
    Link?
    - detaro 9y ago
      easy to find via HN search: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15748368 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15748368
      - puppetmaster40 9y ago
        THANK YOU.
        sctb 9y ago
        Could you please read the guidelines before posting again? You've been breaking them a lot. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
juicyfroot 9y ago
Let me get this straight. Grad students receive free housing, tuition, and other paid expenses out of the tax payers wallets. And the grad students do not want to pay income tax on these benefits, like everyone else does? Holy shit. Talk about a group of entitled and self-victimizing bunch. I'm against all forms of income taxation. But at least grad students can be treated Equally to everyone else. Good riddance. Universities have been a bastion of Marxism and Leftism for too long and the tax payer is subsidying this bullshit there. Unbelievable.
- stu2010 9y ago
  Just to be clear, the majority of PhD students that are getting free tuition take either a very light courseload, or none. They are paying tuition, but not receiving any classes and in fact likely helping teach several classes. They also already pay income tax on their stipends, which are used to cover housing and other expenses. Free housing is not a benefit available to the vast majority of PhD students.
- wakkaflokka 9y ago
  Where do graduate students receive free housing?
  - cprayingmantis 9y ago
    I know right? What about these other benefits s/he speaks of? When I was in grad school I had to pay for housing, electricity, internet, meals, and transportation. Still had to work for the Uni 20 hours a week, study 40 hours, and take a contract job of 20 hours a week just to live paycheck to paycheck.
- ivraatiems 9y ago
  > Grad students receive free housing, tuition, and other paid expenses out of the tax payers wallets. Not all schools are public or paid for by the taxpayer. > Good riddance. Universities have been a bastion of Marxism and Leftism for too long and the tax payer is subsidying this bullshit there. Here are some other things universities are bastions of: medicine, law, engineering, biology, mathematics. All of which will be dramatically and negatively impacted by this change, so that a few very wealthy people won't be taxed on their massive estates after death. In the place of American universities, other countries will take over as the leaders in these fields - or American students will stop attending in favor of international ones, and then your alleged taxpayer dollars will go to people who aren't from here and have no intention of staying. But hey, at least those damn liberals will be mad, right?
Rnd1729 9y ago
Schools essentially try to double dip here dancing between for-profit/non-profit status. By giving a tuition-waiver instead of "free tuition" they can consider this a business expense and write off the tuition. The worst part about this is the write off gets bigger if tuition is bigger. Don't fall victim to distilling things down to a headline. Read deeper and understand. It's not just about what things do but how they do it and in this case this had to go.
- greglindahl 9y ago
  Ther'e s a lot of misinformation floating around this discussion. The school that gave me a tuition waiver was owned by the State of Virginia and doesn't pay taxes. Almost all private US schools are charities and don't pay taxes for education-related activities.
LeoJiWoo 9y ago
American Universities are for profit corporations and need to be investigated. They have huge endowments and pay admins huge sums. Yet they crush students with unbelievably high tuition. We have a student loan crisis, that is mentally destroying millennials. They refuse to pay grad students a living wage. They refuse to open up publicly funded research. They overfund huge sports teams while underfunding much needed scientific research. Universities may have been a beacon of science before, but now they are a profit-seeking parasite destroying students and true scientific progress. Endowments: Harvard - 35 billion Yale - 25 billion Stanford - 22 billion Princeton - 21 billion MIT - 12 billion Upenn - 10 billion Texas A&M - 9 billion Why do these universities need taxpayer money AND force students to take loans ?! https://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/the-short-list-college/articles/2017-09-28/10-universities-with-the-biggest-endowments https://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/the-short-lis...
madengr 9y ago
"That’s something Margaret Mary Downey, an elected representative for Berkeley’s graduate student union and a fifth-year PhD student studying social welfare, wants to change." Wow, 5 years into a welfare PhD. Not exactly quantum chromodynamics, but she is an expert at living off the state. Seems more to me like a bunch of whiny socialist wanting everything free. I'm taxed, as income, for any grad classes my employer pays for. I'd say they are just closing a loophole. It goes both ways.
- UncleMeat 9y ago
  During my PhD I took three classes. This isn't "grad classes my employer pays for" at all.

I wanted to apply for graduate schools in US this semester, last date of application is around 15 Dec. (I am from India) But now I am confused. With this kind of uncertainty, I don't know what to do.

chriskanan 9y ago
If you can afford it, I'd still apply. The senate version of the bill doesn't tax tuition waivers, unlike the house version. That means the final bill may not include that provision. Even if it does include that provision, the universities will probably find a way to get around this, I assume. Otherwise, they would face enormous problems paying PhD students enough money to live on. Also, you may want to apply to some schools outside of the US as well, e.g., Canada, UK, etc.
- jernfrost 9y ago
  People forget that you can do graduate programs in english in plenty of non-native english speaking countries. All graduate programs in the Netherlands e.g. are offered in english. A reason to not forget this is that anglo-saxon countries usually have high tuition fees, while outside the anglo-saxon world you can frequently find tuition free or schools with very low tuition. It is not like lower tuition means worse quality. I've a master partly both in the US and the Netherlands, and the dutch university was much better. Better facilities, better professors, better designed programs. Of course top American universities are the best in the world, but once you go below that level, American universities are not necessarily that good. University quality varies much more widely in the US and UK e.g. In Scandinavian countries, the Netherlands, Germany etc, quality will be more even.
buildbot 9y ago
Depending on what you are studying, both the University of British Columbia and the University of Toronto are great graduate schools to consider. UBC has the added bonus of being fairly inexpensive for grad school. After getting a graduate degree it is also fairly straightforward to become permanent resident, if that’s important to you.

