Universities are also to blame for the GOP’s ‘grad student tax’
My wife is graduating from a PhD program and all her friends spam social media with &quot;Republicans making my taxes go up!&quot; posts.<p>News Flash - universities claim they pay <i>way</i> more than a grad student&#x27;s stipend, then get some sort of tax break by &quot;gifting&quot; the tuition. So if tuition is $50k, and pay a $30k stipend, total compensation is $80k - even though a student only gets $30k salary!<p>Why doesn&#x27;t the university just say the tuition awarded to grad students is $100k? $500k? $1million? Who cares? It doesn&#x27;t really exist anyway!<p>In reality, they should &quot;award&quot; grad students $0 in tuition and pay them like what they are - employees (and deeply exploited employees at that!).<p>EDIT - Sure, PhD students <i>might</i> cost more than they are paid (although I seriously doubt it given the 80 hour weeks, classes taught, and metric ton of bullshit my wife put up with). Regardless, pretending that somehow my wife is being paid $80k and the university is doing her this big favor is a ridiculous. Universities should figure out how to fund the supposed costs some other way than through a giant, made-up tuition bill that&#x27;s waived. Universities are full of the smartest people on earth, <i>surely</i> they can figure out how to give grants properly without this insane accounting maneuver.