Employees of elite universities, including Stanford University and the University of Chicago, are richly rewarded with tax-free benefits, according to an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal.
Furthermore, taxpayers subsidize these benefits, including free housing in some of the most expensive places in America, according to Professor Steven Solomon at the University of California Berkeley.
He wrote:
The exact benefits universities provide to staff and their children vary but are consistently extravagant. Schools such as Columbia pay a significant portion of K-12 private school tuition for professors and senior administrators, often covering about 50% of tuition costs—which can run upward of $65,000 a year at New York’s top private schools…
…The problem is that because these gifts are all exempt from income tax, taxpayers foot the bill. And K-12 education is hardly the only university perk taxpayers cover. Columbia, Northwestern, Stanford, Penn and others offer tuition benefits for faculty children attending colleges of their choice, paying up to 50% of tuition bills. Some schools cap this assistance at their own tuition rates; others don’t. Princeton pays 100%. There is also generally no limit on the number of children who can qualify.
The generous exemptions are the result of years of lobbying, with higher ed institutions arguing free housing “would help poorly paid faculty and staff.”
“This exemption was never intended to subsidize multimillion-dollar Greenwich Village apartments or entire suburban-style faculty enclaves in Palo Alto, Calif,” Solomon wrote.
He argues for reforms, including requiring housing to actually be on campus and taxing the tuition benefits.
“If elite universities want to pamper their faculty and staff, they are welcome to do so—on their own dime.”
MORE: Trump says he’ll follow through on stripping Harvard’s tax-exempt status
IMAGE CAPTION AND CREDIT: Stanford University’s campus; Jejim/Shutterstock
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