the New York Times<\/a>\u00a0on Thursday, I fired out a tweet griping about these claims that the change in the provision would \u201cbankrupt graduate students.\u201d\u00a0 And this time I got a number of replies.<\/p>\nSome of them just didn\u2019t get what I was trying to say.\u00a0 \u201cIf universities no longer condition the tuition waivers on employment, they wouldn\u2019t be able to get grad students to do the teaching and lab work upon which they depend.\u201d\u00a0 Um, no.\u00a0 It seems preposterous to imagine that any more than a small number of grad students would turn down the stipend, so as long as that\u2019s conditioned on employment \u2014 and that\u2019s taxable anyway so it\u2019s not a change \u2014 there won\u2019t be any significant impact in that respect.\u00a0 In the sciences, the \u201cemployment\u201d is part and parcel of their research towards their doctorate, so it simply wouldn\u2019t have any effect.\u00a0 In the humanities,\u00a0surely it\u2019s still the norm that grad students at least have the hope of pursuing a teaching career, so that teaching assistantships are a key part of their training, and they wouldn\u2019t be willing to forgo the teaching, presuming that it\u2019s not too burdensome.\u00a0 My experience is now many years in the past, and was, after all, at only one university, but I would guess that it\u2019s generally the case that the stipend is a \u201cgood deal\u201d and, even without considering the tuition waiver element, is still more pay for fewer working hours, relative to any other job that a grad student might find that would accommodate their studies.\u00a0 Maybe there would be humanities grad students who didn\u2019t need an income, for whatever reason (spousal support, independently wealthy) and wanted to focus exclusively on their studies without the distraction of teaching.\u00a0 But I don\u2019t see how that would necessarily be a problem, as I suspect that, again even considering only the cost of the stipend, a university could likely hire a full-time instructor for the\u00a0equivalent of two or three grad student stipends (assuming that a grad student TA works half- or one-thirds-time), and probably provide more value for their students.<\/p>\n
But the replies in my twitter feed did point out three relevant complications.<\/p>\n
In the first place, in the sciences, it is grants that pay for grad student stipends, and those same grants also pay for the tuition waivers.\u00a0 For those universities to now declare that the tuition waivers are unconditional would mean that there would be accounting\/compliance issues, if grant money is paying universities for something that is now no longer connected up to the content of the grant. Which means that those grants would have to be reduced in value, and universities would lose real money.\u00a0\u00a0On the other hand, those grants could include both employment-conditional tuition waivers and a tax gross-up<\/em>, but this can\u2019t just happen overnight, and it would mean that the grants would be more costly.\u00a0 Given that (so far as I understand) grants generally originate from the government (e.g., the NSF, NIH, etc.), it seems perhaps correct from an accounting point of view but an unnecessary complication for the government to pay out money that just gets paid back in taxes.\u00a0 (Though, on the other hand, one could say that this is exactly the same as any government employee being obliged to pay taxes like other citizens.)<\/p>\nIn the second place, in the humanities, and to the extent that grad students in the sciences \u201cearn their keep\u201d not by research but by teaching\/TAing, it upends what is at the very least a convenient fiction that tuition waivers are compensation for grad student work.\u00a0 After all, if universities had to deem graduate student scholarships as entirely unconditional, they\u2019d face criticism for their generosity in handing these out.\u00a0 Public universities in particular might come under criticism from state legislatures, depending on how closely they scrutinize their spending.<\/p>\n
Perhaps this would factor into universities\u2019 decisions about building out humanities graduate education, if they were unable to maintain the fiction that they earned their out-of-state tuition by teaching, and had to acknowledge that the objective of a graduate department is not to \u201cpay for itself\u201d but to make the professors happier and boost prestige.\u00a0 And don\u2019t get me started on what I think of claims being made that all sorts of wonderful career opportunities await individuals with graduate degrees in the humanities.\u00a0 I think it\u2019s done a lot of harm that young adults are now being told that a master\u2019s degree is a near-requirement for all manner of employment in which it objectively isn\u2019t.\u00a0 After all, there are a lot of ways to acquire the writing skills and the \u201cadvanced knowledge\u201d and touted wisdom of these graduates that cost less money \u2014 among them, life experience, and experience on the job itself.<\/p>\n
