I was wondering cause it's no skin off my nose to offer a $40k base salary of 25% effort (10k for 10 hours a week) to anybody with a bachelor's degree (with possible raises to at least $55k for big grants) bumped up to $70-80k starting (and 6 figure finishing) once they get their PhD. And that's government salary. But for some reason I'm being pressured to pay them on a base salary rate of like $20k even though I'm not going to be putting a dime towards their tuition. It doesn't make sense to me.
For biomed research, which means you are probably reliant on NIH money if you are not at a big biotech (and even then, they certainly love grants), PhDs go on this scale:https://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/notice-files/NOT-OD-16-131.html
Currently, for that extra 4-7 years of schooling...you start at 43k a year. For more lets be conservative and say 50 hour weeks. The site talks about overtime but...that is just not how post docs work. You'll get what you get. If grad students are the worker elves, post docs are the work horses, it's...a bad, grindy system frankly, and preys on people naiive/idealistic enough to have not jumped right to industry.
So I imagine everything else just falls to this level, because it can. Why pay them much more? What are they gonna do, jump to academia?
It seems like literally every part of the tax bill is aimed at increasing tax on productive work in favor of lowering tax on passive rentiers. The only difference is in the details and amounts.
I was wondering cause it's no skin off my nose to offer a $40k base salary of 25% effort (10k for 10 hours a week) to anybody with a bachelor's degree (with possible raises to at least $55k for big grants) bumped up to $70-80k starting (and 6 figure finishing) once they get their PhD. And that's government salary. But for some reason I'm being pressured to pay them on a base salary rate of like $20k even though I'm not going to be putting a dime towards their tuition. It doesn't make sense to me.
For biomed research, which means you are probably reliant on NIH money if you are not at a big biotech (and even then, they certainly love grants), PhDs go on this scale:https://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/notice-files/NOT-OD-16-131.html
Currently, for that extra 4-7 years of schooling...you start at 43k a year. For more lets be conservative and say 50 hour weeks. The site talks about overtime but...that is just not how post docs work. You'll get what you get. If grad students are the worker elves, post docs are the work horses, it's...a bad, grindy system frankly, and preys on people naiive/idealistic enough to have not jumped right to industry.
So I imagine everything else just falls to this level, because it can. Why pay them much more? What are they gonna do, jump to academia?
NIH funding is beyond me. I use the General Schedule Payscale, and it is understood that the $43k level is for GS9s - people with bachelors degrees + experience or masters degrees. I know for a fact I can non-competitively hire just about anybody with a Master's degree or above for a GS9 even with a blank CV. Bachelor's degrees right out of school get $35k + COLA. Above GS12 which is $70k a year, it gets tricky but still possible, and if you're a PhD you should probably be applying for competitive jobs or your first career development award anyway? I feel like government jobs should be the rawest deal cause they're public service, but the salaries you're quoting me ... honestly if I were a postdoc I'd try my luck at USAjobs or sweet talk a PI in grant-writing season before trying to seek my own NIH grant if that's the sort of pay schedule I'd be looking at.
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It seems like literally every part of the tax bill is aimed at increasing tax on productive work in favor of lowering tax on passive rentiers. The only difference is in the details and amounts.
It seems like literally every part of the tax bill is aimed at increasing tax on productive work in favor of lowering tax on passive rentiers. The only difference is in the details and amounts.
It's the entire purpose of the bill, note how aggressively it targets the 'useful rich. Your owners of chain restaurants and whatever. Employees and managers. It's an attack on the section of the rich who is 'betraying the gop' and the level of wealth which is becoming available to women and minorities.
The Republicans are attacking students and grad students for a reason: universities are hotbeds of influential left wing politics. This is a purely political tax, designed to discourage students.
Well, that and the fact that graduate students have nearly zero representation. They can tax them because it's easy.
The problem being that graduate students are the future of this country moreso than any other demographic. If you break down the support structure for grad students, you're going to get a brain drain of our most talented 20-somethings to other countries who will treat TAs better, instead of the current situation where we siphon off many of the best and brightest from other countries who come to study and then stay and enrich our society.
I'm aware, I used to be one, and I agree with you. The question is, If this does end up becoming law, do you think the Universities will keep the same tuition waiver structure as it stands now? They stand to lose a lot as well. I have a feeling Universities will start scrambling for alternative methods of "paying" their graduate student's "tuition" if this tax hike is built into the final bill.
Why the heck do universities pay grad students so little anyway
I'm budgeting for a government grant and I figured that grad students would get at least more than a person with a bachelor's degree. Nope! They actually earn less!
Universities pay grad students less because, quite frankly, having the tuition waived is a huge deal. As has been pointed out, that waived tuition is often more than a person with a fresh bachelors degree will receive in salary. The total compensation is actually reasonable in many cases, and is currently tax advantaged. This encourages people to pursue higher education, which is a difficult thing to do that accrues a net benefit to society. I am fine with giving tax incentives to things that benefit society (and I took advantage of this myself while getting my Ph.D.), and I absolutely do not want this to go through. If it does go through, however, there will undoubtedly be a shift in how grad students are compensated. One way would be to lower the price tag of the education while also raising the compensation of the grad students, which turns the proposal into a tax on universities instead (and they also want to tax university endowments). Another way would be to simply pay the grad students enough more to make up for the tax burden, which again is a tax on universities. I'm sure tax experts can come up with something more creative, but the end result is very likely to be fewer grad students and less research being done.
