Yeah, so, House Republicans evidently have no qualms tearing out the foundations of collegiate teaching and research, so that’s great!!
There are a lot of things to be angry about with the tax bills in the House and Senate, but for hopefully understandable personal reasons, this gets to me. Basically, the House bill will count graduate tuition waivers as income on graduate students’ taxes.
Graduate students literally never see a single cent of those waivers, by the way. All of that is handled by the university. Waivers cover the cost of the actual graduate school classes and Those waivers are the exact thing that make graduate work, especially PhDs, even possible. Graduate student stipends are notably poor – no one goes into academia because they’re planning on raking in the cash. So graduate work is already not the most financially feasible route for a lot of people. Counting those waivers – which can cover costs that can be literally double or more the amount grad students are paid in stipends – as taxable income is to devastate American higher education and research for years to come.
More specifically, this will put humanities degrees in particular further out of reach. Humanities students tend to receive lower stipends than their STEM counterparts.
In all cases, graduate students are integral to the work of teaching students and conducting research. Gradate students fill the gap in universities’ ability to offer languages, to teach a variety of new or expected classes. In my experience, they’re the ones sitting you down to teach you the grammar you never learned – the frontline of collegiate teaching, right there. They’re also in the field and in the lab and crunching numbers. They are essential.
All of these things have consequences. Yes, a lot of academic work circulate within academia, but academic work and teaching have effects. A law professor was the first to coin the term intersectionality. If you want something more concrete: books, vaccines, and social policy! And that of course, barely scratches the surface.
Graduate students already often being overworked and underpaid and facing less than optimal job prospects. It’s cruel to do this. It would also likely undercut American higher education and research across the board. People will drop out. People will choose not to apply. We could miss a generation of brilliant scholars.
Grad students don’t have a lot of clout and this isn’t necessarily an issue that everyone out there is going to get worked up about. But if you’re an American who cares about education, you should.
Opinion | The House Just Voted to Bankrupt Graduate Students
Thoughtfulfangirling 