[_m8fo]

If this is what you believe, then I've already covered it in my original post -- PhD students should be treated as employees.

PhD "students" can be either employees or students, not both. Currently they're "both".

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Also, I'm not sure your post really refutes the notion that a PhD student is paying for access to a professor. A PhD student could receive a degree without access to the institution, so in both cases, undergrad or grad, the institution itself is what's being paid for.

[jjoonathan]

We agree that (PhD students like employees) => (PhD students should be paid like employees), but you also asserted ~(PhD students like employees) which I disagree with.

[_m8fo]

I don't have any opinion on whether or not PhD students are employees or not, however, what I do want is consistency. So if PhD students are indeed students, yet receive a massive tax break in the form of "free tuition" (contrast this to imaginary undergraduate working for a college, who receives income from the college from a job and has to pay post-tax income for tuition) then undergraduates should have the same benefit (that is, tuition reduction from pre-tax income, if they work for the school that they go to).

That's it.