It’s assessed to show income is less than Y over X number of years. So reducing income right before going to Johns Hopkins would not normally qualify.

This seems like an edge case though. Unless this is the actual-norm, why optimize for something happening infrequently?

There is no 100.000% perfect solution, but a 99.9995% one isn't terrible.

It's really rare that this would be an issue, but the way to fix it would be to do what the tax system does and say it's free up to $235,000 and give $1 or 50¢ less for every dollar earned over that. The downside is that the administrative burden added by that probably costs similarly to any high earners intentionally taking a pay cut to mooch off them.