Slashdot Mirror
No Tuition, but You Pay a Percentage of Your Income (if You Find a Job) (nytimes.com)
What if there were a way to eliminate student debt? No, really. Student debt reached a new height last year -- a whopping $1.5 trillion. A typical student borrower will have $22,000 in debt by graduation, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. Now, Silicon Valley is backing a novel idea that proposes to rewrite the economics of getting an education.
From a report: The concept is deceptively simple: Instead of charging students tuition -- which often requires them to take out thousands of dollars in loans -- students go to school for free and are required to pay back a percentage of their income after graduation, but only if they get a job with a good salary. The idea, known as an Income Share Agreement, or I.S.A., has been experimented with and talked about for years. But what's happening at Lambda School, an online learning start-up founded in 2017 with the backing of Y Combinator, has captivated venture capitalists.
On Tuesday, Lambda will receive $30 million in funding led by one of Peter Thiel's disciples, Geoff Lewis, the founder of Bedrock, along with additional funds from Google Ventures; GGV Capital; Vy Capital; Y Combinator; and the actor-investor Ashton Kutcher, among others. The new funding round values the school at $150 million. The investments will be used to turn Lambda, which has focused on subjects like coding and data science, into a multidisciplinary school offering half-year programs in professions where there is significant hiring demand, like nursing and cybersecurity. It's an expansion that could be a precursor to Lambda becoming a full-scale university.
On Tuesday, Lambda will receive $30 million in funding led by one of Peter Thiel's disciples, Geoff Lewis, the founder of Bedrock, along with additional funds from Google Ventures; GGV Capital; Vy Capital; Y Combinator; and the actor-investor Ashton Kutcher, among others. The new funding round values the school at $150 million. The investments will be used to turn Lambda, which has focused on subjects like coding and data science, into a multidisciplinary school offering half-year programs in professions where there is significant hiring demand, like nursing and cybersecurity. It's an expansion that could be a precursor to Lambda becoming a full-scale university.
"and are required to pay back a percentage of their income after graduation"
That just sounds like slavery with extra steps.
So basically this is HECS (or whatever they call it now) in Australia....
It is called - taxes.
You already pay a percentage of your income if you have a job. This proposal is a matter of budgeting your taxes to fund education. It's plain and simply that.
Debt is usually a fixed payment, the percentage of your income goes up and down based on what your income is.
So no, not the same.
I hate fat people.
Read the fine print.
1. They say you have to pay them 17-20% of your earnings for _ANY_ job, even if you didn't get that through what they taught you.
2. They do their own financing because they're not an accredited institution, so you can't even use that "degree" elsewhere.
3. They were forced to remove "University" and "Professor" from their language, as those terms were not being used correctly.
4. This is just a bootcamp that charges you $20,000 (up front) or $30,000 (through this scheme) for a 30 week MOOC.
5. Even though they have a $50,000 minimum salary before you have to start repaying (which is deferred for several years until you are at that point), they don't adjust for cost of living. Someone in California or New York (where they hold their schools) will make that and still be below the poverty line.
6. Their success stories are suspect. There was one guy who they claimed landed a full-stack developer position, without also pointing out he had a bachelor's degree, and he had participated in a year-long bootcamp before doing this one.
Oh wait, it looks EXACTLY LIKE THE METHOD THE UK USES for its student loans repayments. In the UK you're charged a max fee for tuition and the student loans company gives you a student loan to cover that and maintenance which is calculated so there are limits that people can get. You repay the student loan once you start earning over £480 and it is deducted from your pay at a rate of 9% of everything over the £480. After 30 years anything unpaid is written off.
More info here: https://www.gov.uk/repaying-yo...
I only please one person per day. Today is not your day. Tomorrow isn't looking good either. - Scott Adams
17% of your salary for 2 years, if you get paid over $50,000.
0 if you get less than $50,000.
(pause if you get fired)
Math:
17% of 50,000 is $8,500. That means you only pay $17,000 for your degree.
(It also means you're only making $41,500, so you're better off negotiating a salary at $49,999.)
--Welcome to the Realm of the Hawke--
Or, what if, hear me out now, what if colleges stopped the campus beautification arms race, and quit spending hundreds of millions of dollars on new buildings, and then passed the cost savings on to students?
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
I wouldn't want it any where near a normal University, for fear it would kill off the less lucrative subjects.
Lucrative = valuable to society.
Yes, yes, I know, people really hate admitting that. But this is how we measure the need for one more person in society doing whatever it is. If there's a great need for another person, it will pay well. If more people want to do it than are needed, it will pay crap, even if the field is very necessary to society (like teaching), it may be we already have an excess of qualified people, and don't need more right now.
Of course, there's a different argument. There are those who believe that University if for indoctrination by your betters in what you are supposed to believe, and not for mere "vocational" learning of things actually needed. Fuck all those people, individually and collectively, for they are destroying society.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
There are still state universities in smaller states where you could live and work for a couple of years to get residency, then start college and (barely) scrape by. But you're right that it isn't nearly as easy as it used to be.
For example, my undergrad uni costs about $9,400 in tuition per year. That's less than a year of minimum wage even after taxes. Of course, you have to deal with books, food, and housing, so getting by on minimum wage would pretty much require finding several other people willing to split the rent on a small apartment off campus. But it should be (just barely) possible to work your way through school there without scholarships.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Any country with government paid post-secondary education, and progressive taxation, also does essentially the same thing this article proposes. With progressive taxation, members of society who are most benefiting from their own education and/or the education of their fellow citizens (and employees) pay more of the cost of government. So in affect, they are paying a larger proportion of everyone's "free" post-secondary education.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke