More Colleges Try Forgoing Tuition For A Percentage of Future Income (yahoo.com)

"Some innovative colleges, in partnership with private investors and a small number of philanthropies, are experimenting with a new financing model called 'income share agreements' or 'ISAs,'" reports Yahoo Finance: With an ISA, instead of assuming a fixed debt obligation, students simply agree to pay an affordable percentage of their future income over a set time period, subject to an overall cap. High earners will have larger payments than low earners, but all will have an affordable payment, based on what they will actually be making. Importantly, when the college is providing some or all of the funding for the ISA, its return will be aligned with its students' post-college earnings, giving it economic incentives to make sure its students both graduate and find jobs. The college is, literally, invested in its students' success...

With ISAs, there is no principal or interest. Thus, they are much better suited for low income students as their financial obligations never exceed their ability to pay... In a recent paper commissioned by the Manhattan Institute, we looked at the small but growing number of colleges and universities offering ISA programs. Indiana's Purdue University launched the first such program in 2016. About a dozen other institutions have now followed suit, including Lackawanna College in Pennsylvania, Clarkson University in New York, and the University of Utah. Most of these pioneers offer ISAs to students as an alternative to non-subsidized federal loans, though a few are offering them as a complete substitute for borrowing... A common feature of all these ISA programs is that they require payments only when the graduate meets a certain income threshold. All impose time limits and caps on the total amount that needs to be repaid, though they differ widely in where they set those caps and limits.

Comments

Sounds good

[Kokuyo]

If someone's success depends on your success, chances are they're going to help you actually succeed.

Let's see how this works out.

Re:Sounds good

[Freischutz]

If someone's success depends on your success, chances are they're going to help you actually succeed.

Let's see how this works out.

Your (financial) success (as a business) depending on the success of your graduates is a principle that should be applied to all for-profit schools because currently their business model seems to be to trick students into life long debt slavery in return for a truly useless bargain basement education.

Re:Sounds good

[AmiMoJo]

This has been happening in the UK for a couple of decades, basically a loan that you only repay once you are earning. I am still paying mine off.

A lot of people are headed for having it written off due to not earning enough in the 25 year time limit. There is also the issue of people going overseas and not paying it back.

It used to be a good deal when the interest rates were fixed at a low level, but now it's not nearly as attractive.

Re:Sounds good

[idji]

This is similar to HECS (Higher Education Contribution Scheme), how Australians have payed for University since 1991, and payed back through taxes after you start earning.
What is interestingly different here is that those with better paying jobs pay more under ISA, and that could lead to discrimination against students who are studying courses that pay less in jobs.
https://www.studyassist.gov.au...

Re:Sounds good

[Anonymous Coward]

What do you think is going to change? This is an administrative decision to chase falling income. Courses won't change. Careers advice won't change. The fact that going to college is for most people a complete waste of money won't change. All that's changing is that instead of being in servitude to a bank for a decade, you'll be directly in servitude to colleges. It's just a way to cut out the middle man in the whole college financing scam, and it's a clear indicator of an industry in decline.

Re:Sounds good

[Anonymous Coward]

Whether a student loan is a good deal depends mostly on the value you get from your education, not on the deal you get on the interest rate. These systems are propping up a scam, which is that most people do not need a college education and will not derive value from it. The focus on "good interest rates" is to detract you from the fact that most people won't ever see a positive ROI on the principle.

Re:Sounds good

[Kokuyo]

But there seems to be no interest involved here.

Re:Sounds good

[Kokuyo]

But that is a good thing, isn't it? Either those types of jobs are needed so it behooves employers to pay accordingly or they are not and it makes little sense to waste a human mind to it.

Re:Sounds good

[jellomizer]

There are some big questions to this.
I got my masters degree from an another school then my undergrad degree. Who is to say how much of my salary is from my undergrad education and how much from my masters.

A student after a year or two determines that they don’t like that school and switch. Or fail out and one they matured they went to an other school.

Or the cases of the Billionaire college dropouts like Bill Gates, who realized they could make more money with their own business then wasting more time at school.

This method is hiding the fact the College Education is too expensive and a way to make college administrators lives easier by not finding area to save money. Such as not keeping on building new building but utilizing the space they have.

Re:Sounds good

[Anonymous Coward]

Seeing how your job is trolling Rei on /. it wasn't a very successful partnership.

