Here & Now

TAA Member Weighs In On Potential Tax For Grad Students

Frederica Freyberg:

Police arrested nine protestors outside Speaker Paul Ryan's Washington office this week. Protesters voicing display over tax changes for graduate students. Tonight we take a closer look at the changes in the House tax bill that would make tuition waivers taxable income. According to the American Council on Education, about 145,000 U.S. graduate students receive tuition waivers. Michael Bellecourt is a UW-Madison graduate student who represents the Teaching Assistants’ union. Michael, thanks very much for being here.

Michael Bellecourt:

Thank you for having me.

Frederica Freyberg:

As you know, the House version has to be squared in conference committee with the Senate bill, which does not include this provision, but what would this tax change mean to students like yourself?

Michael Bellecourt:

The situation is really different for every graduate student, so I don’t want to go in with one number and say every grad here at Madison will pay this much more. But for a very sizable chunk of grad students here at UW-Madison, their tax burden could go up by several thousand dollars if this bill passes with the House’s language.

Frederica Freyberg:

Would those grads students be able to pay that?

Michael Bellecourt:

Many of them would have to take out additional loans just to pay their taxes.

Frederica Freyberg:

And so what’s been the reaction on this campus and others to this proposed tax change?

Michael Bellecourt:

Amongst grad students there’s a lot of disbelief, a lot of fear and a lot of disgust about this proposed change. And it’s really motivated a lot of grad students to speak out.

Frederica Freyberg:

You are a biochemistry Ph.D. candidate. What is the value of your tuition waiver?

Michael Bellecourt:

My tuition as a senior graduate student is actually very low. So I have a very low burden, according to this language. But incoming biochemistry graduate students, they have a much tuition because they’re still taking classes. And these are some of those students that will have that additional several thousand dollars of taxes if the House version of the bill.

Frederica Freyberg:

So for those younger, incoming grad students, what is tuition for grad school that they get waived potentially?

Michael Bellecourt:

The value of the tuition, the actually monetary value is around $2500. Most of us don’t even know that because we don’t ever see our tuition. It’s just money that’s being handed from one part of the university to the other. So the fact that they want to tax us on that money that we never even really see is kind of amazing. A lot of grad students don’t even know what their tuition is.

Frederica Freyberg:

You said it was $2500. Per semester?

Michael Bellecourt:

That's per year. It is an approximation. I don’t have the exact numbers on me because these numbers are just kind of mysterious to the grad student. It’s buried on the UW-Madison website.

Frederica Freyberg:

Do you have any idea how many UW-Madison students are granted this tuition waiver?

Michael Bellecourt:

All UW-Madison grad students have a tuition waiver. Yes.

Frederica Freyberg:

Would that be the case where there are Ph.D. programs elsewhere?

Michael Bellecourt:

Most universities across the nation waive tuition for their grad students. I would even venture to say it may be all universities.

Frederica Freyberg:

I heard one critic of the tax change say it would mean only the wealthy could afford graduate students. How real is that in your mind?

Michael Bellecourt:

We have so little money at the end of month because we don’t make a lot. Our stipends are very low. If we had to throw additional money at taxes, we would have nothing. We would have to take out loans or we would have to have a wealthy source funding our graduate student career.

Frederica Freyberg:

Would that be an impact on research?

Michael Bellecourt:

Absolutely.

Frederica Freyberg:

How?

Michael Bellecourt:

Taxing tuition would cause people to stay away from grad school. We would have so many fewer graduate students. And the graduate students are really the people who are doing research. We have all these really intelligent professors and they’re instrumental to the process, but their role in research is advising others. They’re telling others what to do, how to do the experiments, what to research. And others are doing it for them. Whether that’s a graduate student or a post doc, you would scare away grad students, you will have no one doing that research and it’ll all just–the system will collapse.

Frederica Freyberg:

Michael Bellecourt, thanks very much.

Michael Bellecourt:

Thank you.