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While I agree that there are a lot of structural problems with universities and the way funding is allocated, I disagree with the premise that beginning with taxing graduate students is the correct way to do it. Granted, as a current PhD. student at a University of California university, I have some skin in this game which colors my view-point, so take what I say with a grain of salt. In particular, state schools have a lot less flexibility in terms of how we allocate funding to graduate students; our pay rates are set by California state law, and the salary of every single employee of the university is subject to public scrutiny [0]. We cannot simply dip into our endowments to correspondingly raise wages, since the amount which can be withdrawn each year is strictly capped as a portion of the total, to ensure the long-term growth of the fund (see [1], "Endowment Spending Policy"). It is true that colleges and universities have grown tremendously in their size and scope. This is a popular anecdote (and often repeated without data), but consider this: a university has become a mini-society in a lot of ways. Universities offer an unbelievable number of services and drive their own mini-economies. They are often among the largest employers in their area, even in thriving metropolitan centers [2]. They provide health insurance, mental health care, their own police forces, job-searching centers, support groups, etc. As our broader American society scales back its social services, universities are increasingly on the hook to provide these services to students. I agree that universities have grown too large, and resent extremely large unnecessary salaries (for example for sports coaches), but I also acknowledge that such waste exists in any sufficiently large and complex system, and it is a constant and active process to limit its effects. Condemning the whole system on account of this seems like cutting off the nose to spite the face. [0]: https://ucannualwage.ucop.edu/wage/
[1]: http://www.ucop.edu/investment-office/_files/report/UC_Annua...
[2]: http://www.ucla.edu/about/facts-and-figures |