mankash666 9y ago

Let's face it - this is a dubious tactic adopted by schools. The latest leaks show universities stashing money offshore. Just clean up your act - Phds are free labor, don't swallow federal grants for exploiting them

aub3bhat 9y ago
This isn't about dubious tactic at all, if the government thinks its dubious it could simply direct NSF/NIH to disallow amount from being used to pay tuition and lower overhead allowed. You don't even need any legislation for that. In fact PhD's are merely a collateral damage in ending tution tax exemption which affects all students (and represents a much larger chunk when you account for number of undergrads). It's just that in other cases "per-student" effects are much lower, since either the student has no income or the lack of exemption mere dissuades parents from filling jointly.
irq11 9y ago
So, your logic is that it’s fine to tax tuition waivers as income, because the schools should be paying more? How does that work? This is a dubious tactic adopted by a sleazy political party to ram a bill through congress by taxing literally everything they can in order to make their other tax cuts look revenue neutral.
- gruturo 9y ago
  I don’t think that’s what the parent post means. Rather, they advocate slashing the tuition price, because universities are already paid - by the government! - and they get to benefit from a PhD student’s labor. Actually - Not merely slashing. Money should actually flow, but in the opposite direction.
  - azeotropic 9y ago
    Exactly. In the natural sciences, PhD students are typically required to register for a 'thesis' course, and their lab is billed for the 'tuition' for this course. The lab is already providing all the instruction and paying for facilities for research through overhead charges. The tuition is in fact a naked money grab by the universities, out of a lab's personnel budget, on top of what's already budgeted for overhead. If these tuition charges are merely overhead, then universities need to dispense with this accounting fiction and re-negotiate their overhead rates with the granting agency, who may decide they get better value at other institutions. If tuition is really a charge to cover some services a graduate student directly receives from the university, then the waiver is income to the graduate student and ought to be taxed the same way tuition remission is taxed for other university employees.

IIAOPSW 9y ago

Makes sense. Grad students don't vote Republican anyway so why wouldn't the current admin fuck em'.

jernfrost 9y ago

Seriously American students should consider studying abroad. PhDs is a paid job in many countries. Also graduate and undergrad programs are tuition free, even for Americans in many European countries. I think a problem is many Americans think they have the top universities in the world, but you forget that is really only the ivy league which most Americans will not be able to attend anyway. I went to a decent university in the US, before going to the Netherlands instead. I got to say it was much better in the Netherlands for several reasons: 1. Most of my professors shockingly spoke BETTER english than at the US university. WHY? Because in the US there is an abundance of professors/teachers from foreign countries, especially from India and various asian countries. These professors often pronunciations of the english language which is hard for an American or European to understand. Dutch professors in contrast speak very clear english. Yes dutch is the native language, but at Master level all courses are taught in english if you don't speak dutch. For undergrad there are several special schools which do english only teaching. 2. More modern facilities. They had better equipped university library. Newer computers in the computer labs etc. 3. They teach you more about how to think. I felt US university was closer to a high school experience. A lot of hand holding and focused on learning lots of stuff. In the Netherlands it was less workload but harder problems. You spend more time thinking than doing. 4. More time with your professor and less time with student assistants and other non-professionals. 5. Easer to be a student in general. You don't need a car to get around. Dutch cities are very walk and bike friendly, and there is lots of public transportation. 6. More FREEDOM! For young people there seems to be way too many restrictions in the US. Can't drink until 21. Gender separated dormitories etc. I find that in the Netherlands and Europe in general you are treated more as an adult. You live in apartments with other students on campus (or off) and there are nobody going around enforcing lots of stupid rules.

bob_theslob646 9y ago
I agree with most of your points but does a European PhD hold the same exact weight as an American PhD, on average? I know that might sound silly, but I'm genuinely curious.
- sytelus 9y ago

bob_theslob646 9y ago

>Until the tax bill drew national attention to these tuition waivers, many graduate students didn’t spend much time thinking about them. “I knew my tuition was being waived,” says first-year anthropology PhD student Levi Vonk. “I had never thought about the political implications that meant that someday Republicans would try to tax my waived tuition. I just assumed that would never be taxed.” Unfortunately, with this guy at the helm for the next couple of years, nothing will be sacred.

sytelus 9y ago

This is truly abomination in my view. Everyone knows how graduate students live on shoestring budgets and that in itself is non-incentive to take graduate studies. Today US thrives because of its research output and lead in technology. This singular measure can change that. On the top of this, the bill makes religious education more accessible.

