To: The United States House of Representatives
Congress: Don't Tax Graduate Student Tuition Waivers
By taxing graduate tuition waivers as income, the GOP tax plan would make graduate study prohibitively expensive. Our government should value the labor of graduate students and must not undermine graduate education in this way.
Why is this important?
The good that universities do would simply not be possible without graduate students. Graduate students already face a huge financial burden--they survive on small stipends while teaching classes and assisting with research on top of their own studies. Often they're forced to take on extra jobs and/or debt to make it through. And yet they're a vital engine of our intellectual life. They deserve our respect, our thanks, and our protection. And if Congress makes graduate school impossible to pursue for the many, this country is going to lose out on a generation of thinkers.