Someone please correct me if I'm wrong, but the waivers in question are aimed at students who receive tuition discounts due to working in a full-time capacity. Like a professor gets a tuition discount for their daughter who attends the school, or the admissions accountant gets a discount to attend the MBA program. [1] This means most students unaffiliated with the school would be protected from any tax on graduate school tuition aid.

Regardless, this is an interesting scenario (I say this as a tax accountant), since the university is a non-profit entity, and therefore doesn't receive any tax benefit for incurring this cost (whereas a for-profit company would deduct this as some sort of employee expense).

But instead of passing a tax onto the employee, it seems like the IRS waived the tax entirely since it could be interpreted as a contribution made by the university, to the university: the Uni pays the employee tuition, and the employee pays tuition back to the university. Since the tuition benefits can't be applied to other schools, it seems like a reasonable waiver.

On the other hand, we have a hefty amount of debt on our hands, and in order to dig ourselves out of it, the funds will have to come from _somewhere_. In an effort to "see randomness", this is what I'm hoping is the reason for the change.[2]

[1] the "145,000" student hyperlink in the article: acenet.edu/Pages/Higher-Education-and-Tax-Reform.aspx#tabContent-6 [2] http://www.paulgraham.com/randomness.html