Re:Sounds good

[Mr. Dollar Ton]

It really isn't. It is propagating a very well-known market failure, which tax-funded research is supposed to rectify. Fundamental science is, for example, a field that is traditionally underfunded by the markets and the reason is that the returns from understanding basic physics are very small in the short run, although nearly immeasurable in the long term, so the "investment" and pay are very low.

If you validate this with your funding scheme, you're doing the opposite of what you should.

Re:Sounds good

[Mr. Dollar Ton]

Research and education really, because both are tightly linked.

Re:Sounds good

[Quakeulf]

Two words why it's not going to work out:

Private investors.

Re:Sounds good

[Anonymous Coward]

"trick students into life long debt slavery" - not living beyond your means and simple math... if you can't do both your not smart enough for the watered down courses that pass as 'university' now days

Sounds like someone is either a shill from for-profit, naive, or an AH. What GP said is talking about many for-profit universities (e.g. DeVry, UoF, etc.) that don't care about their students' future but rather the number of enrollment. The more they can enroll, the more money they will get from the government. They don't care whether these students will graduate and become successful in life. The drop out from this type of universities is way higher than any public universities (including well-known private universities).

The trick part is from getting people enrolled. Their recruiters sell dreams to those who aren't capable of looking far ahead in their lives -- average people. There are a lot more average people than you think. I know you are above average, so please stop using yourself as a standard (the motto "if I can do it, you can too").

This has NOTHING to do with living beyond their mean.

Re:Sounds good

[Anonymous Coward]

Their lives are easier because the state gives them free money. Malinvestment with the uneducated masses. A fraud perpetrated by the government.

Re: Sounds good

[Anonymous Coward]

those jobs are needed

Which jobs are needed is a philosophical dilemma that people feel differently about. Most, I think, would argue that there exist jobs for which the free market cannot account. A possible example are your government representatives. The job is not free-market-supportable so we force the people to give up the resources to pay those salaries (i.e. via taxes)

Re: Sounds good

[Anonymous Coward]

the returns from understanding basic physics are very small in the short run, although nearly immeasurable in the long term

Possibly the word "are" here should be "have, on average, hitherto been". Although the evidence thus far generally supports your claim, recall that basic physics research gave us atomic weapons, and may yet uncover some fantastical thing that can finally destroy us all.

Re:Sounds good

[Joce640k]

"trick students into life long debt slavery" - not living beyond your means and simple math... if you can't do both your not smart enough for the watered down courses that pass as 'university' now days

Doubly true if your debts were racked up while chasing down a career in media studies.

Re:Sounds good

[parkinglot777]

It is bad as you said in the UK, but it is a different type of loan compared to this ISA. The ISA loan has fixed terms that has nothing to do with interest. The main term is to pay back at a certain percentage of the current annual income for a fixed period of time. As a result, the eligible amount loan will depend on the possible minimum annual salary after graduation from a selected program. There could be some more additional terms, such as the loaner may not need to pay back at all after not being able to find a job for a certain continuous period of time, there is a cap for the total pay back and the loaner can stop paying once the pay back hits the cap, etc.

Besides, the issue about going out of the country and not paying back is not likely to be in the U.S. Europeans can easily leave their home country and go to work in another European countries. As a result, these people don't pay taxes back to their home country (and not paying back the student loan because no income shows up in the home country). In the U.S., people simply move to another state. However, the loan system covers the whole nation, so it is not likely to be a major issue.

Your example is legit, but it doesn't apply to the type of loan (ISA) and the boundary in the U.S.

Re: Sounds good

[Mr. Dollar Ton]

Possibly the word "are" here should be "have, on average, hitherto been"

Is there any other way to have technological progress but education and research? Please elaborate, because I'm not aware of it.

Re:Sounds good

[Anonymous Coward]

How it'll "work out" is the massively over represented liberal college administrators will block this as it degrades the fake legitimacy of all their bullshit departments that constantly run at a loss and produce degrees with no economic value.

Re:Sounds good

[jbmartin6]

I'm not so sure. Current student debt issuers would have the same incentive after all, and they aren't especially helpful. Instead they look to the government to uphold special privileges for them when it comes to collection.

Re:Sounds good

[Immerman]

You mean so that the lower classes can't afford an education?

Re:Sounds good

[Anonymous Coward]

Speaking of success being built on others, creimer bought Slashdot for three pennies last year. Long live Goat C!

