Republicans are fast-tracking the way to a plutocracy while they can, now that they're in control of all the levers of federal government. That's one part of what's behind their tax cuts for the very wealthy in the plans they've been jamming through this month. Witness what they're doing to graduate education for anyone but the very wealthy.
The annual stipend for a PhD student in Carnegie Mellon's school of computer science is about $32,400. The university covers the student's $43,000 tuition, in exchange for the research she conducts and the courses she teaches. Under current law, the government taxes only a student’s stipend; the waived tuition is not taken into account. But under the GOP bill, her annual taxable income would rise from $32,400 to $76,234. Even factoring in new deductions also included in the proposal, the CMU document estimates her taxes would amount to $10,209 per year—nearly four times the amount under current law. That would slash her net annual stipend by 25 percent, from $29,566 to $22,191. […]
Current and would-be graduate students fear that, were the bill to pass, getting a PhD in the US could become financially impossible. "I monitor all legislation at the state and federal levels that could affect graduate and professional students, and this is just—this would have the greatest negative impact of anything I've seen," says Samantha Hernandez, legislative director of the National Association of Graduate-Professional Students. "It would be devastating."
More than 90 percent of PhD students in the STEM fields rely on stipends. With the amount of debt they have to take on just to get undergraduate and master's degrees, furthering their studies without these stipends would be impossible. Having to pay taxes on them—and be able to pay rent and, you know, eat at the same time—would make that doctoral degree out of reach. So fewer people going on for PhDs, but that's not where the damage ends.
The more debt students graduate with, the less likely they are to pursue relatively low-paying or financially risky jobs—in academia and elsewhere. That means fewer educated people teaching, experimenting, and innovating at research institutions, sure, but in other places, too. "Right now you can graduate debt free and work for the government, non profits, start your own company—you get to choose. But if you've accumulated a lot of debt, most students are going to look at high paying jobs that'll let them pay off debt," [PhD student Amanda] Coston says.
That makes our collective future look pretty damned bleak, but Republicans stopped thinking about the future a generation or so ago. They're only in this for what they can steal in the here and now. Including the world all of our children and grandchildren will inherit.
Jam your senators' phone lines at (202) 224-3121. Tell them to vote "no" on the Republican tax bill.