But the point is, if this loophole had never been there, the system would have developed differently, which means that, regardless of what\u2019s \u201cright\u201d or \u201cwrong\u201d in terms of how universities and taxes should work, there are legitimate issues around a transition, particularly with the apparent last-minute nature of the whole bill \u2014 for the federal government to make changes to the tax code which would, near as I can tell, take effect almost immediately, is moronic.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
And some twitter-repliers reasonably asked, \u201cwhy is all of this being put into place at all?\u201d<\/p>\n
With respect to changes in how universities manage their endowments, I quite honestly haven\u2019t dug into this enough to know whether the law removes loopholes, so that university endowments are treated the same as an endowment or foundation connected to a hospital, say, or an independent foundation, or whether universities are being singled out because they\u2019ve pissed off too many GOP lawmakers.<\/p>\n
With respect to this legislative change, I simply don\u2019t know whether lawmakers wanted to be \u201cpurists\u201d and remove all loopholes, and make everyone play by the same rules, whether in the end it gets them more money or not, or whether this change is a by-product of a separate change that is intended to garner more revenue, or if, again, this is an intentional \u201cstick it to the Ivory Tower.\u201d\u00a0 After all, the principle of the change is reasonable \u2014 bartering and payments in kind are taxable.\u00a0 If I offer up my actuarial skills to a university and ask, in exchange for teaching a course on pension accounting, to be able to take a class on public policy tuition-free, that\u2019s clearly compensation.<\/p>\n
And, yes, if I were a professional blogger, rather than writing in the snatches of time before I start work in the morning, or at lunch, or at the end of the day, I might have had access to the sorts of information that would answer that question.<\/p>\n
But the Chicken Little approach that universities have taken really gets my dander up.\u00a0 It\u2019s just so frickin\u2019 unproductive,\u00a0because you can\u2019t talk anymore, if no provision of the tax code can ever be changed for anyone.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
And, yes, I promised a more general post on the tax bill, and I still haven\u2019t gotten around to it.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Image:\u00a0\u00a0https:\/\/commons.wikimedia.org\/wiki\/File%3AHarvard_Yard%2C_Harvard_University.JPG; By Daderot. (Own work) [GFDL (http:\/\/www.gnu.org\/copyleft\/fdl.html) or CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-sa\/3.0\/)], via Wikimedia Commons<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
So last week I wrote a little blogpost expressing my irritation at the Chicken Little reporting over a provision in the House tax bill, which would remove the exemption\/\u201dloophole\u201d in which, at present, grad student-employees are exempt from paying taxes on the tuition waivers they receive that are conditioned on that employment.\u00a0 No, it will […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2209,"featured_media":7215,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[38,100],"class_list":["post-7722","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-tax-reform","tag-universities"],"yoast_head":"\n
Grad student Chicken Littles -- sort of right, sort of wrong<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"So last week I wrote a little blogpost expressing my irritation at the Chicken Little reporting over a provision in the House tax bill, which would remove\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2017\/11\/grad-student-chicken-littles-sort-right-sort-wrong.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Grad student Chicken Littles -- sort of right, sort of wrong\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"So last week I wrote a little blogpost expressing my irritation at the Chicken Little reporting over a provision in the House tax bill, which would remove\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2017\/11\/grad-student-chicken-littles-sort-right-sort-wrong.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Jane the Actuary\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2017-11-18T20:55:44+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/533\/2017\/08\/800px-Harvard_Yard_Harvard_University.