Tag Archives: tuition fees

The urgent need to recognize and value academic labor

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Two Harvard professors share their thoughts on the latest from the US Republican Party’s tuition waiver tax plan.

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Recently the House of Representatives essentially voted to destroy graduate education in the United States. By taxing tuition waivers as income — and therefore treating their taxable income as two to three times the amount graduate students are actually paid — the Republican tax bill would effectively put graduate study outside of the reach of all but the independently wealthy. While the Senate version of the tax bill does not include this provision, it is far from certain what the final bill after the reconciliation process will look like.

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Changes to the U.S. tax code will harm graduate student mobility and career prospects

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Increased financial burden for students will harm science in the long run, says Aliyah Weinstein.

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A recent editorial in Nature described the harm that newly proposed changes to the United States tax code will have on graduate student finances. If passed, these regulations — ostensibly designed to simplify tax calculations — will eliminate benefits previously given to students. Of particular harm to graduate students and the scientific world would be the elimination of the tax-free status of tuition waivers.

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What do the new industry-led tuition deals mean for academia and postgraduate study?

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The impending hike in university tuition fees in the UK is prompting companies to offer to shoulder the financial burden in order to attract top graduate talent. Pharma giant GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) followed the lead of accounting firm KPMG on Wednesday by announcing that it will reimburse tuition fees to all its UK recruits from September 2012. It’s an enticing deal – worth up to £27,000 for those taking a three-year degree – but what are the wider implications?

The scheme is only available to undergraduates and graduates in the United Kingdom who are not yet employed. They will be reimbursed once they start working for GSK, and they must remain with the company for a minimum of two years.

These new deals – which academic employers are unlikely to match – add to the uncertainty of how increased tuition fees will affect postgraduate study, an issue acknowledged by the UK minister for universities and science David Willetts in a speech to university leaders last week. In response to concerns that higher undergraduate fees could mean less postgraduate students, he announced that Adrian Smith, director-general for science and research at the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, would reconvene an expert panel that examined the state of postgraduate study last year to review the potential impact.

Ellen Pearce, director of research staff support organisation Vitae, said she welcomed the review. “The potential implications of changes in the undergraduate tuition fees aren’t fully understood,” she told Naturejobs. She said the routes into doctoral research were likely to become more diverse and complex in light of the increased fees. And there may be more mobility between higher education and business if financial reward – such as the deal offered by GSK – becomes a higher priority for students. “There may also need to be new models of postgraduate education that provide more flexibility,” she added.

Universities that plan to charge the maximum allowable fees of £9,000 per year include University of Cambridge, Imperial College London and the University of Exeter.

What’s your reaction to GSK’s plans? Do you think less people will go on to postgraduate study once the higher undergraduate fees are charged? What can academic employers do to compete with the reimbursement deals that will be offered by industry?