Meanwhile, a friend I often disagree with on a lot of issues thinks that it is fine, because the government has been offering financial assistance and tax advantages to getting higher education, and he blames that for making higher education expensive. He believes that if the government stops financial support for universities, that those universities will then have to become cheaper, or go out of business. He also thinks school endowments should be taxed, because the amount of money some of them make is ridiculous. Yet he doesn't think capital gains should be taxed, nor should estates. /sigh
-edit- Something that occurs to me, could universities dodge this by changing from waiving the tuition to providing teaching assistants and research assistants scholarships equal to the amount of the tuition? Or are scholarships also getting taxed as income?
My guess is all the university would have to do is change the structure of their programs, as @Demerdar said, making the more advanced graduate school programs (where TA compensation is the whole reason anyone can afford the program, like with most PhD's) into free programs. That way they can claim to be giving the student no benefit.
The Republicans are attacking students and grad students for a reason: universities are hotbeds of influential left wing politics. This is a purely political tax, designed to discourage students.
Well, that and the fact that graduate students have nearly zero representation. They can tax them because it's easy.
The problem being that graduate students are the future of this country moreso than any other demographic. If you break down the support structure for grad students, you're going to get a brain drain of our most talented 20-somethings to other countries who will treat TAs better, instead of the current situation where we siphon off many of the best and brightest from other countries who come to study and then stay and enrich our society.
I'm aware, I used to be one, and I agree with you. The question is, If this does end up becoming law, do you think the Universities will keep the same tuition waiver structure as it stands now? They stand to lose a lot as well. I have a feeling Universities will start scrambling for alternative methods of "paying" their graduate student's "tuition" if this tax hike is built into the final bill.
Why the heck do universities pay grad students so little anyway
I'm budgeting for a government grant and I figured that grad students would get at least more than a person with a bachelor's degree. Nope! They actually earn less!
Universities pay grad students less because, quite frankly, having the tuition waived is a huge deal. As has been pointed out, that waived tuition is often more than a person with a fresh bachelors degree will receive in salary. The total compensation is actually reasonable in many cases, and is currently tax advantaged. This encourages people to pursue higher education, which is a difficult thing to do that accrues a net benefit to society. I am fine with giving tax incentives to things that benefit society (and I took advantage of this myself while getting my Ph.D.), and I absolutely do not want this to go through. If it does go through, however, there will undoubtedly be a shift in how grad students are compensated. One way would be to lower the price tag of the education while also raising the compensation of the grad students, which turns the proposal into a tax on universities instead (and they also want to tax university endowments). Another way would be to simply pay the grad students enough more to make up for the tax burden, which again is a tax on universities. I'm sure tax experts can come up with something more creative, but the end result is very likely to be fewer grad students and less research being done.
Meanwhile, a friend I often disagree with on a lot of issues thinks that it is fine, because the government has been offering financial assistance and tax advantages to getting higher education, and he blames that for making higher education expensive. He believes that if the government stops financial support for universities, that those universities will then have to become cheaper, or go out of business. He also thinks school endowments should be taxed, because the amount of money some of them make is ridiculous. Yet he doesn't think capital gains should be taxed, nor should estates. /sigh
-edit- Something that occurs to me, could universities dodge this by changing from waiving the tuition to providing teaching assistants and research assistants scholarships equal to the amount of the tuition? Or are scholarships also getting taxed as income?
My guess is all the university would have to do is change the structure of their programs, as Demerdar said, making the more advanced graduate school programs (where TA compensation is the whole reason anyone can afford the program, like with most PhD's) into free programs. That way they can claim to be giving the student no benefit.
I feel like the IRS would still treat that as a gift of some value. They tend to be pretty good at that sort of thing. At best the University will shift the tax burden onto itself. Which is better for the students, but still worse overall since we are taxing Universities in order to fund free inheritances.
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ShivahnUnaware of her barrel shifter privilegeWestern coastal temptressRegistered User, Moderatormod
The other frustrating thing is that grad students are charged for tuition in the first place. At least in neuroscience, after a couple of years "tuition" is asking your PI for advice on how to best approach the literally free labor you are providing the lab and university for the 40+ hours of the week you're not TAing.
I am hopefully a year away from my PhD. I should sit down and calculate the government's investment in me just so I have it as a number of "wasted" funds in case I am forced to another country (not financially, the things I'm worried about are longshot social issues involving gay rights).
The Republicans are attacking students and grad students for a reason: universities are hotbeds of influential left wing politics. This is a purely political tax, designed to discourage students.
Well, that and the fact that graduate students have nearly zero representation. They can tax them because it's easy.
The problem being that graduate students are the future of this country moreso than any other demographic. If you break down the support structure for grad students, you're going to get a brain drain of our most talented 20-somethings to other countries who will treat TAs better, instead of the current situation where we siphon off many of the best and brightest from other countries who come to study and then stay and enrich our society.
