Five Science Graduate Students Share How the Proposed Tax Bill Will Affect Them and the Future of Science

By: Jessica Trinh, Research Assistant, The Joint BioEnergy Institute

Graduate school is an arduous but rewarding journey. In grad school, you dive deeper into a topic that interests you, learn about the current research in your topic of choice, and perform research that adds to the conversation. In grad school, you learn how to become a scientist.

For many prospective grad students like myself, grad school is a wonderful opportunity to learn the skills needed to properly conduct research and to present what you have learned to different audiences. I want to be able to take what I have learned from grad school and use it to conduct groundbreaking research so that we can continue advancing our knowledge of the world. Things that we could do with this knowledge include finding more cures for diseases, identifying additional sources of renewable, clean energy, and other innovations to improve our everyday lives.

Tuition for grad school is quite expensive, but luckily, many universities offer PhD students teaching and research assistantships that grant graduate students a small stipend and a tuition waiver. The stipend is quite small, but with the tuition waiver, it gives just enough money for grad students to continue attending school. Traditionally, this tuition waiver is paid for by the university and is not counted as taxable income, but the tax plan that has been recently proposed by the GOP would tax these waivers.

Under this new tax plan, grad school would become unaffordable for those who cannot independently fund their education. Science would suffer. Prospective students would decide not to pursue advanced degrees, and some current graduate students might drop out due to the financial strain that additional taxes would cause.

Currently, the Senate and the House have to reconcile the differences between their tax bills, and the grad student tax might not make it into the final bill that is sent to the President. However, the GOP tax plan would still shift the tax burden onto young students, possibly forcing them to relinquish their dreams of getting advanced degrees in favor of paying off student debt instead. As someone who feels passionately about higher education, I do not want to see this happen to our country. I have invited some of my friends, who are currently in grad school, to share their experiences as graduate students and give their opinions on the tax bill that is currently being reconciled.

Sonal Rangnekar — Graduate Student at Northwestern University

As a PhD student, I am preparing myself for a career in nanotechnology — manipulating single atoms and molecules to build electronic devices that work more efficiently and consume less power than the devices we use today. I work hard to learn to solve a very particular nanoscience problem, so that in the future I’ll be able to solve a lot of other nanoscience problems more quickly.

Becoming a PhD student was a dream I’ve had since I was in elementary school. As a daughter of two scientists, one of whom has a PhD, I was always encouraged to be curious about the physical world. However, beyond the thrill of making scientific breakthroughs, having a PhD represented financial stability later in life. It represented an opportunity to prove myself as a subject matter expert in an academic environment and transfer that determination and doggedness to my future jobs.

For the first time in my life, I’m questioning whether or not I’ll be able to achieve my dream of earning a PhD– not because it’s too difficult, but because I may not be able to afford to be a student anymore under the proposed Republican tax plan.

My current income is approximately $30,000 a year, which is typical for graduate students across the country. While this is the actual amount I see in my bank account, the paperwork tells a different story — I “receive” extra money that covers my tuition. This is money that never enters my bank account. I cannot touch it, and until this past month I took it for granted that I wouldn’t have to pay taxes on it thanks to a tax waiver for graduate student tuition. This waiver is eliminated under the proposed tax plan. For me, that means I will be taxed as if I make $80k a year. Furthermore, the tax plan removes student loan interest deductions, which means that individuals with student loans (like me) will be even deeper in debt than they currently are. This will force thousands of graduate students across the country to quit their programs due to financial hardship, and it will make me reevaluate whether my PhD is worth more than my financial stability.

The proposed tax plan, as it stands now in the Senate, is absolutely detrimental to the economic well-being of this country. It will make graduate school unaffordable for students across the country, leading to a decline in scientific and engineering prowess within the next two decades. Who benefits from graduate students? The U.S. Department of Defense does — they routinely partner with academics to develop novel technology for human safety and warfare. If you support increasing the Defense budget for international conflicts, then it is senseless to deny the necessary education to the individuals who will develop superior defense technology. Cancer treatments, airplanes, computer chips, and renewable energy sources are researched and developed by people with PhDs. There is no economic, social, or moral reason for the government to sacrifice graduate students to pay for tax cuts.

Please spread awareness about these problems with the proposed tax plan, and encourage your senator to vote against any tax plan that hurts graduate students and individuals with student loans.

Sonal is a PhD student at Northwestern University in the Department of Materials Science. In the Hersam group, she studies assembly methods of 2D materials with the aim of developing the next generation of scalable nanoelectronic devices. She holds a B.S. in Chemical Engineering from UC Berkeley. When she’s not “sciencing”, Sonal is absorbed in a variety of creative pursuits, including dance, music, and visual arts.

Jenna Weiner — Graduate Student at University of Nevada, Reno

My name is Jenna Weiner, a transgender graduate student at the University of Nevada, Reno. I study the effects of snow on drought, and how our current drought measurements may be misunderstanding a key component of the water cycle. This is really important because many of our water management practices depend on accurate measurements of water availability and drought measurements play a big role in that. If we’re not measuring drought severity properly, that can have significant repercussions on water management practices across the western United States.

This tax plan would make it nearly impossible for me to pay for my education, as I receive a tuition waiver of about $20,000 a year, and my graduate student stipend is only about $1700 a month. Between rent, medical expenses, and basic day-to-day expenses, I just break even each month, and that’s not accounting for potentially being taxed on $20,000 I never actually receive as income.