Re:Sounds good

[slashdot_commentator]

I disagree. The problem is that parents don't raise their kids to be financially independent at the age of 18, to the point where they would be concerned about taking on the loans. It doesn't matter if you wise up by the age of 22, you're pretty much a slave at that point. The other problem is that a college degree has been mythologized as a road to financial success, to the point that colleges (and public schools) sell the myth, and parents (affecting mostly the poor) enable their kids to become debt slaves.

The Congress and the banks have basically made student loans a predatory industry, along with "payday" style cash loans.

When I look at the "value" of a college degree, I look at teachers as a canary test. They have to be highly educated to take on such a career (in NY), and what's their financial status? They're living paycheck to paycheck, can barely afford to live in the region, and are worried they won't have enough money to help put their kids through "state college" *and* their retirement (and keep property, for those who have it).

Its especially crazy to think this status quo can be maintained when AI will eventually cut into much of the entry level jobs on the professional level. Forget the truck drivers (although they're screwed if they were counting on a career), computer systems are already reducing head counts in paralegal and lawyers at large firms, and shocker, medicine is basically a pattern matching machine to determine diagnosis, and follows a protocol to address the diagnosis. You don't need a doctor's education, who is able to piece together exceptional situations that require going "off book", for 90% of people's ailments. Computers are going to wipe out professional entry level jobs the way that it wiped out the bookkeeping industry before the 1980s.

Re: Sounds good

[Immerman]

Actually no - basic physics research gave us the knowledge that atomic weapons were possible - developing the weapons themselves took many more years and massively larger amounts of far more specialized and well-funded application-specific research.

Also, I'd say wiping out humanity would count as an "immeasurably (large) return". Not necessarily a *positive* one, but quite large.

Re:Sounds good

[Anonymous Coward]

Why should someone who is merely average feel entitled to higher education and an above average salary?

Re:Sounds good

[Anonymous Coward]

Then - Than - two different words, with VERY different meanings.

You should not have to pay back any of your student loans, because obviously you didn't learn a damned thing.
Not about the English language, at least.

Re:Sounds good

[Immerman]

Indeed - there are many details to sort out. One possible compromise would be something like X% of your annual salary for the first Y years after graduation, per year of school. Graduate from a 4-year program, pay 4X%. Leave after 2 years, pay 2X%. Go on to a different graduate school - the Y-years counter doesn't start until you graduate from there.

Re:Sounds good

[Gavagai80]

Money does not equal success. This will simply lead to pressuring students into more lucrative majors while completely neglecting the rest of the university. Might as well just open a trade school.

Re:Sounds good

[ShanghaiBill]

I look at teachers as a canary test. ... They're living paycheck to paycheck, can barely afford to live in the region

The average high school teacher's salary in NY is $83,360.

If both spouses teach, their combined income is $166,720.

The average household income in NY is $64,894.

Teacher salary by state

Re:Sounds good

[Gavagai80]

You think it's a good thing for everybody in the world to become an investment banker or similar economic parasite, and everything else (such as actually making things, researching or teaching) is a waste because it pays less?

Re:Sounds good

[Immerman]

>Current student debt issuers would have the same incentive after all

Not even remotely. Get a degree and be totally unable to find a job, and you're expected to pay off your student loan just the same as if you were making $1M/year. The debt issuers would surely rather you got a job that let you pay them off in a timely fashion - but as you pointed out, their preferential treatment means they'll probably get paid eventually no matter what. They have nothing to gain if you get a great job versus a mediocre one, and very little to lose if you get a lousy one.

Also, they're not really in a position to actually help you get a good education, or a good job.

Contrast that to a university that gets say 10% of your paycheck for the next 10 years. Get a $20k job, they make $20k total. Get a $100k job, they get back $100k total. Fail to find a job, they get nothing. That's some potent incentive to make sure you're actually qualified for $100k job, and to use their resources and connections to help you actually get the job, and negotiate as high a salary as possible.

Especially valuable assistance for first generation college graduates, whose families are unlikely to have the connections or experience to effectively navigate the white-collar job market.

Re:Sounds good

[ranton]

most people won't ever see a positive ROI on the principle.

I have never seen any studies showing most people do not see a positive ROI on receiving a Bachelor's degree. The most negative research I have seen suggested about a third of college graduates see no positive ROI from their degree.

Overall the ROI of a college degree has only been rising in recent decades, so the risk of not obtaining a degree has risen as well. This is likely to continue. It would be nice if that risk was not bore by individuals (like high school) but until post-secondary education is funded like secondary education college debt will continue to hamper the large percentage of graduates who see little to no value.

