Since the unveiling of the GOP tax plan, the country has been abuzz with questions. Individuals ask, “How does this affect me?” Companies contemplate, “How does this affect the bottom line?” Pundits and talking heads sputter, “Who wins? Who loses?”
I ask only one question, “Has the entire country forgotten about graduate students?”
The most familiar educational provision in this bill is the elimination of the student loan interest deduction. However, this bill has a more nefarious plan for graduate students.
Typically, PhD students have their tuition waived by the school and are given a modest stipend to live on – all as a small way to keep graduate students from flipping burgers in between classes, time in the lab, and running undergraduate courses. Currently, this stipend is counted as taxable income and the tuition waiver – money never actually seen by the students – is not.
The GOP proposes to now include the tuition waiver as “income,” increasing graduate student’s taxes three- to four-fold under most calculations.
No matter how exact rates change, this bill will not in any way be a tax cut for graduate students. This spells disaster for our country’s education system.
PhD students already live on the brink of poverty and devote on average five of their best years to expanding our collective knowledge. This bill seeks to take this opportunity away from any student who is not independently wealthy. The loss of graduate students would stretch university resources to their limits as they scramble to fill all the positions currently covered by graduate students.
Any attempt to soften the blow to graduate students would mean universities diverting the costs to others – the most likely candidates being the undergraduate students and ultimately the government, who would see tuition spikes and increased borrowing rates of subsidized student loans.
It is no secret that America’s prowess in the last half century has been built upon the education system we have created. Firms like Apple, Amazon, Boeing, and AbbVie thrive on the talent cultivated by these institutions. This destructive blow to the education system risks our economy, our health, and our military might. This provision will not make America great again.
As Americans we must support those who sacrifice for the greater good. So we must call upon our representatives and senators to remove this attack upon our nation’s students.
However, this does not go far enough. We should go a further and make stipends tax-free as they once were. If the goal of this bill is to reward hard work and drive growth, then let us incentivize innovation. Let us support those students who sacrifice time and careers with much higher pay to instead delve into the questions and problems plaguing our world.
Benjamin Wheeler is a scientist for a local biotech start up with a BS in Biomedical Engineering from Johns Hopkins University.
