[smanzer]

I finished a chemistry Ph.D. at Berkeley in 2016 - the way that the university handled "tuition" for science graduate students always seemed like a scam to me during my time there.

In the early 2010s, we all made ~$28K/yr, while the university pocketed a comparable sum from the funding agencies as "tuition." I assume that they spent it like any other general tuition funds. For the vast majority of the time during a typical graduate career, everyone was working on individual research. I suppose the "tuition" could be interpreted as paying for the 1 hr a week of meeting with your advisor (when they weren't blowing you off for conference travel), but that seems like a stretch. That money should stay in the sciences, and ideally be used to pay grad students more.

So it would be good for universities to get rid of this money laundering scheme, but I worry very much for the folks that I know who are still in the system who may be hurt by this. I think this problem should be treated in some way less likely to hurt vulnerable people.