Re:Sounds good

[Anonymous Coward]

So what you're saying is that "success" of the student in this case equals "earning enough money to pay back the loan" and "success" of the institution equals "enforcing an agreement that ensures the university will be paid no matter what happens to the student"

I'm afraid that yields a totally different outcome, son. In this world it means the university will simply make the student sign a contract requiring them to take ANY employment that they can or trigger some sort of draconian auto-garnishment/foreclosure clause.

Re:Sounds good

[guruevi]

It doesn't depend on their success. It's just a loan where you incur interest over the period of your education without having to make payments and you have to pay it back by a certain due date, they just have an agreement that once you have a job, they will start collecting direct from your paycheck.

Re:Sounds good

[guruevi]

The lower classes can still take out a loan. State backing of bad loans leads to bubbles and crashes, like they did for the housing crisis - everyone has to have a loan, then you force banks to be creative with the risk.

Re:Sounds good

[Anonymous Coward]

If fundamental science is underfunded, then you should fix that by funding fundamental science. If you "fix" it by offering discount degrees in the sciences, you're going to create a surplus of labour in the field: lots of people who can't get a job because you spent the money subsidising their degrees instead of funding research programmes that could employ them.

(Conflict-of-interest warning: I work in fundamental science, so it's in my interest to have more funding.)

Willingness of lenders to pay for different types of college degrees is a *really useful* economic signal, since - unlike most students - they're smart enough to research the market and determine what skills are in demand. Throwing away this signal is not something that should be done lightly.

Re:Sounds good

[Anonymous Coward]

the only thing you've built is a fatter ass, chris

Re:Sounds good

[Anonymous Coward]

The only problem with this is that it is incentive for the educational institute to pad their graduation requirements to make sure you can't graduate in less than 5-6 years, when the incentive on them should be to make sure that when you graduate, you have enough background in your chosen field of study that you can find employment requisite to the cost of your education. And that you do it in the least amount of time possible so that you don't tie up your resources or theirs.

It will also make the enrollment process all the more painful and tricky. An institute may decide not to invest in individuals based on the incarceration status of their relatives, since a student who graduates and goes on to a job only to be put in jail is a lost investment. This could disproportionately disadvantage students from a lower economic status, as incarceration rates increase as family income decreases. It becomes a self-defeating cycle.

The best solution is to find out the true value of education and get the loan sharks out of these waters. As log as someone else foots the bill, the education industry will continue with its rent-seeking behavior. Shut down the institutions that care nothing for the student other than the money they bring in and the financial industry that has built up around supporting those institutions with userous loan products that can't be forgiven even with an act of congress.

Yes, higher education is absolutely important, but it is not the end-all, be-all of a fulfilling (and enriching) career, but rather a starting point to one. And these institutions should focus on the fact that education is a continuous process that is self-led, and even more so with the nature of information today. Universities are a font of learning, but not the information they need to teach. The best use of an education is to learn how you best educate yourself, and where that information can be obtained.

Re:Sounds good

[geekoid]

Absolutely correct.

Re: Sounds good

[geekoid]

Here are three:

1) Monkey Paw

2) Magic genie

3) Thoughts and prayers.

Re:Sounds good

[geekoid]

The Arts. English, writing, these are all needed for a healthy society.

Motivating college to focus only on high paying career fields means things that make life beautiful will be forgotten.

Re:Sounds good

[Immerman]

I'm inclined to agree - so get rid of state-backed loans.

Now, how is some enterprising lower-class kid with deadbeat parents and who hasn't yet developed a credit rating of heir own supposed to get a loan?

Re:Sounds good

[geekoid]

The education isn't useless. There is more use then 'money'.

And there is no trick.

But great, lets motivate college away from the Arts. That's not stupid at all.

Re:Sounds good

[jbmartin6]

Exactly, that is what I meant by "special privileges". It's a somewhat tangled history, but a lot of the privileges were negotiated with the government in exchange for making more student loans available. Prior, loans to major in Art History were pretty sparse since that study path doesn't scream 'ability to repay in the future.' it wouldn't surprise anyone to hear that these universities would seek to have their financing options filed under the same sort of debt slavery rubric rather than pursue some sort of career counseling program like the parent suggested.

