To: The United States Senate
Stop GOP tax plan from eliminating graduate school for our children
Republicans propose that students pay taxes on the tuition the university typically pays itself for their education under university grant programs, making it impossible to get an MA or PhD for most middle and lower class students. This brain drain would give both Betsy DeVos and Donald Trump a lower tax rate than a graduate student at Princeton under the new proposed tax plan.
Why is this important?
For many Americans, the American dream includes many years of graduate school and extremely frugal living along the journey to a Ph.D. Traditionally, in a great many fields (such as biology, physics, chemistry, and mathematics), the only way this has been possible is through teaching and/or research assistantships, which grant graduate students with a small stipend (in the ~$20K-$30K/year range) to live. This Republican move will almost certainly guarantee that middle and lower class highly talented and intelligent people will be locked out of higher education.