December 11, 2017

The Grad Student Tuition Fee Waiver, Explained

The tuition waiver provision of the tax bill was aimed at folks like this. Sorry about that, STEM.Paul Rodriguez/The Orange County Register via ZUMA

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One of the provisions of the Republican tax bill would force graduate students to pay taxes on waived tuition fees. So if annual tuition is, say, $50,000, and that cost is waived, the student would have to pay taxes on $50,000 of income. Jeremy Berg, the editor-in-chief of Science, is perplexed:

It is not clear what the objective is, as the new policy would disproportionately affect students without additional resources to support their educations and would likely decrease economic viability and competitiveness as talent is lost from the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) enterprise.

Well, here’s the thing: I’m afraid STEM is just collateral damage in a war against economics, sociology, women’s studies, education, history, and so forth. These are all areas that produce lots of lefties who write mean things about conservatives, and the objective of the tuition waiver is to make life hard for them. Unfortunately, the tax writers couldn’t think of a way of making this provision apply only to “fields that harbor lots of liberals,” so STEM got hit too. Sorry about that.

On another note, I attended a math summer camp with Jeremy in 1975. We were not great friends or anything, but we all knew each other and this means he is now in the running for most famous person that I used to know when I was young. None of my friends from the 70s has won a Nobel Prize or become a show runner for HBO, so editor-in-chief of Science might well be the current top dog in my personal universe.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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