Progress!!! 31 Republican House members have signed on to the letter. I can’t say I fully support all his reasoning (we need more than STEM PhDs!) – but I won’t quibble if they just keep the waivers tax free. Keep up the pressure:
http://money.cnn.com/2017/12/08/pf/college/grad-student-tuition-tax/index.html
Part of me is afraid they’re going to figure out how to waive it for STEM students but not the rest of us.
I center my work in STS (Science, Technology, & Society)- maybe I can make a case for being STEM-like.
I’m not celebrating ANYTHING until this is a done deal. Too many moving parts…and too many changes.
And once again it seems that the STEM majors are the only ones anyone cares about! It seems like even the (liberal?) media views education for any other major to be a waste. No wonder we are where we are.
And I say this as someone with degrees in Engineering, Math, and Physics.
I use STEM because those are the degrees that the pro business party’s corporations value the most. I value deep thinking on medieval French literature as much as the next person but the corporate donors are going to care more about where the next medical device comes from or the next cancer drug.
edited to add: To me the most effective arguments appeal to people’s self interests.
Bingo! (And with a little luck, Lit/Hume can join along with any continued carveout.)
I wasn’t specifically referring to your comments, Snowball. The articles I’ve seen seem to focus on STEM to the exclusion of everything else, as if that were the only area in which it really matters.
Related to our discussions, this does not bode well if there the representative in charge doesn’t know where the money is going. This sounds like someone laying the groundwork for cuts.
http://www.factcheck.org/2017/12/smith-wrong-nsf-funding.
(Full disclosure, DS is trying to get a grant in neuroscience, so I could be guilty of motivated reasoning. On the other hand, I’m not sure which way the fine representative would classify this.)
^ “Or” is different to “and” …mathematics OR material science.
I’m biased, but I don’t want to live in a society where all we value is STEM. STEM without humanities often ends quite poorly.
“Science without conscience is ruin of the soul” a Renaissance philosopher said. 
As we’re living a revolution as important as the industrial revolution was, we need all thinkers and scientists we can.
But that’s not going to help grad students.
The bottom line is that grad students won’t be able to pay their taxes if this passes.
Hoping also that the teacher’s exemption is restored thanks to the 20-to-finally-22% corporate cut.
My arts kid was a TA when he was in grad school. He ctually didn’t teach… it he did a LOT of work for his department chairperson. He got a small stipend on which he did have to pay taxes…but no tuition waiver. Guess who paid his taxes?
My STEM kid is getting a rather large tuition waiver. If this passes…guess who will be paying her taxes?
I really need a tax cut…and it does NOT look like we are getting one.
I think you guys are getting too wound up in the wording of the letter. It doesn’t propose a carve out by major, and I sincerely doubt they will try that. Too hard to write, honestly.
I think I should get a deduction of some sort for paying taxes for my kid…if that happens…could they include THAT in their proposal? Ok…guess not.
To be clear, I don’t actually think they’re only going to tax non-STEM or whatever.
That said, it wouldn’t surprise me if they tried. Afterall, it is the humanities that try to “brainwash” college students.
^I saw a bunch of comments on Philly online paper article about taxing endowments; the article mentioned my alma mater, Swat, which is why I picked it up. It’s very dispiriting how little people know about places like that (“pay 60k a year and they’ve only learned basket-weaving so they can’t get a job…”
Most of the funded Ph.D’s are in STEM fields anyway, so that would restore the tax free status for most students.
^Stats for that?
I think that is right that the majority are, but I’d like to see the exact stats.
I (personally) don’t know any humanities or social studies students who aren’t in fully funded PhD programs. It’s dumb to ever pay for a phd.