GOP tax plan harms higher education

There are many reasons to oppose the House Republican tax plan, and not just because it will lead to increases in taxes on many in the middle class, while showering gifts on the already wealthy. It also contains a provision that will gut the training of the next generation of scientists, technologists, engineers and mathematicians.

The tuition waivers that graduate students receive in exchange for assistant teaching work would be taxed as income. At many research universities, this would more than double graduate student income and, after tax, plunge them from a meager income to even lower levels. These young people are the best and brightest of their generation, and they’re putting off earning income in order to train to make critical advances in medicine, science and engineering. If House Republicans get their way, Ph.D. students will have to quit and those applying to Ph.D. programs will only be those already wealthy. Richard Seager New York