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"768\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"576\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Jane the Actuary\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Jane the Actuary\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"7 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2017\/11\/grad-student-chicken-littles-sort-right-sort-wrong.html\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2017\/11\/grad-student-chicken-littles-sort-right-sort-wrong.html\",\"name\":\"Grad student Chicken Littles -- sort of right, sort of wrong\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2017-11-18T20:55:44+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2017-11-18T20:55:44+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/#\/schema\/person\/ed9b99e0bd58c5eeeebae6b82fa5a77a\"},\"description\":\"So last week I wrote a little blogpost expressing my irritation at the Chicken Little reporting over a provision in the House tax bill, which would remove\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2017\/11\/grad-student-chicken-littles-sort-right-sort-wrong.html#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2017\/11\/grad-student-chicken-littles-sort-right-sort-wrong.html\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2017\/11\/grad-student-chicken-littles-sort-right-sort-wrong.html#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Grad student Chicken Littles — sort of right, sort of wrong\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/\",\"name\":\"Jane the Actuary\",\"description\":\"\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/#\/schema\/person\/ed9b99e0bd58c5eeeebae6b82fa5a77a\",\"name\":\"Jane the Actuary\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/8d6a493d380e87d49599d5487691c9fc?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/8d6a493d380e87d49599d5487691c9fc?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"caption\":\"Jane the Actuary\"},\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/author\/actuaryjane\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Grad student Chicken Littles -- sort of right, sort of wrong","description":"So last week I wrote a little blogpost expressing my irritation at the Chicken Little reporting over a provision in the House tax bill, which would remove","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2017\/11\/grad-student-chicken-littles-sort-right-sort-wrong.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Grad student Chicken Littles -- sort of right, sort of wrong","og_description":"So last week I wrote a little blogpost expressing my irritation at the Chicken Little reporting over a provision in the House tax bill, which would remove","og_url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2017\/11\/grad-student-chicken-littles-sort-right-sort-wrong.html","og_site_name":"Jane the Actuary","article_published_time":"2017-11-18T20:55:44+00:00","og_image":[{"width":768,"height":576,"url":"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/533\/2017\/08\/800px-Harvard_Yard_Harvard_University.jpg","type":"image\/jpeg"}],"author":"Jane the Actuary","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"Jane the Actuary","Est. reading time":"7 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2017\/11\/grad-student-chicken-littles-sort-right-sort-wrong.html","url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2017\/11\/grad-student-chicken-littles-sort-right-sort-wrong.html","name":"Grad student Chicken Littles -- sort of right, sort of wrong","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/#website"},"datePublished":"2017-11-18T20:55:44+00:00","dateModified":"2017-11-18T20:55:44+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/#\/schema\/person\/ed9b99e0bd58c5eeeebae6b82fa5a77a"},"description":"So last week I wrote a little blogpost expressing my irritation at the Chicken Little reporting over a provision in the House tax bill, which would remove","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2017\/11\/grad-student-chicken-littles-sort-right-sort-wrong.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2017\/11\/grad-student-chicken-littles-sort-right-sort-wrong.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2017\/11\/grad-student-chicken-littles-sort-right-sort-wrong.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Grad student Chicken Littles — sort of right, sort of wrong"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/","name":"Jane the Actuary","description":"","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/#\/schema\/person\/ed9b99e0bd58c5eeeebae6b82fa5a77a","name":"Jane the Actuary","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/8d6a493d380e87d49599d5487691c9fc?s=96&d=mm&r=g","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/8d6a493d380e87d49599d5487691c9fc?s=96&d=mm&r=g","caption":"Jane the Actuary"},"url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/author\/actuaryjane"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7722","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2209"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7722"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7722\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7215"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7722"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7722"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7722"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"https:\/\/commons.wikimedia.org\/wiki\/File%3AHarvard_Yard%2C_Harvard_University.JPG;](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/533\/2017\/08\/800px-Harvard_Yard_Harvard_University.jpg\")
<\/p>\n