With the new tuition tax bill from Trump administration there would be the main change which is tuition waivers being the primary target in this case. Approximately 150,000 Ph.D students will be affected by this change that are studying technology, science, engineering, and math.

Currently, how tuition works is as long as the student is teaching or researches in one of those fields (technology, science, engineering, and math) for the university they are studying at the money is not taxed. So, in other terms for example when a student studying science and university charges them per semester then the fee gets waived automatically.

To put it in numbers perspective for example a $33,000 a year tuition price will be subjected to tuition tax bill which would be around $4,000 per year extra for tax.

Here’s what I think about this change. I will be a graduate student in math field in a few years and this news are disappointing in terms of not beating the time or cut by this change. So, now I am looking at extra 12% per year on already ridiculous cost of tuition. Money is already an objective in most of students case and now it will only get worse and with new tuition tax bill proposal there would be decline in productivity in our society.

Bottom Line

Surely this have its own benefits like boosting our economy, but on the other side this will discourage students pursuing the education because of its costs and will therefore drive our innovation levels down.