I'm aware, I used to be one, and I agree with you. The question is, If this does end up becoming law, do you think the Universities will keep the same tuition waiver structure as it stands now? They stand to lose a lot as well. I have a feeling Universities will start scrambling for alternative methods of "paying" their graduate student's "tuition" if this tax hike is built into the final bill.
IANAL, but it seems like there could be plenty of loopholes to something like this.
For instance, grad students no longer get free tuition. Instead they get a 98% discount on tuition costs (or an entirely separate base cost that just happens to be really cheap).
It's frustrating and stupid, but I can't imagine that some solution isn't found. Maybe that's just because of how horrible the alternative is (I have a Master's from such a program and thus know it well).
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I was wondering cause it's no skin off my nose to offer a $40k base salary of 25% effort (10k for 10 hours a week) to anybody with a bachelor's degree (with possible raises to at least $55k for big grants) bumped up to $70-80k starting (and 6 figure finishing) once they get their PhD. And that's government salary. But for some reason I'm being pressured to pay them on a base salary rate of like $20k even though I'm not going to be putting a dime towards their tuition. It doesn't make sense to me.
For biomed research, which means you are probably reliant on NIH money if you are not at a big biotech (and even then, they certainly love grants), PhDs go on this scale:https://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/notice-files/NOT-OD-16-131.html
Currently, for that extra 4-7 years of schooling...you start at 43k a year. For more lets be conservative and say 50 hour weeks. The site talks about overtime but...that is just not how post docs work. You'll get what you get. If grad students are the worker elves, post docs are the work horses, it's...a bad, grindy system frankly, and preys on people naiive/idealistic enough to have not jumped right to industry.
So I imagine everything else just falls to this level, because it can. Why pay them much more? What are they gonna do, jump to academia?
NIH funding is beyond me. I use the General Schedule Payscale, and it is understood that the $43k level is for GS9s - people with bachelors degrees + experience or masters degrees. I know for a fact I can non-competitively hire just about anybody with a Master's degree or above for a GS9 even with a blank CV. Bachelor's degrees right out of school get $35k + COLA. Above GS12 which is $70k a year, it gets tricky but still possible, and if you're a PhD you should probably be applying for competitive jobs or your first career development award anyway? I feel like government jobs should be the rawest deal cause they're public service, but the salaries you're quoting me ... honestly if I were a postdoc I'd try my luck at USAjobs or sweet talk a PI in grant-writing season before trying to seek my own NIH grant if that's the sort of pay schedule I'd be looking at.
(sorry if this is too off topic for D&D, I'm more used to SE++ and hope that this is germane enough to the discussion)
A looot of post docs do! The issue is, is there are SO MANY 1-2+ year post docs applying for grants, that it is super hard to get one as a fresh PhD, because they have those couple years on you. And there are so many of those because there is such a bottleneck between post doc and any sort of faculty position. So a freshly minted PhD having any sort of grant they can carry with them is really exceptional. Also, the current structure and thinking is largely that once you are out of academia, you are out. Those academics that stayed forever are the ones hiring you, and they see you as a traitor/higher jump risk. So if you DID want to be a professor, there is a rather limited path. Add to this the fact that your boss probably isn't equipped to train you/develop you to do much other than what they do, and you get our current system. I've had very frank talks with my PI about my goals, and he was super nice, but also admitted that he wasn't necessarily that helpful with anything but what he knew, which was the grad school->few years of post doc->young faculty->desperately work for tenure track.
The other grant problem now is that it's gotten super conservative and funding is tight relative to the number of labs asking. So where it used to be a fundable grant was, "basis for good idea, how i'm gonna do this great idea, and maybe a little preliminary data indicating how good this idea is" a grant now is more towards "basis for good idea, how i'm gonna do it, but we both know I actually already did this, because I have half a papers worth of "prelim" data here, and you can guess that a couple of the experiments I propose are already done, and worked, because if you don't fund me and comment on them, my revision includes those results to show what a good idea it was..." You basically are writing a grant on the last thing you did to fund the next thing, which is screwy and makes it super hard to get started as a professor.
The Republicans are attacking students and grad students for a reason: universities are hotbeds of influential left wing politics. This is a purely political tax, designed to discourage students.
Well, that and the fact that graduate students have nearly zero representation. They can tax them because it's easy.
The problem being that graduate students are the future of this country moreso than any other demographic. If you break down the support structure for grad students, you're going to get a brain drain of our most talented 20-somethings to other countries who will treat TAs better, instead of the current situation where we siphon off many of the best and brightest from other countries who come to study and then stay and enrich our society.
I'm aware, I used to be one, and I agree with you. The question is, If this does end up becoming law, do you think the Universities will keep the same tuition waiver structure as it stands now? They stand to lose a lot as well. I have a feeling Universities will start scrambling for alternative methods of "paying" their graduate student's "tuition" if this tax hike is built into the final bill.
IANAL, but it seems like there could be plenty of loopholes to something like this.
For instance, grad students no longer get free tuition. Instead they get a 98% discount on tuition costs (or an entirely separate base cost that just happens to be really cheap).