Re:Sounds good

[Anonymous Coward]

Problem with your statistics is that no Median was provided with that Average. I would like to see either the average for public high school teachers in NY or the average and median for the lumped public and private school teachers in NY presented. I don't think it is a stretch to consider there may be some very well compensated private school teachers in NY that through the curve off and gives an artificial impression of how much teachers make.

The article you site is careful to only provide the average, and does not provide median values, despite the date referenced providing it. Although at this point I've already spent too much time.

Re:Sounds good

[Anonymous Coward]

The student loan interest rates for what I was offered was over 10%. That's for federal unsubsidized loans which are the only ones that are available to me. I'm working on a master's and teaching license program and to be stuck with a loan that's actually higher than some credit card rates is rather insulting.

They wonder why so many people don't go into the field, well that's part of it, a near complete lack of any meaningful support for aspiring teachers. And being a white male, there's basically no scholarships or grants available to me without competing with all those other groups that also get to have their own scholarships.

Re:Sounds good

[Anonymous Coward]

That's the thing, in modern America, the pay for a job is often inversely related to the value that job provides. CEOs make the most money when they run their business into the ground. CEOs that run successful companies often make less. The janitors and support staff of those companies make the least, but do the least damage to the world.

Those investment bankers are one of the biggest things holding humans back from more and better things.

Re: Sounds good

[Lord Dreamshaper]

Im betting median wage/salary skews lower than average wage/salary. Therefore someone of average intelligence has odds against average salary. The greater that disparity between mean vs. average, the greater the chance that gambling on perpetual debt isnâ(TM)t due to a lack of understanding or foresight, but rather a greater chance of desperation, possibly to the point that perpetual student debt canâ(TM)t make it worse.

Re:Sounds good

[Solandri]

The main difference with ISAs would seem to be that the loan is effectively from the school. With regular student loans, either the bank (i.e. the people who own stock in the bank) or the government (i.e. the taxpayers) have to eat the loss if the loan isn't repaid. With an ISA, it's the school which eats the loss. So nobody except the student/school should care if a student defaults on an ISA. It only affects the financial status of the school if too many of their graduates begin defaulting. It doesn't create a sword of Damocles threatening to sink the entire U.S. economy if the percentage of defaults rises too much, like we have with current student loans. Basically, all the risk of the uncertainty over the repayment rate has been shifted from the banks or the taxpayers to the school.

Re:Sounds good

[Anonymous Coward]

That is the wrong question to ask. The correct question to ask is "If a university charges $X for a degree, whoever acquires that degree should be able to find a job that can pay for it. Yet that does not seem to be the case. Why?"

Maybe the answer is "the people with that degree are trying to live beyond their means", I don't know. All I know is it is a much better question than the one you posed.

Re:Sounds good

[Immerman]

Again, you're overlooking the fact that under an ISA *THERE IS NO DEBT*. Debts must be repayed to the tune of a specific monetary amount (plus interest). An income sharing agreement has no such basis.

Also, the reason student loans get extra privileges, in large part, is because hose loans are guaranteed by the government, and so the government wants to make it as hard as possible for you to default and leave them with the bill.

Contrast to an ISA, where the government is not involved at all, and THERE IS NO DEBT to pay off anyway.

Re: Sounds good

[Anonymous Coward]

If a university charges $X for a degree, whoever acquires that degree should be able to find a job that can pay for it.

Says you. In my experience art majors know that their degree isn't going to make them earn big bucks. Yet, they persist. Why? Because they love art and are willing to pay the price so that they can do what they love.

I'm not saying that there don't exist those who were fraudulently promised returns on their education investment that they'll never realize. But to suggest that everyone who goes to university goes for the $$$ is inaccurate.

Re: Sounds good

[Anonymous Coward]

I find it difficult to imagine that you believe that technological progress is a good in and of itself. Surely such progress is "good" because it, e.g. generates happiness or some such. Whatever your reasons for supporting technological progress, I suspect that extincting the human race would run against them.

Re:Sounds good

[torkus]

In NYC public schools, with a masters degree and 8 years teaching, you make $86k. This is public info from the teachers union negotiation/contracts.

Doesn't seem too bad, eh? Except a studio or 1 BR apartment in Manhattan will run you $2.5-3k a month and any commercial landlord is going to want 40x rent in minimum income (basically the 30% rule) while others want up to 60x. That's at LEAST $100k on the lower end of things.

Just to put it out there: a teacher with a MASTERS degree plus 8 years experience can't rent a studio apartment in Manhattan.

