I sympthatize with the article and the person writing it, but if they shouldn't be taxed, why should people who pay post tax income for their undergraduate degree?
For example, in my last two years of PhD, I was both a teaching assistant and an instructor. When grading finals weeks before graduating, one of the instructors I was a TA for joked that he's surprised they were letting me graduate because I was far too useful.
Like TAs they too are getting paid less than what they would with a "real job", working full time.
Not to mention getting a graduate degree is a relative privilege to begin with. Either everyone should get the benefit, or they should take loans out and not be required to work like everyone else. Anything else is just hypocrisy.
It's this arrangement that enables more people to become grad students, not less. As the NYT opinion piece points out, these new rules will make it that only people who are independently wealthy, or can depend on support from wealthier family members, will be able to afford going to grad school.
Again, the NYT article is fallacious. Such a student could take out loans, just like undergraduate students.
It's nonsensical. There's no reason for admission and payment to be coupled.
Also, the amount being paid is irrelevant. A university could pay graduate students $33k/yr + whatever it costs to attend their institution. The only reason they don't do this is because they'd be taxed. This arrangement is beneficial to the university. Not to mention the student would be taxed more heavily as well.
The reason they don't do it is because for a large population of the grad students, it doesn't cost the university that much for that student to be at their school.
Loans are an extra burden, and grad school is an unbounded process. I spent 7.5 years in grad school. In practice, far, far fewer people will do it, and it will tend to be people who are already much better off financially. This will hinder class and economic upward mobility.
1. Everything you said applies to undergraduate students.
2. Undergraduate students are more in need than graduate students, not to mention that graduate students are better off financially.
So, yeah.
Why should graduate students alone get this benefit? For doing work they signed up for? Should university employees also not be taxed? There are tons of low paid researchers. Adjunct professors, etc.
Graduate students can just take loans out like everyone else (not that I like loans) You literally haven't given a reason for their special treatment. I think you're blind to the reality because you happened to go through grad school.
Finally, only top stem programs are funded. Most grad students, even phds, get loans. There's zero reason to discriminate on this.
In exchange for work, grad students usually get a combination of a stipend and free/subsidized tuition. This is described in the second paragraph of TFA.
> why should people who pay post tax income for their undergraduate degree
Are they being paid to get their undergrad degree? Most likely they are paying. And tuition at an accredited educational institution has traditionally been tax deductible, so it's not technically "post-tax income".
AOTC requires AGI <$80k ($160k married/joint) LLC requires AGI <$65k ($130k married/joint) Tuition deduction requires AGI <$80k ($160k married/joint)