> 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/...