The City of Pittsburgh is facing a budget shortfall and is looking to the students who benefit from "the privilege of studying in Pittsburgh" to fill the gap. Legislation has been proposed to tax their tuition at the full listed price in order to cover "city services they use but do not pay for."
It's time to provide actual details about this proposed tuition tax. Sound bites and short quotes in the media are insufficient to capture the complexity of this issue.
Of the 65,201 students who now study in Pittsburgh at the institutions that are members of the Pittsburgh Council on Higher Education, 46,804 live in Pittsburgh and thus pay real estate taxes (including amounts included in their leases if they rent) and other taxes to the city.
A large number of students at these schools work in Pittsburgh and pay wage or commuter taxes to the city.
Students pay parking and entertainment taxes.
To tax the tuition of students in these categories would be to double tax them for the same general services.
Thus Mayor Luke Ravenstahl's tuition tax for these students is not a "privilege tax" but a "punitive tax." City residents and employees who choose to better themselves through education and to work in the city while they study would be penalized because they are students.
Legislation already prepared to enable the collection of the tuition tax makes no exceptions for students already paying for city services. Nor does the proposed legislation distinguish between students who are paying the full price of tuition from those who receive financial aid.
All students would be taxed at 1 percent of the published tuition at their particular institution, even if those on financial aid do not pay full price.
In the combined institutions in Pittsburgh, 64 percent of the undergraduate students receive financial aid, as do 53 percent of the graduate students. Since tuition at each institution is different, for a variety of good reasons, students would be charged different amounts of tax at the common 1 percent, depending on the institution they attend.
Some students study at multiple institutions (one of the benefits of attending our colleges and universities), sometimes in different semesters, and would be charged a different tuition tax at 1 percent of the tuition for each institution they attend in a given year.
Imagine the challenge facing the tax collector and the colleges and universities themselves to keep track of all this.
The stated purpose of the mayor's tuition tax was for students "to bear their fair share of the many services which the city provides to them." Yet commuters who live outside Pittsburgh but who work in Pittsburgh 52 weeks of the year, regardless of their salaries, pay a flat $52 per year ($1 per week, with no annual escalator) for the privilege of working in the city and receiving city services.
On the other hand, students would pay between $27 (Community College of Allegheny County) and $400 (Carnegie Mellon University) in the first year, and then 1 percent of any increased tuition annually.
Many of the services that Pittsburgh provides to other citizens are provided to the students by our institutions themselves, dramatically reducing municipal costs.
Such services include police for safety and security, fire hydrant maintenance and replacement, road and street maintenance and snow removal and contracted trash removal.
Institutions also pay telecommunications fees, building inspection fees, licenses and permit fees, and property transfer fees, and they pay 31 percent more than residential rates and 26 percent more than commercial rates per 1,000 gallons of water in taxes to the Pittsburgh Water and Sewer Authority (a city agency).
Our institutions also teach many students who are identified in the proposed legislation as "learning in programs which originate in Pittsburgh" but who never come to Pittsburgh (e.g., online students all over the world). According to the legislation, they too would have to pay Pittsburgh a 1 percent tax on tuition.
In presenting these facts, we have not included the many other contributions made by our students to the city. Their voluntary service amounts to hundreds of thousands of hours each year, demonstrating students' commitment to improving the neighborhoods, serving the poor, providing supervised educational, business and medical services and generally raising the quality of life for their Pittsburgh neighbors.
These are the facts. These are reasons the Pittsburgh colleges and universities will continue to oppose Mayor Ravenstahl's tuition tax. This is not a "fair share" tax or a "privilege tax" but an unfair tax that also is illegal and unenforceable.
These fundamental flaws cannot be fixed because, at root, this is bad public policy. It is a tax aimed at a group least able to pay and least able to defend itself politically. If passed, it would be the first thing that student recruiters in other cities would present to potential students and their families, reminding them that, unlike Pittsburgh, their own city prizes its students and does not regard them as burdens and cash cows.
Finally, there is no rational relationship between any city services used by our students and this 1 percent tax on their tuition. It is instead a convenient way to fill a budget hole unrelated to city services for students.
Mary Hines, president of Carlow University, is chairwoman of the Pittsburgh Council on Higher Education. This commentary was co-authored by Jared Cohon, president, Carnegie Mellon University; Alex Johnson, president, Community College of Allegheny County; Esther L. Barazzone, president, Chatham University; Charles J. Dougherty, president, Duquesne University; Sister Candace Introcaso, president, La Roche College; William J. Carl III, president, Pittsburgh Theological Seminary; Paul Hennigan, president, Point Park University; Gregory G. Dell'Omo, president, Robert Morris University; and Mark Nordenberg, chancellor, University of Pittsburgh.