It's frustrating and stupid, but I can't imagine that some solution isn't found. Maybe that's just because of how horrible the alternative is (I have a Master's from such a program and thus know it well).
The discount is what they are proposing taxing as a gift or debt write down.
So I thought the chance for reconciliation passed in October, what is the rush with this tax bill to pass it before the end of the year? Why don't the Republicans just spend the next nine months planning and writing a viable bill so it can pass this next October?
So I thought the chance for reconciliation passed in October, what is the rush with this tax bill to pass it before the end of the year? Why don't the Republicans just spend the next nine months planning and writing a viable bill so it can pass this next October?
Because they know it's incredibly unpopular so they don't want to have to deal with it during election time.
Just like with Healthcare the plan is to rush it through the process as fast as possible so no one can debate it, no opposition can coalesce around it and it'll be forgotten about by the time of the election.
So I thought the chance for reconciliation passed in October, what is the rush with this tax bill to pass it before the end of the year? Why don't the Republicans just spend the next nine months planning and writing a viable bill so it can pass this next October?
Because they know it's incredibly unpopular so they don't want to have to deal with it during election time.
Just like with Healthcare the plan is to rush it through the process as fast as possible so no one can debate it, no opposition can coalesce around it and it'll be forgotten about by the time of the election.
But can't Democrats just filibuster it until the Reconciliation period? Or are they trying to use next year's reconciliation this December?
So I thought the chance for reconciliation passed in October, what is the rush with this tax bill to pass it before the end of the year? Why don't the Republicans just spend the next nine months planning and writing a viable bill so it can pass this next October?
Because they know it's incredibly unpopular so they don't want to have to deal with it during election time.
Just like with Healthcare the plan is to rush it through the process as fast as possible so no one can debate it, no opposition can coalesce around it and it'll be forgotten about by the time of the election.
But can't Democrats just filibuster it until the Reconciliation period? Or are they trying to use next year's reconciliation this December?
The point of reconciliation is that it can't be filibustered.
So I thought the chance for reconciliation passed in October, what is the rush with this tax bill to pass it before the end of the year? Why don't the Republicans just spend the next nine months planning and writing a viable bill so it can pass this next October?
Because they know it's incredibly unpopular so they don't want to have to deal with it during election time.
Just like with Healthcare the plan is to rush it through the process as fast as possible so no one can debate it, no opposition can coalesce around it and it'll be forgotten about by the time of the election.
And they absolutely need it through before 12/13 because even if Roy Moore wins, he's likely a no vote because the bill doesn't ban Islam or something. If Doug Jones wins he's definitely a no vote. They need this while Strange is still in office. So now they've got just 24 days to get it out of the Senate (which means passing the House version or passing a version, working it out in conference, and passing it again). Among those 24 days are a national holiday.
I'd watch and see if they really cancel Thanksgiving recess. I think if McConnell lets folks go home for Thanksgiving then we can breathe a little easier.
So I thought the chance for reconciliation passed in October, what is the rush with this tax bill to pass it before the end of the year? Why don't the Republicans just spend the next nine months planning and writing a viable bill so it can pass this next October?
So I thought the chance for reconciliation passed in October, what is the rush with this tax bill to pass it before the end of the year? Why don't the Republicans just spend the next nine months planning and writing a viable bill so it can pass this next October?
Because they know it's incredibly unpopular so they don't want to have to deal with it during election time.
Just like with Healthcare the plan is to rush it through the process as fast as possible so no one can debate it, no opposition can coalesce around it and it'll be forgotten about by the time of the election.
But can't Democrats just filibuster it until the Reconciliation period? Or are they trying to use next year's reconciliation this December?
The point of reconciliation is that it can't be filibustered.
I understand that, but I thought there were limitations on reconciliation, and one was that it could only be used once a year, and that year ended in October. So are they trying to pass 2018's one reconciliation bill in December of 2017? I'm already exhausted by the ACA repeal that was toyed around for months and months, I'm not looking forward to this coming up for the next 10 months.
So I thought the chance for reconciliation passed in October, what is the rush with this tax bill to pass it before the end of the year? Why don't the Republicans just spend the next nine months planning and writing a viable bill so it can pass this next October?
Because they know it's incredibly unpopular so they don't want to have to deal with it during election time.
Just like with Healthcare the plan is to rush it through the process as fast as possible so no one can debate it, no opposition can coalesce around it and it'll be forgotten about by the time of the election.
But can't Democrats just filibuster it until the Reconciliation period? Or are they trying to use next year's reconciliation this December?
The point of reconciliation is that it can't be filibustered.
I understand that, but I thought there were limitations on reconciliation, and one was that it could only be used once a year, and that year ended in October. So are they trying to pass 2018's one reconciliation bill in December of 2017? I'm already exhausted by the ACA repeal that was toyed around for months and months, I'm not looking forward to this coming up for the next 10 months.
It's every Fiscal Year. This is the FY-2018 bill. The main rush is they're trying to have it take immediate effect, so they want it done before the calendar year in order to remove any lag on it. Also, elections.
