The colleges and universities have become corporations that run on student loans and graduate student slave labor. This has to change, and it will be a painful process no matter what happens.
https://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/the-short-lis...
For example, my graduate students are on NSF grants that I applied for. The grants pay the graduate students a stipend and health insurance costs, they pay my university the full cost of in-state tuition and fees, and they pay overhead on those costs. These are all budgeted for.
You can argue that graduate students and universities are just another special interest lobbying the government for a tax exemption that benefits them. There is nothing special about graduate education when you're conferring something that's inherently valuable (namely MS and PhD degrees) to a lucky few.
You could further argue that it's unfair to ask blue-collar workers in fly-over states to pay higher taxes because of the impact of such a subsidy.
There is a lot to like in the tax bill: interest on second homes isn't going to be subsidized nor are new mortgage interest on homes over $1M. Frankly, I think it should have been applied to ALL homes over $1M since many economists have argued vociferously that such an exemption is a huge subsidy to the high-cost states.
I'd also like to see a revisitation of the taxation of carried-interest for hedge funds. There is no reason to consider performance bonuses as a return on capital if they don't have any basis in the investment/capital at risk.
But arguing that graduate students (LUCKY graduate students) are worthy of some kind of exemption is just lobbying. You could easily make the same argument for active-duty armed service members. Frankly, I'd support a tax reduction on those people. They've suffered from our national follies to a disproportionate degree.
This tax cut is solely focused on corporations and was fixated on hitting a 20% tax rate. The corporate tax rate could have been 22% or 28% with out the need to scrounge money every other place they could and yet still add 1 to 1.5 trillion to the national debt.
No corporation is going to make investments because of this, there just going to horde it in the Cayman Islands or issue dividends then will also end up in the Cayman Islands. Funny how the repatriation of capital exemption wasn’t in this bill. So to your point. Both blue collar workers and grad students are now subsidizing corporate profits that will sit idle in foreign accounts.
The overall tenor of your post is a bit disingenuous. The data tells us that getting a PhD does not substantially improve your material existence, or at least that the picture is murky.
The data also tells us that the science that comes out of the research performed during those PhDs has an enormous positive ROI for society.
So in other words, phd students are under-paid take a lifelong financial hit to provide large but diffuse benefits to society, benefits that most students won't be able to capture because, well, that's the nature of basic science..
> You can argue that graduate students and universities are just another special interest lobbying the government for a tax exemption that benefits them
Since everything's a special interest, we might as well throw the money at oil executives?
No, of course not. Some of those special interests really are worth investing in. Roads, schools, and labs provide enormous and measurable, if diffuse, value.
> You could further argue that it's unfair to ask blue-collar workers in fly-over states to pay higher taxes because of the impact of such a subsidy.
This bill will most harm the public and low-endowment universities in those flyover states. The schools those workers' children will attend will be less well-staffed and there will be fewer opportunities for funded graduate programs.
> You could easily make the same argument for active-duty armed service members. Frankly, I'd support a tax reduction on those people
Good news: they already receive very large tax exemptions. As they should; the armed services are also an important special interest...
I meet plenty of PhD's in my regular practice. Not every person earns a PhD and stays in academia. PLENTY earn that degree and use it as a stepping stone to a high-paying job in the private sector.
As for oil executives: they're not going to be the biggest winners here. Shareholders likely will be. That repatriated capital is going to lead to a huge share buyback and dividends. Wanna know who's going to get a large chunk of that? PENSION FUNDS for state employees. If you think CALPERS doesn't stand to benefit from this surging stock market you're not paying attention.
I wonder if you realize how much you sound like a lobbyist? Without a tax subsidy, there is a calamity. Every time someone warns that a tax increase will affect investment or job creation or cause a shift in the deployment of capital, people in favor of said increase downplay those fears.
All the folks who said that a $15 minimum wage would kill job creation....were those folks wrong?
And here we are, hearing that the removal of a special tax treatment will massively impact graduate education. Well, maybe. Maybe not. I guess we will have to see.
So the cost to a student to receive a PhD goes up a bit. Big deal. Is that gonna kill research entirely? There is already a glut of PhDs here in the USA. Maybe a few less isn't such a bad thing.
Cool anecdotes and all, but there's data on this question and you're wrong. PhDs do not increase lifetime earnings.
This isn't a case of dueling anecdotes. It's a normal fact we can verify with data.
> As for oil executives: they're not going to be the biggest winners here. Shareholders likely will be.
And I suppose oil executives store their fortunes in bold bars...?
> PENSION FUNDS for state employees
This is such a BS excuse for favoring capital.
It is, in fact, possible to write tax code that differentiates between the two.
The current tax bill does not, in fact, actually do so.
And worse, it even rolls back benefits that did differentiate between "filthy rich" and "working class saving for retirement"!
> I wonder if you realize how much you sound like a lobbyist?
Says the one conflating upper class investment income with pension funds while defending a policy that slashes retirement benefits and dismissing hard facts with personal anecdotes about how well-off people making 30k/yr are...
1. What it shows: Students good enough to get accepted into PhD programs are good enough to get paid more in general. Good we're talking about this -- the market clearly values these people!
2. What it misses: ... But what if a PhD-capable person instead just went directly into industry? What is the opportunity cost of taking a pause of 4-7 years to do R&D for the public?
3. What economists found: By looking at students graduating from a good school and therefore PhD-capable, and then comparing the result of them doing 4-7 years of PhD vs not.. the students who took time to contribute to science lost out on a ton of money. They're quite literally donating their time to society.
Phrasing it as _subsidizing_ these people to do R&D is misleading. The reality is the government is underpaying for the public service of growing the economy, especially relative to market rates for people equally qualified to make a bunch of $$$ working on social media ads and fancy juice machines.
