I think we should be more worried about the junk science being put out by the government and the constant lies we hear everyday.
The current tax proposal is nothing but unfettered greed by the rich at the expense of the middle class.
^ I don’t see how 20-25k becoming 50k would work at public universities though, unless States increase funding by A LOT.
@roethlisburger : you’re being disingenuous in the way you present what @juillet said. BTW, @juillet doesn’t teach in grad school but works for Microsoft. His/her credentials don’t need to be questioned.
BTW, where do you think government researchers come from?
This is one political discussing that affects college education.
MODERATOR’S NOTE: Yes, political discussion as it directly affects higher education is fine. Getting into partisan politics isn’t.
Please report any posts you think cross the line. Moderators are volunteers who don’t have time to babysit every thread.
Sorry, MLH. Thanks for getting us back on track 
OK, I’ll try.
They say that the purpose of this tax bill is to give tax cuts to the middle class and to reduce the corporate tax rate How does taxing higher education further this goal? Are there not better ways to give me a tax cut? (I consider myself to be in the middle class). And how does increasing the national debt by $!.5 trillion or more serve the common good? What happened to all those people who have been opposing this kind if debt increase for the past 10 years. Have the ALL decided that they were wrong.
Also, what will be the impact be, from all the corporate CEOs who have said that they will NOT invest any of their new tax benefits in hiring or increasing wages.
If they are looking for a source of revenue to give me more money, I can recommend better sources than higher education
There is an interesting blog post on the internet, which you can find by googling “twitter thread on the GradStudentTax”, that discusses a strategy for resisting this GradStudentTax. Interestingly, the author does not propose overtly protesting the House bill’s #GradStudentTax, but thanking your senator for keeping it out. I not sure if I agree, but it is an interesting read nonetheless. It does address strategies for lobbying effectively to prevent the tax.
Stop the #GradStudentTax
It’s tough not to talk politics with this bill but the main way to get this defeated would be in the Senate where it’s on shaky grounds, especially with the Obamacare individual mandate being eliminated. I’d contact your Republican senator about your disapproval and how you’ll remember this in 2018/20 and I’d contact your Democratic senator to tell them about the education impact, right now they seem more focused on state/local income tax, mortgage interest deduction and the deficit. All the Dems in congress will vote no on the bill but let them know about the education getting hurt with the bill.
The grad tax walkout event has now merged with the Rally to Save Higher Education, and the date has changed. It is now Wednesday, Nov 29 at 1:00 Eastern time on local college quads. If you Google Grad Tax Walkout you can find some links (the Rally doesn’t come up in a search yet). One of the links will help you get to a place where you can sign up to get info on local events (or even sign up to organize if you want to). There is a twitter hashtag, too. #gradtaxwalkout
@intparent, did you ever get a response from the NYT reporter who emailed?
Yes, they’ve published a few articles on it now, but not until after the house bill passed (although doubt it could have been stopped, honestly):
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/15/us/politics/house-tax-bill-higher-education-increases-tuition.html (and there was an earlier article that was expanded into this one)
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/16/opinion/house-tax-bill-graduate-students.html
I’m seeing a lot of references to it now in articles about the tax bill, it is getting more traction in the news in general.
From today’s Washington Post
Oh please…make this be true…and how the final bill looks.
Lit/hume academic jobs continue to decline.
^Hmm, not surprised by the former…academic jobs in the traditional sense are slowly going the way of the dodo. Public institutions are cutting funding and shrinking departments, and other departments are responding to demand in non-humanities fields by college students. Adjuncts are plentiful and cheap, and the field is so competitive that even mid-level universities can get well-trained humanities scholars to teach for them part-time with no benefits.
I think academia in general needs a transformation for how they train and hire new professors, but particularly with the humanities.
BINGO, @MYOS1634. At their base level, government researchers and think tank researchers are trained at academic institutions, where they learn how to do research from academic researchers.
If the number of people getting PhDs is reduced because of this tax increase, we ALSO decrease the number of government and think tank researchers (and industry researchers, too!) since virtually all of them are trained at universities.
(This is also social science research, by the way…so any argument to fund the natural and physical sciences and cut off the social sciences cuts off anti-terrorism and national security research as well.)
Also:
Reproducibility: What I was actually saying is a bit more difficult to explain, but what I mean is that (particularly in the social sciences) there’s a difference between repeating the exact same experiment in the exact same way and reproducing the same result in different samples under similar but slightly different conditions, thus bringing together a coherent body of research into a theory. My argument, and that of many others in the field, is that we’re too concerned with the former and not concerned enough with the latter.
Randomness: This is just facts, I don’t really know any other way to explain this. Statistically, random samples are the gold theoretical standard. Practically speaking, a random sample isn’t necessarily to get valid results from a survey.
Theoretically, a survey only needs to unbiased and not a random sample. Practically speaking, that usually means a survey either needs to be a random sample or be shown periodically to be consistent with surveys that are random samples. Practically speaking, you might read the Kinsey reports for their entertainment value, but you shouldn’t trust the results enough to base public policy on them.
This isn’t completely accurate. A few top law schools provide need-based FA. A much larger number provide merit aid—essentially partial tuition waivers, though they don’t call it that—and among some the competition for the best-qualified applicants is quite fierce, so merit awards have been increasing. Still, though, the expectation at the better law schools is that all or almost all of their graduates will be employed, most in well-paying jobs, so they can afford to borrow heavily to pay for their legal education. But a number of top schools also have loan repayment assistance programs for those of their graduates who opt for lower-paying jobs in the public sector or at non-profits. I don’t think that model translates to Ph.D. programs in the arts and sciences
Professional degrees are different from traditional PhDs. I don’t know why some are conflating the two. They’re for completely different career types.
I think folks are concerned for ALL students in post bachelors programs who are getting fee waivers. All of them Stan to get the shaft…if the house version of this bill is the final version.
Apparently this tax on tuition waivers is not currently in the senate version. God knows where they are getting the money to break even!
No, I don’t think that’s the case. The rationale for taxing tuition waivers for Ph.D. students is that it’s part of their compensation for their work as TAs/GSIs/RAs. When law schools grant full or partial tuition waivers (in the form of merit scholarships), it’s not in exchange for work, so that would remain untaxed. I think some posters were discussing professional schools as a possible alternative financial model for Ph.D. programs, But as I said, I don’t think that works. A university could offer “merit scholarships” or “fellowships” to all its Ph.D. students without tying it to a work requirement, but then few grad students would volunteer to work as TAs or RAs, and they really are dependent on that labor force. But I think taxing them is a terrible idea.