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HedgethornAssociate Professor of Historical Hobby HorsesIn the Lions' DenRegistered Userregular
Yes, this is the fiscal 2018 (Oct 2017-Sept 2018) reconciliation bill. And they want this done as far ahead of the midterm election as possible.
There's another significant reason for the rush: several members of Congress have admitted that their donors have told them they won't be receiving campaign contributions for the 2018 midterms if this tax bill isn't finished. So they need this done soon enough to turn on the spigots of donor dollars in time to start advertising next spring/summer.
I also suspect some of those donors have promised to fund primary challengers if this bill isn't finished...and the deadlines for those primary filings are mere weeks away. So the rush here may be in part to preempt possible primary challenges.
One final pragmatic reason for pushing this: most of the bill's changes take effect January 1, 2018. The earlier the bill is signed into law, the more time employers have to correct tax withholding and the more time corporations have to take into account the new rates and provisions when making investment/expansion decisions.
I called and left a voice mail for Rep Posey and Senator Nelson about my opposition to this bill specifically because it is going to affect the future of our economy (my family lives on the Space Coast, within short driving distance of Kennedy, I know people who have graduate STEM educations who work at Kennedy for Space X or for NASA, and at startups in Melbourne, and with a bill like this before they finished school they probably wouldn't be), that I'm currently a graduate student at the Bush School, and that I don't have personal skin in the fight as I'm not a grad assistant but that the bill needs to be opposed.
I'm not sure if it's been posted already but here is the page to search for your reps and Senators and here is a script that you can use if you don't feel comfortable without one.
So.. if the government is trying to tax 'reductions' on university fees, can universities not just reduce the fees to what they're charging anyway, for all students, and then gate students by academic performance alone?
That is, what students are paying the full fee now, and how much if at all would it hurt universities to not charge these students the full amount?
So.. if the government is trying to tax 'reductions' on university fees, can universities not just reduce the fees to what they're charging anyway, for all students, and then gate students by academic performance alone?
That is, what students are paying the full fee now, and how much if at all would it hurt universities to not charge these students the full amount?
Lowering costs but strengthening the filter is going to decrease revenue. It's also likely to create an effective economic ceiling for anyone who isn't a higher performing student before college. Which is greatly affected by socio-economic status.
What about student athletes? Isn't this change going to obliterate every college sports team? Since the free tuition will now be taxed and most of the top players come from poor families and can't possibly afford that?
Not that I'm saying I particularly mind the collapse of college sports back to a true amateur level, but, wouldn't that really piss of the ncaa and like everyone who votes republican?
If the universities "charge" and then waive tuition for grad students, why not just not charge tuition for grad students? Are they not allowed to have different tuition for grad students and regular students? Or is it some kind of legal thing?
I confess I don't understand the US education system at all on almost any education level; the system in my country is quite different in a lot of important ways.
What about student athletes? Isn't this change going to obliterate every college sports team? Since the free tuition will now be taxed and most of the top players come from poor families and can't possibly afford that?
Not that I'm saying I particularly mind the collapse of college sports back to a true amateur level, but, wouldn't that really piss of the ncaa and like everyone who votes republican?
I was under the impression it only affected the specific way graduate students tend to be subsidized and not scholarships. So a graduate student who receives a stipend+tuition waiver is taxed on the tuition waiver but a student athlete who only receives "scholarship" money and not stipend+waiver wouldn't have an increased tax burden.
If the universities "charge" and then waive tuition for grad students, why not just not charge tuition for grad students? Are they not allowed to have different tuition for grad students and regular students? Or is it some kind of legal thing?
I confess I don't understand the US education system at all on almost any education level; the system in my country is quite different in a lot of important ways.
Grad school is already priced differently (and more expensively) than undergrad, and not all grad students work as Teacher's Assistants/Grad Assistants to cover their tuition. Many are just regular full time students (this is what I did), or employed full time and obtaining the advanced degree with assistance from their employer.
If the universities "charge" and then waive tuition for grad students, why not just not charge tuition for grad students? Are they not allowed to have different tuition for grad students and regular students? Or is it some kind of legal thing?
I confess I don't understand the US education system at all on almost any education level; the system in my country is quite different in a lot of important ways.
Grad school is already priced differently (and more expensively) than undergrad, and not all grad students work as Teacher's Assistants/Grad Assistants to cover their tuition. Many are just regular full time students (this is what I did), or employed full time and obtaining the advanced degree with assistance from their employer.
Undergrad/grad tuition is also different if you are an out of state student vs an in state student. The specific schools can also charge differently. I received one of my 2 year degrees (one was heavily subsidized because of how I got it) from a state college (used to be community college) in my home city which charged a fraction of what my 4 year university charged. Which was then itself much lower than what I'm charged for graduate tuition even with a waiver for in state tuition.
Sen. Jeff Flake(y), who is unelectable in the Great State of Arizona (quit race, anemic polls) was caught (purposely) on “mike” saying bad things about your favorite President. He’ll be a NO on tax cuts because his political career anyway is “toast.”
The President being diplomatic in trying to get tax votes
Sen. Jeff Flake(y), who is unelectable in the Great State of Arizona (quit race, anemic polls) was caught (purposely) on “mike” saying bad things about your favorite President. He’ll be a NO on tax cuts because his political career anyway is “toast.”
