This is interesting. Universities with extremely large endowments (Stanford, Harvard, quite a few others) don't really need to charge tuition, even at the undergrad level. And as far as I can cell, most PhD students don't pay tuition.
So, what stops Harvard from setting a zero tuition for graduate PhD students? In many fields, STEM especially, grad students are really valuable for the extremely inexpensive labor they provide, not for tuition checks.
Public universities typically charge lower tuitions, and even then (well, at Berkeley at least), my experience was that it isn't hard to get a tuition waiver and become a TA or RA. So, just do away with graduate tuition for PhD students.
The big casualty, I suppose, would be academic masters students, since those degrees actually are tuition based cash cows for universities, including Stanford. Corporations typically underwrite the tuition, and the students are pretty low maintenance. But I suppose they could create an M.Eng for the corporate students, and an M.S. for the academic students, and charge higher tuition for the corporate program.
Another factor, I suppose, is law, MBA, or Med students who get tuition waivers. Not sure what they'd do about that.
Just a couple of thoughts, but my guess is that the top privates will find a way around this.
Most PhD students don't pay tuition out of pocket, but someone usually pays tuition on their behalf.
For example, my first two years of grad school were covered by an institutional training grant, which paid for my tuition, stipend, and books. The next year was paid for by private fellowship (thanks, Pfizer), which covered pretty much the same things--and a very large coffee mug that I still haven. Subsequent years were paid for by a combination of other training grants to the university and research grants to my advisor.
This adds up to some decent money for the university, especially since PhD students typically take only a handful of classes–and these seminars are fairly cheap to put on.
Now that makes sense - PhD students may be paid out of grants that come from a source other than the university itself or the student. So that would be a source of income lost.
Do you think the grant could go directly to fund research, with the university then funding a grad student with the grant money as a condition of how the grant is used? Or does it have to go through the grad student as a reportable tuition waiver?
I certainly do agree this sounds like a much more complicated problem than a line item that can be hidden when things are internal. Just wondering what loopholes might work.
> And as far as I can cell, most PhD students don't pay tuition.
Yes, they do. But they receive a full waiver, and that waiver is not taxed.
The proposed tax bill amounts to a several thousand dollar / year increase in the tax load on graduate students, who typically make less than 30k/year.
> So, what stops Harvard from setting a zero tuition for graduate PhD students?
We'll see what clever accounting universities come up with, if any.
But indeed: a $Nk pay-cut could end up having a pretty devastating impact on academia.
Right - so my question is, why not just set a PhD student tuition of zero? They don't make any money off this, so why charge it and always waive it? Why not just get rid of it.
That would remove the option to occasionally charge the tuition, but research PhD programs, especially in STEM at elite universities? Tuition from PhD programs must be close to irrelevant.
1. That would mean redefining enrollment. What if a PhD student takes a class that involves instruction time during their research period - as I did, and as some of my students will likely do?
2. The money used to pay the instructors for PhD-level classes, of which there are some, has to come from somewhere. And for many universities, there is $0 that is "irrelevant".
As noted, most PhD students don't pay out of pocket.
What this is meant to correct, as noted elsewhere, is that PhD students still have to be enrolled in classes while working on their dissertation, at least to some extent - and class enrollment means tuition. Full time student status is important for many, many things like health insurance and student loans.
These waivers are an acknowledgement that those classes aren't actually using space, instructor time, etc. so it would be silly to charge them tuition for it.
What's being proposed is essentially charging students for a book keeping adjustment.
Hilariously, I think it will be harder for the top privates. Many states have clauses to prevent tuition being spent using state money so that the state doesn't end up effectively paying itself, which may still work even if waivers themselves go away.
The privates would have to figure out how to define full enrollment but not paying tuition (and for some portion of a PhD students should be paying tuition, via some mechanism). And that can get tricky...
So, what stops Harvard from setting a zero tuition for graduate PhD students? In many fields, STEM especially, grad students are really valuable for the extremely inexpensive labor they provide, not for tuition checks.
Public universities typically charge lower tuitions, and even then (well, at Berkeley at least), my experience was that it isn't hard to get a tuition waiver and become a TA or RA. So, just do away with graduate tuition for PhD students.
The big casualty, I suppose, would be academic masters students, since those degrees actually are tuition based cash cows for universities, including Stanford. Corporations typically underwrite the tuition, and the students are pretty low maintenance. But I suppose they could create an M.Eng for the corporate students, and an M.S. for the academic students, and charge higher tuition for the corporate program.
Another factor, I suppose, is law, MBA, or Med students who get tuition waivers. Not sure what they'd do about that.
Just a couple of thoughts, but my guess is that the top privates will find a way around this.