betterunix2 9y ago
"Everyone knows how graduate students live on shoestring budgets" Actually, people do not know this, because a lot of people have never met grad students. That is one of the reasons Republicans can get away with this: their base has no clue what this is about and will probably not be affected by it.
- obmelvin 9y ago
  And the people who are affected by and large won't vote for Trump, so they know they can make this political move to offset the 'cuts' to those who will vote Republican. Very sad.

puppetmaster40 9y ago

Dear Berkeley U.: Students don't have income. Also 40% of lowest paid pay $0 taxes. PS. Is it OK to post right articles on HN, or no dissenting allowed? Ex: Would this make it to the home page or nah? Asking for a friend. http://twitter.com/TheEconomist/status/933013221824397312 http://twitter.com/TheEconomist/status/933013221824397312

detaro 9y ago
That article was on the front page, yes.
- puppetmaster40 9y ago
  Link?
  - detaro 9y ago
    easy to find via HN search: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15748368 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15748368
    - puppetmaster40 9y ago
      THANK YOU.
      - sctb 9y ago
        Could you please read the guidelines before posting again? You've been breaking them a lot. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

juicyfroot 9y ago

Let me get this straight. Grad students receive free housing, tuition, and other paid expenses out of the tax payers wallets. And the grad students do not want to pay income tax on these benefits, like everyone else does? Holy shit. Talk about a group of entitled and self-victimizing bunch. I'm against all forms of income taxation. But at least grad students can be treated Equally to everyone else. Good riddance. Universities have been a bastion of Marxism and Leftism for too long and the tax payer is subsidying this bullshit there. Unbelievable.

stu2010 9y ago
Just to be clear, the majority of PhD students that are getting free tuition take either a very light courseload, or none. They are paying tuition, but not receiving any classes and in fact likely helping teach several classes. They also already pay income tax on their stipends, which are used to cover housing and other expenses. Free housing is not a benefit available to the vast majority of PhD students.
wakkaflokka 9y ago
Where do graduate students receive free housing?
- cprayingmantis 9y ago
  I know right? What about these other benefits s/he speaks of? When I was in grad school I had to pay for housing, electricity, internet, meals, and transportation. Still had to work for the Uni 20 hours a week, study 40 hours, and take a contract job of 20 hours a week just to live paycheck to paycheck.
ivraatiems 9y ago
> Grad students receive free housing, tuition, and other paid expenses out of the tax payers wallets. Not all schools are public or paid for by the taxpayer. > Good riddance. Universities have been a bastion of Marxism and Leftism for too long and the tax payer is subsidying this bullshit there. Here are some other things universities are bastions of: medicine, law, engineering, biology, mathematics. All of which will be dramatically and negatively impacted by this change, so that a few very wealthy people won't be taxed on their massive estates after death. In the place of American universities, other countries will take over as the leaders in these fields - or American students will stop attending in favor of international ones, and then your alleged taxpayer dollars will go to people who aren't from here and have no intention of staying. But hey, at least those damn liberals will be mad, right?

Rnd1729 9y ago

Schools essentially try to double dip here dancing between for-profit/non-profit status. By giving a tuition-waiver instead of "free tuition" they can consider this a business expense and write off the tuition. The worst part about this is the write off gets bigger if tuition is bigger. Don't fall victim to distilling things down to a headline. Read deeper and understand. It's not just about what things do but how they do it and in this case this had to go.

greglindahl 9y ago
Ther'e s a lot of misinformation floating around this discussion. The school that gave me a tuition waiver was owned by the State of Virginia and doesn't pay taxes. Almost all private US schools are charities and don't pay taxes for education-related activities.

LeoJiWoo 9y ago

American Universities are for profit corporations and need to be investigated. They have huge endowments and pay admins huge sums. Yet they crush students with unbelievably high tuition. We have a student loan crisis, that is mentally destroying millennials. They refuse to pay grad students a living wage. They refuse to open up publicly funded research. They overfund huge sports teams while underfunding much needed scientific research. Universities may have been a beacon of science before, but now they are a profit-seeking parasite destroying students and true scientific progress. Endowments: Harvard - 35 billion Yale - 25 billion Stanford - 22 billion Princeton - 21 billion MIT - 12 billion Upenn - 10 billion Texas A&M - 9 billion Why do these universities need taxpayer money AND force students to take loans ?! https://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/the-short-list-college/articles/2017-09-28/10-universities-with-the-biggest-endowments https://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/the-short-lis...

madengr 9y ago

"That’s something Margaret Mary Downey, an elected representative for Berkeley’s graduate student union and a fifth-year PhD student studying social welfare, wants to change." Wow, 5 years into a welfare PhD. Not exactly quantum chromodynamics, but she is an expert at living off the state. Seems more to me like a bunch of whiny socialist wanting everything free. I'm taxed, as income, for any grad classes my employer pays for. I'd say they are just closing a loophole. It goes both ways.

UncleMeat 9y ago
During my PhD I took three classes. This isn't "grad classes my employer pays for" at all.