So, theortically, this thing should be dead, or now much less likey to pass? Murkowski and Collins are two moderates and seem opposed to the tax bill. McCain possibly too, but he seems more likely to vote yes on this than the ACA repeal.
Sen. Jeff Flake(y), who is unelectable in the Great State of Arizona (quit race, anemic polls) was caught (purposely) on “mike” saying bad things about your favorite President. He’ll be a NO on tax cuts because his political career anyway is “toast.”
Sen. Jeff Flake(y), who is unelectable in the Great State of Arizona (quit race, anemic polls) was caught (purposely) on “mike” saying bad things about your favorite President. He’ll be a NO on tax cuts because his political career anyway is “toast.”
If the universities "charge" and then waive tuition for grad students, why not just not charge tuition for grad students? Are they not allowed to have different tuition for grad students and regular students? Or is it some kind of legal thing?
I confess I don't understand the US education system at all on almost any education level; the system in my country is quite different in a lot of important ways.
At one time your public institutions were deeply discounted owing to the fact that the state they resided in (New York, Kansas California, etc) heavily subsidized them thanks to generous amounts of taxes passed to them by the federal government. This allowed these institutions to compete with and sometimes surpass their private counterparts in terms of quality of education. Then the 90s happened and Gingrich stepped onto the scene. As part of his "Contract with America" to cut taxes, he eliminated many of the tax passbacks that were earmarked for higher education which forced the states to either raise taxes (what the GOP was hoping they did so their state level counterparts could compete on that theme) or eliminate much of the state's higher education budgets (which the GOP also wanted but for different reasons). Those different reasons have to do a lot with their internalized notions of self-sufficiency and of outright class warfare. That is, the poor aren't staying as poor as they once did and are changing the way they vote.
This new tax on grad students is probably one of the last things needed to do in order to shut down public universities from competing with and providing an alternative to many private institutions. This carries on a theme that's long been played in the US. One that started with how public education shouldn't be a thing the government does for reasons best explained by old, bigoted, racist, classist white guys with the sort of shrill & condescending voice used to scold children who have profaned in church. That is, "it's not in the constitution". Which is how much of how to run education has been passed off to the states to figure out instead of having a central authority in the federal government. See my previous post as to how property taxes, one of the least fair ways to generate income, has been a longtime battleground for education and can be oft cited as to why the US has such a patchwork system in the first place.
All opinions are my own and in no way reflect that of my employer.
What about student athletes? Isn't this change going to obliterate every college sports team? Since the free tuition will now be taxed and most of the top players come from poor families and can't possibly afford that?
Not that I'm saying I particularly mind the collapse of college sports back to a true amateur level, but, wouldn't that really piss of the ncaa and like everyone who votes republican?
I was under the impression it only affected the specific way graduate students tend to be subsidized and not scholarships. So a graduate student who receives a stipend+tuition waiver is taxed on the tuition waiver but a student athlete who only receives "scholarship" money and not stipend+waiver wouldn't have an increased tax burden.
So why can't the universities just give the students a scholarship which must be spent on tuition?
Not trying to excuse this stupid bill, just wondering how graduate students could bundle themselves in with student athletes somehow to save themselves.
What about student athletes? Isn't this change going to obliterate every college sports team? Since the free tuition will now be taxed and most of the top players come from poor families and can't possibly afford that?
Not that I'm saying I particularly mind the collapse of college sports back to a true amateur level, but, wouldn't that really piss of the ncaa and like everyone who votes republican?
I was under the impression it only affected the specific way graduate students tend to be subsidized and not scholarships. So a graduate student who receives a stipend+tuition waiver is taxed on the tuition waiver but a student athlete who only receives "scholarship" money and not stipend+waiver wouldn't have an increased tax burden.
So why can't the universities just give the students a scholarship which must be spent on tuition?
Not trying to excuse this stupid bill, just wondering how graduate students could bundle themselves in with student athletes somehow to save themselves.
I think it has to do with how the graduate students are subsidized. They aren't just given waivers and money, they are student employees. So the waiver and stipend is given in return for X (at least 20) hours per week of teaching or research. Student athletes AFAIK aren't considered student employees.
I mean, the final language would have to be written in order to find a workaround, which I'm sure Universities will start doing immediately. It's still just a ridiculous thing to do.
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HedgethornAssociate Professor of Historical Hobby HorsesIn the Lions' DenRegistered Userregular
Part of the issue with grad student tuition is that a large number of graduate students are funded by research grants. That $40,000 graduate student tuition isn't just waived, it's often charged to the relevant research grant. When Professor X gets a grant to study moral cognition in honeybees or whatever, the size of that grant is in part due to the cost to subsidize so many graduate students for so many hours for so many years. If universities just made graduate school tuition-free, they could no longer charge that tuition as an expense on grants, and so they'd be losing quite literally tens of millions of dollars of revenue.
Part of the issue with grad student tuition is that a large number of graduate students are funded by research grants. That $40,000 graduate student tuition isn't just waived, it's often charged to the relevant research grant. When Professor X gets a grant to study moral cognition in honeybees or whatever, the size of that grant is in part due to the cost to subsidize so many graduate students for so many hours for so many years. If universities just made graduate school tuition-free, they could no longer charge that tuition as an expense on grants, and so they'd be losing quite literally tens of millions of dollars of revenue.
