I went to see if U of M had included a statement in the email we got about tax increases, CF, but didn’t see one.
I did however, find this at the bottom of the email:
@notrichenough is that a good enough explanation for you?
(I was using my numbers because I am not single).
Some combination of
@igloo, I assume they will be accused of tax fraud if they just make that change for RAs and TAs.
I cannot emphasize this enough.
I was thinking about this more on the way back from teaching a section today. (By the way, a thing that would no longer exist. We went into depth today about what the professor lectured on and now they all understand the main idea at a much deeper level.) I gave my first real lecture yesterday in front of 150 students. It was a pretty low stakes exercise. I was given feedback from my professor. The students’ grades aren’t riding on how well I perform.
You want to lose that? Because that’s what will happen. I’ve had many a poor teacher in my life and part of the goal of getting a PhD is so that we’re not that bad when we go to teach other people’s children. Teaching that you might be paying good money for.
… deleted, off topic
Hire adjuncts? I had a good laugh. It is relatively easy for law schools to lure adjuncts with CLE and networking perks (and only one exam a term to grade!) but most stem professionals have no desire to teach classes at inconvenient for them hours of the day, bagloads of homework to grade, and all for a few crumbs of pay.
delete / off topic
I could see my H being an adjunct in his field after he retires and has a big fat pension and likely other income from consulting. There’s no way he could do it while he has a full time job that is often 24/7.
I’m thankful that S1 got his PhD 3 years ago, because I have no idea how he could’ve afforded living in Cambridge MA on his RA stipend if he had to pay federal and state tax on his stipend + his tuition waiver. This is nuts. For the amount of time he was expected to be in the lab, he figured that his stipend didn’t even pay him close to minimum wage - not unusual for PhD students.
@romanigypsyeyes does your example above factor in doubling the standard deduction? I honestly don’t know what it is, but one of the enticements is supposed to be that it is doubled.
I’m not mocking anyone. In fact, my D is applying to grad school right now for next fall. I’ve said repeatedly, I am against this.
Thank you for some actual numbers. By my calculations, they are wrong - with the specifics outlined, taxable income would be $53,533, and the income tax would be $7,538.
Even calculating this correctly, it’s not good.
Don’t most grad students at public schools get residency after a year and therefore in-state rates?
According to this report: https://www.urban.org/sites/default/files/publication/91016/price_of_grad_professional_school_0.pdf, in-state public graduate tuition averages $11,000, and out-of-state averages $22,600.
So maybe one change will be that students will have to price-shop more, and establish residency before entering grad school. Getting taxed on $10-15K will be a lot easier to handle than getting taxed on o-o-s rates. Private schools may have a tougher time getting students.
Harvard charges way less for tuition in years three and later (like 75% less), maybe all schools will adapt a model like this. Many schools already charge different rates for different degree programs, is there any reason they couldn’t just start charging $5000 per year instead of $40k if you are a PhD student? How many PhD students actually pay tuition with their own money?
Doesn’t help students caught in the middle of change.
Depends on the state, of course. Some like California, make it extremely easy for a grad student to obtain instate residency for tuition purposes after one year. I think Texas is even easier (or used to be): they give instate tuition to all grad students who earn any type of merit scholarship, so even some terminal MA programs offer a $1,000 merit scholly so the students can get instate rates.
In my state, no—which, since the money we get for tuition waivers comes to us in a block amount, means that my department can reasonably only offer tuition waivers in our graduate program (which are competitively awarded) to in-state students.
Now, I am in a state where it’s pretty easy for someone to establish residency, but it takes more than one year, so it doesn’t help students in a 2-year masters program.
Regarding adjuncts, I’m not sure retired professionals will want to do what TAs do. A couple if examples:
Did they say it will be fraud? I doubt it will come to that. They should have just called it scholarship anyway, tuition waiver and stipends. Many grad students don’t make a great instructors. I regarded it educating them rather than hiring them. I didn’t enjoy having a student “helper” when I was teaching. It made more work for me. You had to train them and supervise. You rarely use what they grade.
Actually, I had more amazing TAs in college than profs to be honest. I still remember them all these years later – Greg my Calc TA who sweated bullets to help us understand and be ready for exams; Tim who would keep the geology lab open late so I could finish a lab; Bryn who met with me multiple times when I was struggling to pass a history class; Mike who cared so much about the national parks in our region and got us to care, too. I can’t remember the profs from any of those classes.
And this is expected to raise $65 billion in taxes over 10 years – you don’t think the IRS will care?
Where do you see $65B in taxes? There can’t be that many graduate students. If you assume most of them in the 10-12% bracket and tuition $20-30K, each will pay about $3K/year. To raise $6.5B/year, there have to be about 2 million graduate students excluding law school, medical school or MBAs since they don’t get tuition waiver. That sounds a lot to me. The nation produce 400K PhDs a year? That’s assuming it takes them 5 years to get a PhD.
Hmm, looks like the $65B number I saw last week appears to be for all the education impacts of the House law (# was provided by the House itself, but there are so many articles on this topic that I now can’t find the original one I got it from – but maybe THAT is good news that this is getting some press). I don’t see anything in a few minutes of digging that shows just the grad school tuition increase. But I have to ask you – how is a grad student making $25K a year going to come up with an additional $3K per year (plus more for state taxes)? They aren’t allowed to hold outside employment in most cases.
Look we are discussing if IRS will forgo taxes they gain from taxing grad students tuition waiver. You said they won’t since they are losing $6.5B annually. I countered it by saying it has to be a lot less meaning they may just let universities morph tuition waiver to tuition scholarship. Unless you are being sensational, there’s no point bringing “how are they going to pay $3K” BTW google turned up Cornell’s grad school tuition $20K. So the tax will be about $2K not 3K. At state Us who produce majority of PhDs, tuition would be lower about $10K.
How are they going to come up with $2-3,000? Don’t they get paid about $30K/yr and some summer job netting more? That’s not so “poor”. What is the poverty line these days?
My grad student works year round in her lab. No summer jobs.
edited to add
My kid’s grad student tuition is listed as $45,000+ per year. She has a tuition waiver.