So if we're going to compare average income, let's do it for people with a masters degree ($63K) or that plus 8 years (86K) for apples-to-apples. Then let's consider that teachers spend more time raising and educating children than their own parents...and let me know what train of logic justifies paying them an 'average' income that's literally not livable in plenty of areas they teach.

Re:Sounds good

[torkus]

Sorry sir or ma'am, we don't feel that you're a good fit for our tuition program but you can still pay xyz unreasonable dollars if you want to go anyhow.

Basically this is a college program to further divide the rich and 'educated' from the poor and 'uneducated. I put educated in quotes since the income potential of an idiotic, but wealthy child averages much higher than a very smart child from a broken family living in poverty.

Re: Sounds good

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, but I think that "the unveiling of possibilities" is the "value" that Mr. was referring to.

If you like, I amend my previous statement from "gave us atomic weapons" to "are a direct precursor to atomic weapons.", atomic weapons still, then, being a "value" of said basic research.

Re:Sounds good

[nine-times]

Except the goal of the college then stops being to educate you, and becomes all about pushing you towards career goals that are lucrative for the college.

That might be fine for some strictly vocational programs. If the whole point is to teach you a trade and then place you in a job, then getting paid based on the earnings at the job they've places you in makes a certain amount of sense. However, if we're talking about college for the purpose of higher education, it makes a lot less sense.

Re:Sounds good

[shentino]

That doesn't help when the debt slaves still wind up saturating the professional job market and crowding out competitors less eager to saddle themselves with debt to get the degree they need to remain in the market.

Those who get the jobs lose because of debt.
Those who don't get the jobs lose because of opportunity costs of not getting the job.
The colleges win because the surplus demand allows them to jack up tuition.
And the backers of the loans probably win because of the interest they're collecting, especially given the nondischargeability in event of default.

Student loans need to go, period. They inflate supply for professional labor and demand for education.
Student grants are a lesser evil but they may need to go as well. At least unlike debt they don't create slaves.

Re:Sounds good

[shentino]

Because the professional labor market is saturated with an excess of degrees that only serve to raise the bar.

Re: Sounds good

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry, don't care. We have billions in scholarships floating around. If it bothers you, donate. Stop blowing my money and setting up non-viable systems under the tired defense of much poor people. Fuck your poor people.

Re: Sounds good

[Anonymous Coward]

The education system as it is is useless. It is nothing but a testing mill disguised with cargo cult rituals professing idiocy like "teaching to learn." It is time to cut it

Re: Sounds good

[Mr. Dollar Ton]

Progress is not "good" or "bad", it is not a normative category. It is a positive one. Progress is what extends what you get out of your limited resources. So, if you're in the same shoes in all other respects, having more "progress" gives you more choices that you can make and more freedom to make them in a smart way.

You can make the "good" ones, or the "bad" ones, but hear, it is also likely that if your mind is more advanced, you'll make the "better" choices simply because you're more aware of their consequences.

So, knowledge and its foundation - education - are always valuable.

Now, go pray for salvation, troll.

Re: Sounds good

[Mr. Dollar Ton]

Yep. I also have a maneki-neko to help me save money for my retirement.

Re: Sounds good

[astrofurter]

Let them eat cake!

Re: Sounds good

[Anonymous Coward]

My preferred method would be - pay x% of your income as tax. The government pays x% of tax to schools to fund the education of the next generation. Communism, I know, but I thought that was the point of 'society'

The rest of the problem is easy to solve. Encourage more people into vocational training, etc, rather than devaluing degrees by pushing everyone into them

Re:Sounds good

[Anonymous Coward]

Above average people are highly susceptible to impostor syndrome. There's also the issue that many highly intelligent people have some form of test anxiety and many gifted people score very poorly in standardized testing. My main point is it is very difficult to detect highly intelligent people via some general testing method. You best bet is is educated as many as possible and hope you captured more above average people.

Re:Sounds good

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder if almost the entire problem is being driven by these "for profit" schools. There was a statistic a few years back saying something like 60% of all student debt was held by 15% of graduates, 80% of whom are from diploma mills, and over 50% earn less than someone with a high school degree. I do not remember the exact numbers, but they should be ballpark and at least convey how concentrated the issue is into a very specific kind of case. The numbers at the time made it abundantly clear that vast majority of the the issue was diploma mills.