Why doesn't the school just charge grants like 100% fringe or something
Marty: The future, it's where you're going? Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
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For biomed research, which means you are probably reliant on NIH money if you are not at a big biotech (and even then, they certainly love grants), PhDs go on this scale:https://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/notice-files/NOT-OD-16-131.html
Currently, for that extra 4-7 years of schooling...you start at 43k a year. For more lets be conservative and say 50 hour weeks. The site talks about overtime but...that is just not how post docs work. You'll get what you get. If grad students are the worker elves, post docs are the work horses, it's...a bad, grindy system frankly, and preys on people naiive/idealistic enough to have not jumped right to industry.
So I imagine everything else just falls to this level, because it can. Why pay them much more? What are they gonna do, jump to academia?
NIH funding is beyond me. I use the General Schedule Payscale, and it is understood that the $43k level is for GS9s - people with bachelors degrees + experience or masters degrees. I know for a fact I can non-competitively hire just about anybody with a Master's degree or above for a GS9 even with a blank CV. Bachelor's degrees right out of school get $35k + COLA. Above GS12 which is $70k a year, it gets tricky but still possible, and if you're a PhD you should probably be applying for competitive jobs or your first career development award anyway? I feel like government jobs should be the rawest deal cause they're public service, but the salaries you're quoting me ... honestly if I were a postdoc I'd try my luck at USAjobs or sweet talk a PI in grant-writing season before trying to seek my own NIH grant if that's the sort of pay schedule I'd be looking at.
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
The Grift Old Party
It's the entire purpose of the bill, note how aggressively it targets the 'useful rich. Your owners of chain restaurants and whatever. Employees and managers. It's an attack on the section of the rich who is 'betraying the gop' and the level of wealth which is becoming available to women and minorities.
My guess is all the university would have to do is change the structure of their programs, as @Demerdar said, making the more advanced graduate school programs (where TA compensation is the whole reason anyone can afford the program, like with most PhD's) into free programs. That way they can claim to be giving the student no benefit.
I feel like the IRS would still treat that as a gift of some value. They tend to be pretty good at that sort of thing. At best the University will shift the tax burden onto itself. Which is better for the students, but still worse overall since we are taxing Universities in order to fund free inheritances.
I am hopefully a year away from my PhD. I should sit down and calculate the government's investment in me just so I have it as a number of "wasted" funds in case I am forced to another country (not financially, the things I'm worried about are longshot social issues involving gay rights).
For instance, grad students no longer get free tuition. Instead they get a 98% discount on tuition costs (or an entirely separate base cost that just happens to be really cheap).
It's frustrating and stupid, but I can't imagine that some solution isn't found. Maybe that's just because of how horrible the alternative is (I have a Master's from such a program and thus know it well).
A looot of post docs do! The issue is, is there are SO MANY 1-2+ year post docs applying for grants, that it is super hard to get one as a fresh PhD, because they have those couple years on you. And there are so many of those because there is such a bottleneck between post doc and any sort of faculty position. So a freshly minted PhD having any sort of grant they can carry with them is really exceptional. Also, the current structure and thinking is largely that once you are out of academia, you are out. Those academics that stayed forever are the ones hiring you, and they see you as a traitor/higher jump risk. So if you DID want to be a professor, there is a rather limited path. Add to this the fact that your boss probably isn't equipped to train you/develop you to do much other than what they do, and you get our current system. I've had very frank talks with my PI about my goals, and he was super nice, but also admitted that he wasn't necessarily that helpful with anything but what he knew, which was the grad school->few years of post doc->young faculty->desperately work for tenure track.
The other grant problem now is that it's gotten super conservative and funding is tight relative to the number of labs asking. So where it used to be a fundable grant was, "basis for good idea, how i'm gonna do this great idea, and maybe a little preliminary data indicating how good this idea is" a grant now is more towards "basis for good idea, how i'm gonna do it, but we both know I actually already did this, because I have half a papers worth of "prelim" data here, and you can guess that a couple of the experiments I propose are already done, and worked, because if you don't fund me and comment on them, my revision includes those results to show what a good idea it was..." You basically are writing a grant on the last thing you did to fund the next thing, which is screwy and makes it super hard to get started as a professor.
The discount is what they are proposing taxing as a gift or debt write down.
Because they know it's incredibly unpopular so they don't want to have to deal with it during election time.
Just like with Healthcare the plan is to rush it through the process as fast as possible so no one can debate it, no opposition can coalesce around it and it'll be forgotten about by the time of the election.
But can't Democrats just filibuster it until the Reconciliation period? Or are they trying to use next year's reconciliation this December?
The point of reconciliation is that it can't be filibustered.
And they absolutely need it through before 12/13 because even if Roy Moore wins, he's likely a no vote because the bill doesn't ban Islam or something. If Doug Jones wins he's definitely a no vote. They need this while Strange is still in office. So now they've got just 24 days to get it out of the Senate (which means passing the House version or passing a version, working it out in conference, and passing it again). Among those 24 days are a national holiday.