I think my research can and will provide a lot of future benefit in aiding water management practices across the Western U.S., but if I were to be taxed on my tuition waiver, that work, and similar work, may never get out there. Increasing taxes on grad students, who barely scrape by as it is, is preposterous and entirely unfair, especially given the benefit our work provides the world at such a low cost as it is.

Francis Aguisanda — Graduate Student at Stanford University

My name is Francis Aguisanda, and I am a second year PhD student in the Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine Program at Stanford University. Our lab studies the liver — an incredible organ that serves at the body’s “detox” center, degrading medications, alcohol, and everything else that our body needs to get rid of. My research seeks to understand how the liver activates or deactivates its stem cells, which is a process that is critical for maintaining the liver over the life of an organism. Too much stem cell activation leads to uncontrolled growth, a condition we know as cancer. Too little activation would mean that the liver couldn’t replace damaged tissue with healthy tissue, leading to a degenerative disease. Understanding this process would lead to a better understanding of how the liver works, and new knowledge that we can apply to treating patients with liver disease in the clinic.

When I was a kid, I always dreamed of becoming a scientist. I am incredibly fortunate to have the opportunity to do this now as a PhD student at a wonderful school. However, going to graduate school has its disadvantages. The average PhD program in the biosciences takes 5–7 years, during which I will work for very long hours with very little pay. Additionally, I am continuing to put off saving money for a home, retirement, and a family, in exchange for the scientific training I need to succeed in the future.

The proposed tax plan would cause my federal income tax to soar from $3,606 to $12,129. Allowing taxation on tuition waivers means that I will pay federal tax for $42,000 of additional income that I never see. This will result in a drastic reduction in American students seeking PhDs. The tax plan isn’t just unfair — it jeopardizes the future scientific infrastructure of the United States, reducing our technological competitiveness in the 21st century on the global stage. I encourage all lawmakers to vote against any version of the tax plan that includes the repeal of section 117(d) of the Tax Code and to continue America’s investment in its scientists.

Chad Ummel — Graduate Student at Rutgers University

I work in the field known as nuclear astrophysics. Essentially, I measure nuclear reactions that are of astrophysical importance in a particle accelerator laboratory. This helps us gain a better understanding of nucleosynthesis, which is how the various elements in the universe are created.

I make a $25,000 stipend, which is just enough to get by in the New York City metro area — I spend just about as much as I earn on my basic living needs. A tax on my tuition remission would effectively double the taxes I pay. This would significantly threaten my ability to pursue my research without worrying about meeting my basic needs.

Theo Rusmore — Graduate Student at Oklahoma University

My name is Theo Rusmore, and I am a graduate student at Oklahoma University.

As a graduate student and a constituent, I urged my senator to not include in the Senate version of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (H.R. 1) the House’s provisions that increase the financial burden of higher education for graduate students. Advanced degree-holders are essential to the nation’s innovation ecosystem and economic growth. The House’s bill makes it more financially difficult to obtain those degrees and disincentives education.

The bill takes away the current provision that allows graduate research and teaching assistants to only pay taxes on the wages they receive and not the tuition waived for them by their university. Being accepted into graduate school and holding one of these positions is a milestone accomplishment, and a university rewards this success by covering tuition. The bill would unfairly penalize that success by taxing this scholarship.

Norman has the lowest cost of living of any city in the nation. This means that graduate students like me are able to live comfortably and have a reasonable quality of life on what essentially amounts to $16,000/year, after taxes and university fees.

The removal of the exemption will mean that graduate students, who are already subjected to high levels of stress from our research, teaching, and outreach responsibilities, will have to add day-to-day survival to our list of responsibilities.

Taxation of our tuition waivers essentially guarantees that we will take longer to graduate, either because we need to pick up another job to make ends meet, or because our already-precarious health suffers because of having to eat ramen three times a day. Please do not underestimate the negative impact being bumped to the 25 percent tax bracket will have on the experience of graduate students throughout the nation.

STEM graduate students, like myself, directly benefit the economic productivity of our nation, making our industries more competitive and advancing our technological and economic goals. However, these benefits to the nation will not be the only losses incurred by driving graduate students from their programs in this way. Non-STEM graduate students do valuable research in the social sphere, learning how humanity functions. Their contributions and understanding are at least, if not more, valuable to our country’s continued development, and they are already less supported than those of us in STEM fields. Reducing their support in the manner outlined in the tax plan will effectively eliminate their ability to attend graduate school, and the loss of their contributions may lead our nation into stagnation. Every graduate student’s work is valuable, holistically and economically. Don’t let our educations be torn away from us in this wholly unfair way.

Advanced degree-holders go on to careers in industry, national labs, and academia where they help ensure America’s global leadership and strengthen our national security. I hope our lawmakers will support the U.S.’s future workforce and not include these provisions in the Senate’s bill.

About the Author: Jessica Trinh is a Research Assistant working at the Joint BioEnergy Institute in Emeryville, CA. Her research focuses on building a bacteria that can sense compounds that are commonly used in bacterial communication. She hopes to use this sensor to detect bacterial communication compounds from waste-contaminated soil from Oak Ridge, Tennessee. She plans to go back to graduate school someday to pursue a PhD in Microbiology.