Against a Tax Increase on Berkeley Students
The 2nd comment in the article reveals some interesting things.<p>Basically tuition is usually not charged for Phd students but is used for accounting purposes to get money from Federal agencies.<p>The &quot;tax increase&quot; would stop incentivizing universities to do these accounting tricks and declare tuiton as 0.<p>This is a good step in that tax code is simplified and accounting tricks &#x2F; loopholes are closed for corporations and universities (and other public&#x2F;private entities).<p>This is what I read, can anyone clarify this?<p>&quot;
But from an outside perspective, the current rules look like a money laundering scheme. Universities use an accounting gimmick of setting an arbitrary dollar amount for PhD student tuition, and then waive it. At least in STEM fields, essentially no PhD student actually pays tuition. Why not just set tuition to 0? The reason is because “tuition” can be charged to funding agencies, and so this accounting trick of setting and then waiving tuition allows universities to extract more overhead from the NSF, NIH, etc.<p>Of course, this accounting trick represents a non-trivial fraction of government support for academic research. It seems natural to simplify the tax code by disallowing this trick, but unless the goal is to de-fund academia (maybe it is), it should be countered with an increase in direct funding to universities from funding bodies.
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