I'd watch and see if they really cancel Thanksgiving recess. I think if McConnell lets folks go home for Thanksgiving then we can breathe a little easier.
Midterm elections.
I understand that, but I thought there were limitations on reconciliation, and one was that it could only be used once a year, and that year ended in October. So are they trying to pass 2018's one reconciliation bill in December of 2017? I'm already exhausted by the ACA repeal that was toyed around for months and months, I'm not looking forward to this coming up for the next 10 months.
It's every Fiscal Year. This is the FY-2018 bill. The main rush is they're trying to have it take immediate effect, so they want it done before the calendar year in order to remove any lag on it. Also, elections.
There's another significant reason for the rush: several members of Congress have admitted that their donors have told them they won't be receiving campaign contributions for the 2018 midterms if this tax bill isn't finished. So they need this done soon enough to turn on the spigots of donor dollars in time to start advertising next spring/summer.
I also suspect some of those donors have promised to fund primary challengers if this bill isn't finished...and the deadlines for those primary filings are mere weeks away. So the rush here may be in part to preempt possible primary challenges.
One final pragmatic reason for pushing this: most of the bill's changes take effect January 1, 2018. The earlier the bill is signed into law, the more time employers have to correct tax withholding and the more time corporations have to take into account the new rates and provisions when making investment/expansion decisions.
I'm not sure if it's been posted already but here is the page to search for your reps and Senators and here is a script that you can use if you don't feel comfortable without one.
That is, what students are paying the full fee now, and how much if at all would it hurt universities to not charge these students the full amount?
Lowering costs but strengthening the filter is going to decrease revenue. It's also likely to create an effective economic ceiling for anyone who isn't a higher performing student before college. Which is greatly affected by socio-economic status.
Not that I'm saying I particularly mind the collapse of college sports back to a true amateur level, but, wouldn't that really piss of the ncaa and like everyone who votes republican?
I confess I don't understand the US education system at all on almost any education level; the system in my country is quite different in a lot of important ways.
I was under the impression it only affected the specific way graduate students tend to be subsidized and not scholarships. So a graduate student who receives a stipend+tuition waiver is taxed on the tuition waiver but a student athlete who only receives "scholarship" money and not stipend+waiver wouldn't have an increased tax burden.
Grad school is already priced differently (and more expensively) than undergrad, and not all grad students work as Teacher's Assistants/Grad Assistants to cover their tuition. Many are just regular full time students (this is what I did), or employed full time and obtaining the advanced degree with assistance from their employer.
Undergrad/grad tuition is also different if you are an out of state student vs an in state student. The specific schools can also charge differently. I received one of my 2 year degrees (one was heavily subsidized because of how I got it) from a state college (used to be community college) in my home city which charged a fraction of what my 4 year university charged. Which was then itself much lower than what I'm charged for graduate tuition even with a waiver for in state tuition.
So, theortically, this thing should be dead, or now much less likey to pass? Murkowski and Collins are two moderates and seem opposed to the tax bill. McCain possibly too, but he seems more likely to vote yes on this than the ACA repeal.
Wait, what did Flake say about Lincoln?
I cam here to make that excact joke.
Needs moar quotes and parenthesis.
MWO: Adamski
At one time your public institutions were deeply discounted owing to the fact that the state they resided in (New York, Kansas California, etc) heavily subsidized them thanks to generous amounts of taxes passed to them by the federal government. This allowed these institutions to compete with and sometimes surpass their private counterparts in terms of quality of education. Then the 90s happened and Gingrich stepped onto the scene. As part of his "Contract with America" to cut taxes, he eliminated many of the tax passbacks that were earmarked for higher education which forced the states to either raise taxes (what the GOP was hoping they did so their state level counterparts could compete on that theme) or eliminate much of the state's higher education budgets (which the GOP also wanted but for different reasons). Those different reasons have to do a lot with their internalized notions of self-sufficiency and of outright class warfare. That is, the poor aren't staying as poor as they once did and are changing the way they vote.
This new tax on grad students is probably one of the last things needed to do in order to shut down public universities from competing with and providing an alternative to many private institutions. This carries on a theme that's long been played in the US. One that started with how public education shouldn't be a thing the government does for reasons best explained by old, bigoted, racist, classist white guys with the sort of shrill & condescending voice used to scold children who have profaned in church. That is, "it's not in the constitution". Which is how much of how to run education has been passed off to the states to figure out instead of having a central authority in the federal government. See my previous post as to how property taxes, one of the least fair ways to generate income, has been a longtime battleground for education and can be oft cited as to why the US has such a patchwork system in the first place.
So why can't the universities just give the students a scholarship which must be spent on tuition?
Not trying to excuse this stupid bill, just wondering how graduate students could bundle themselves in with student athletes somehow to save themselves.
I think it has to do with how the graduate students are subsidized. They aren't just given waivers and money, they are student employees. So the waiver and stipend is given in return for X (at least 20) hours per week of teaching or research. Student athletes AFAIK aren't considered student employees.
Why doesn't the school just charge grants like 100% fringe or something
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.