Wednesday, May 13, 2009

Taxing College Students

I guess it's not enough that having a university in your city brings in money. No, sometimes you want to tax the students directly just to fill the holes in your city's budget:

The mayor of Providence wants to slap a $150-per-semester tax on the 25,000 full-time students at Brown University and three other private colleges in the city, saying they use resources and should help ease the burden on struggling taxpayers....

The four schools generate more than $1 billion a year in economic activity, said Daniel Egan, president of the Association of Independent Colleges and Universities of Rhode Island. They employ nearly 9,000 people in a city of roughly 172,000.

What would Providence be without those universities?

5 comments:

Ellen K said...

Why don't they just write tickets for every car that drives around with a college parking tag. That's what they do in Highland Park. I would see old ladies make right turns from the left lane in front of cops and they got nothing. Make and model of car determined the fines there. And that's true in just about any college town you could name.

Happy Elf Mom (Christine) said...

Killing the goose that lays the golden egg.

Stopped Clock said...

GOogling around the Internet seems to show that a sizable number of people are in favor of the tax, but only because they seem to believe that most college students are essentially just lazy bums who take money from their parents and are "considerably more affluent than the local population".

This has never been my experience with college students, but then again I didnt go to Brown.

Scott McCall said...

I already pay $20,000/semester here at the University of Arizona. They just added a $1000 surcharge just to keep themselves out of debt, plus raised the tuition 10% for out of state students (5% for instate). Adding a $150/semester charge is a big deal to me cause i'm low on money as it is. Plus, considering the in-state/out of state stuation, they might do $150/semester tax for instate, and $500/semester tax for out of state..... being that i pay almost 4 times as much for anything just because i'm out of state

Stopped Clock said...

Well, being from near Rhode Island, I can offer my subjective opinion that there's not much to see there and that likely most students at Brown are out-of-state, and that Mayor Cicellini is a bit annoyed that essentially all Brown students move back out of Rhode Island as soon as they graduate. I can see how local people might get the impression that the university only takes money and never gives anything back. But it isnt true.