The Perfect and the Free

The Genius of Malcolm Young

 

For about a decade, beginning in high school, I played bass in a string of rock bands.  It was in this context that I learned much about being creative in a group setting.  The debates and conversations in rehearsal spaces -- garages, basements, even a musty attic -- over how to make a song sound better presaged conversations in offices and seminar rooms about how to make research more convincing.

I also learned quite a bit about rhythm guitar.  The lead guitarist is like the vocalist, flashy, attention-grabbing.  The rhythm guitarist holds everything together.  A bandmate once counseled me to listen carefully to how Izzy Stradlin -- not Slash -- powered Guns N' Roses.  It was a tribute similar to the ones now circulating in the wake of Malcolm Young's death.

It is his brother, Angus, who occupied the spotlight.  Yet Malcolm evinced a -- I was going to say "quiet," but let me instead say subtle -- musical genius.

Let me compare "Hells Bells" to the first movement of Beethoven's 5th symphony.

Both ominous minor-key compositions ("Hells Bells" more overtly so).  And both centered around very simple musical motifs.  The 5th, of course, has the four-note "fate" motif, repeated almost incessantly for the duration of the movement, in a variety of keys, in lieu of any traditionally singable melody.  Perhaps the most famous four notes in music.  For "Hell's Bells," the motivic element is three rather than four notes, arranged so that a descending step is immediately reversed to return to the opening pitch.  As the first song on the first album AC/DC released following original singer Bon Scott's "death by misadventure," it subtly suggests resurrection.  It is typically played as a syncopated phrase, again recalling Beethoven's rhythmic departures from the classical paradigm.  

The song opens with a variation on this main theme, where the three note sequences are heard primarily descending in pitch, originating in the lead guitar.  The three note motif follows the introduction, continuing into the verses, in the rhythm guitar.  The rhythm guitar continues to echo the three-note sequence behind the lead guitar solo.  The motif's final iteration definitively concludes the song.

Attention to detail.  The great rhythm guitarists, occupying a position bridging the band's "rhythm section" and its melodic elements, succeed by their excruciating attention to detail.

Academic research, particularly in the sciences and social sciences where collaboration is the norm, is really not all that different.  Some members of the research team drive the enterprise forward.  They breed the lab mice, clean the data, run the analyses.  Some members specialize in providing the interpretive flourishes, giving a TED talk the way Angus Young might prance about the stage with his trademark Gibson SG.  But the best teams will have a Malcolm Young at their core.

The odd economics of grad student tuition

A few years ago, I was assigned the task of directing a Ph.D. program.  Working with doctoral students was fantastic.  Working with the bureaucracy assigned to oversee graduate training was... interesting.

Once a year I'd have a meeting in the office of the Dean of the Graduate School, to go over what was essentially a profit/loss statement for the program I directed.  It would be just as accurate to call it more simply a loss statement, as doctoral training is a money-losing proposition.  Students typically don't pay tuition, and they receive stipends (typically in exchange for work as research assistants or teaching assistants).

The profit/loss statement would always show a series of charges for tuition, offset almost entirely by credits for tuition waivers.  At the time, I thought this was silly accounting.  When you get right down to it, doctoral students don't pay tuition -- at least when enrolled at major research universities.  We maintained this accounting fiction of charging them tuition but then immediately reversing the charge with a waiver.

It is the value of this tuition waiver that the House of Representatives just voted to include in a graduate student's taxable income.  Graduate students have, understandably, expressed concern that paying taxes on income that they don't actually receive will impose a big hit on their meager finances.

Universities could respond, however, by ending the accounting fiction and declaring that their doctoral programs are tuition free.  Why don't they just do that?  Well, it turns out that although the students themselves are seldom charged tuition, a third party often pays it on their behalf.  If universities modify their tuition policies to save graduate students an income tax hit, universities themselves will sustain a hit -- a potentially much larger one.

When a faculty member obtains a grant for a research project, it's very common to use the proceeds to pay a stipend to a doctoral research assistant.  If a grant pays a stipend to the student, the expectation is that the funding agency -- quite often the Federal government itself -- will pay tuition on behalf of that student as well.

So while the popular press has portrayed the proposed taxation of tuition waivers as an assault on graduate students, it may be more accurate to say that Congress is holding graduate students hostage and demanding ransom from universities.  "Cut the tuition rate you charge the government," Congress is effectively saying, "or we'll tax your students."  Perhaps with the net result of driving graduate students -- many of whom come from abroad -- to universities outside the United States.