You're simply wrong. Higher-income college students are far more likely to go to graduate school than lower-income students.

> The percentage of students enrolling in graduate school increases with family income. Among dependent 2007–08 four-year college graduates, 39 percent of those from families in the lowest income quartile, 42 percent from middle-income families, and 45 percent from the highest income quartile had enrolled in graduate school within four years of college graduation. [0]

It's also misleading for you to look only at figures for STEM fields, in which international students are much more highly represented than other fields. I'm not sure why you're using looking at STEM only and using that to prove your point. The NYTimes article you linked says it best:

> "in arts and humanities, the figure [of students which are international] was about 16 percent; in business, a little more than 18 percent."

Providing tax breaks for graduate school does disproportionately benefit the upper middle class and the wealthy.

[0] https://www.urban.org/sites/default/files/publication/86981/...

Depends on the field. Students from developing countries are usually not lower class, but, compared to Americans, have much lower income. In many fields, especially STEM ones that actually provide tutition waivers, these students make up significant chunk of the students. There is liberal arts, but tuition waivers are much more rare there.

I’m sure this is what the Trumpists were really after. He is not very friendly to immigrants, after all. And STEM doesn’t really mesh with make America great again mantra of bringing back low skilled manufacturing jobs.

Not to wade into the discussion about who makes what money (we need data, full stop) - but in humanities, students largely do not get the type of tuition waivers that are under discussion.

By ignoring STEM students, you're overlooking the people who would primarily be affected.

A vast majority of graduate students are not from low income backgrounds. Graduate students by definition already have a college degree, and statistically college graduates come from families that make substantially more than he average income.

You're making a poor assumption however. The college graduates that go on to pursue a graduate degree are not randomly selected.

Sure. But aren't they even more likely to be well-off? Are people who can afford to forgo getting a job for 4-5 years after getting their college degree more or less likely to be from a lower-income household?

I'm not certain, but to offer a counter argument, aren't the more wealthy students likely to be content to get a Bachelor's degree of an MBA and move into the workplace? Possibly using their connections to supplement their other qualifications?

What is the poor assumption that s/he is making?

Sorry to clarify, the poor assumption is that the fact that the people going to college being generally wealthier means that the people going to graduate school are generally wealthier. A uniform randomness would be required to determine which students choose to continue advancing which is not the case as those choosing to pursue a graduate degree are being influenced by other factors - how fast they need to begin acquiring income, how lucrative they think immediate employment may be, interests...

I always got the impression that the international students were from fairly well off families by the standards of their home country. After all, they can afford to pay full tuition, even after the exchange rate from currencies like the Chinese RMB.

Yup. The most likely outcome of the grad student changes in the House tax bill would be an even greater shift towards international students from well-off families.