But that breaks the narrative. The actual studies show the salary sweet spot is somewhere between a BS and MS. That means federal institutions must _lure_ PhDs, not drive them away.
This sort of uncharitable swiping breaks the HN guidelines. So do insinuations of astroturfing, which you did elsewhere in this thread. I realize it can be hard to restrain oneself when someone else is wrong on the internet, but please make the effort and edit such acid out of your comments if you want to keep posting here. You can always set 'delay' in your profile to give yourself time to edit before others see your comment; that's what I do.
If you care about economic impact, you should be increasing funding, not eating the seed corn.
And as my above post, it seems you are either unaware of what R&D does and who does it, or are effectively performing the work of a paid Russian troll.
https://www.irs.gov/newsroom/tax-breaks-for-the-military
Additionally, and in direct analogy, GI Bill tuition is not taxed.
> They pay taxes on their income just like everyone else does.
Not on combat pay, and spouses get special treatment regardless of status.
> That includes state income tax as well.
And don't forget about commissaries, most especially in the states without income tax.
Combat pay is a tiny portion of a service-member pay. And no, spouses don't get special treatment. You're making things up to justify your argument.
Go ahead and read that list over again slowly and tell me if you think that list compares to the large governmental subsidy that is provided to support non-taxation of tuition for graduate students.
Because I know that list front and back and none of those minuscule allotments compare to treating $50K of tuition per year as tax-free income.
Yes.
> and tell me if you think that list compares to the large governmental subsidy that is provided to support non-taxation of tuition for graduate students.
From my original post:
>> Additionally, and in direct analogy, GI Bill tuition is not taxed.
It's not just comparative. It's Literally. Identical.
> And no, spouses don't get special treatment. You're making things up to justify your argument
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_Spouses_Residency_Rel...
Mind you, I'm not claiming that these benefits should go away, or even that they're enough. But claiming that military members don't receive as many benefits as grad students is absurd.
>From my original post: >> Additionally, and in direct analogy, GI Bill tuition is not taxed. >It's not just comparative. It's Literally. Identical.
It's not identical. The GI Bill is a benefit that's conferred on a servicemember FOR SERVICE TO THE NATION. That service includes the possibility that a servicemember will be killed during their service. That's the job. It's not taxed because it's a benefit they earned for selfless service to the nation.
A good buddy of mine is going to law school with his. He did 20 years of service as a Marine.
You want a benefit like that? EASY. Go do 20 years in the Marines. You can have all the tax-free tuition you want.
> And no, spouses don't get special treatment. You're making things up to justify your argument https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_Spouses_Residency_Rel....
Again. This act was for the protection of servicemembers against loss of job or loss of home because of a deployment. It doesn't give them special tax treatment. It forestalls things like foreclosure or garnishment of wages because of deployment to a war zone. There is no special tax treatment for spouses. They pay tax. I paid tax. Just like everyone else in the USA.
You don't understand the arguments you're making.
It is an identical benefit.
The justification for the benefit is not identical. In one case we're providing additional compensation to veterans. In another case we're providing an incentive for research.
But the benefit itself really is identical.
> This act was for the protection of servicemembers against loss of job or loss of home because of a deployment
Civilians also lose jobs / are forced to relocate?
Pointing out that someone gets special treatment is not an argument that they don't deserve that special treatment.
> You don't understand the arguments you're making.
You seem to be under the impression that I think these benefits are either unreasonable or sufficient.
I don't believe either.
I'm merely pointing out that there are many provisions in the tax code that are specific to military personnel and families.
Perhaps they deserve those benefits, as you argue. And I agree. But that doesn't mean those things aren't special treatment in the tax code.
> They pay tax. I paid tax. Just like everyone else in the USA.
Including graduate students. Excluding billions of dollars over at Apple.
Maybe if we stopped fighting over who's getting screwed more and started taxing extreme wealth we wouldn't have to choose a winner in this apparent culture war?
Graduate students get special treatment which bumps up their real compensation.
So do military families.
What makes this treatment "special" is that it's targeted at a subpopulation. That's all.
You're the one attaching moral weight to these purely factual statements.
I'm sympathetic to criticisms of universities but let's not overstate the case: slaves have no choice and grad students do. It's unwise to go to grad school in most disciplines (https://jakeseliger.com/2012/05/22/what-you-should-know-befo...) but people go of their own free will despite the fact that one hour on Google will return dozens of excellent reasons not to go.
In particular, state schools have a lot less flexibility in terms of how we allocate funding to graduate students; our pay rates are set by California state law, and the salary of every single employee of the university is subject to public scrutiny [0]. We cannot simply dip into our endowments to correspondingly raise wages, since the amount which can be withdrawn each year is strictly capped as a portion of the total, to ensure the long-term growth of the fund (see [1], "Endowment Spending Policy").
It is true that colleges and universities have grown tremendously in their size and scope. This is a popular anecdote (and often repeated without data), but consider this: a university has become a mini-society in a lot of ways. Universities offer an unbelievable number of services and drive their own mini-economies. They are often among the largest employers in their area, even in thriving metropolitan centers [2]. They provide health insurance, mental health care, their own police forces, job-searching centers, support groups, etc. As our broader American society scales back its social services, universities are increasingly on the hook to provide these services to students.
I agree that universities have grown too large, and resent extremely large unnecessary salaries (for example for sports coaches), but I also acknowledge that such waste exists in any sufficiently large and complex system, and it is a constant and active process to limit its effects. Condemning the whole system on account of this seems like cutting off the nose to spite the face.
[0]: https://ucannualwage.ucop.edu/wage/ [1]: http://www.ucop.edu/investment-office/_files/report/UC_Annua... [2]: http://www.ucla.edu/about/facts-and-figures