Re:Sounds good

[wisnoskij]

That is one way of putting it, but when they students actually start having to pay money, you can be sure their will be quite a few very vocal ones about how they were tricked into paying far more for an education than they otherwise would have and they cannot even afford an apartment with what is left over and they are living on the streets or out of their car because of this financial burden that they were tricked into.

then you will have all the people complaining that they don't offer woman's studies classes, and how this is hurting the Arts. Or that their are not enouhg charity cases being let in with 1.0 GPAs.

The thing about government subsidized up front cost education where the universities make the same profit on every student they can get, it is very easy make loads of money off of minorities and women.

Re:Sounds good

[wisnoskij]

This is sort of besides the point. We do not see many individuals advancing science. Taking out a loan, getting a Physics degree, and then improving our knowledge of the universe.

Science nowadays mostly seems to take billions of dollars. So even if this caused far less physics students to be produced, we get more money for research possibly as we are no longer spending as much teaching millions of future car salesmen physics, and quite possibly more talented and skilled group of physicists to draw researchers from. Teachers no longer have to waste 90% of their time on students who are only there for something to do, class sizes fall and you have more one on one time, wages increase because the number of physicists dropped 90%.

This is how it's gonna work

[Anonymous Coward]

Workforce will be shifting to tech jobs as automation will eat up the other ones.
While tech jobs are paid more, these people will try to get their cut out of that.
Result: meet the tech workers demand while make these workers earn like a non-tech worker.

Re:This is how it's gonna work

[Truekaiser]

Automation may create some jobs. The job's created are not as many as the jobs destroyed. They know this, cutting out the middleman(the bank), allows them to have a greater part of a shrinking pie.

Re:This is how it's gonna work

[bluefoxlucid]

The job's created are not as many as the jobs destroyed

...for the same amount of the same product produced.

We either consume more (e.g. at a point, carriages and horses were for rich folk and regular people walked or road donkeys; cars are now a commodity) or we consume other things (e.g. we no longer spend 40% of our income on food, so we can buy iPhones).

allows them to have a greater part of a shrinking pie.

The size of the pie out there per individual person is getting bigger.

The hot-blast furnace allowed 200 workers to produce, in the same hours worked per worker, what 86,000 workers once produced in iron ingots. The wooden shipping pallet eliminated 85% of dock worker labor to ship the same goods. Pneumatic power tools. Computers. Intensive agriculture.

Because we don't have 98% of our workers laboring 16-hour days 100 hours per week on farms and at loading docks, we can make all this stuff. Those workers make tons of other things--many of them are doctors and nurses, researchers, engineers, computer programmers.

Re: This is how it's gonna work

[Anonymous Coward]

You automation utopians always forget that there are limits. Energy, resources, how many trinkets people will force themselves to buy - these are all finite. At some point automation reaches one or more of those limits and it's the end for growth capitalism.

Not necessarily a bad thing, but certainly a big change will be required.

ISA = Indentured Servitude Agreement

[Anonymous Coward]

this space intentionally left blank

Re:ISA = Indentured Servitude Agreement

[Anonymous Coward]

Except if you're rich or are a minimalist. Then you can decide not to work or work below the income requirements for the years of the agreement and end up with a free education. If the agreements are worded poorly you could hop from college to college getting multiple degrees while paying nothing. If they are well worded then they'd be like unemployment assistance where you have to prove you're been looking for work every month. Having a medical disability makes that easy. Disclose the disability upfront and a lot of places won't hire you.

Re:ISA = Indentured Servitude Agreement

[Anonymous Coward]

this is exactly what this is.

It's a great idea if and only if it covers all

[Anonymous Coward]

Unless it covers all obligations to the college, it's just a money grab. Otherwise it's fine.

Starts off looking affordable

[Anonymous Coward]

Doesn't end up that way

How can I cheat that...

[wolfheart111]

curious... that's all...

Re:How can I cheat that...

[Anonymous Coward]

Instead of starting work directly after college, take a paid internship on a cruise ship, and by paid I mean you pay. The college will get 20% of your income, which is negative, so they pay you to go on a trip around the world.

The exploding cost of education

[tinkerton]

This article has a telling graph of how education has been moving out of reach for a large part of the US population
https://www.zerohedge.com/news...

While some technological things have become much cheaper the relative cost of education has increased manifold.

the student loan crisis is then just one aspect of this problem. It's the tip of the iceberg. I still see people focusing on the 'leeches' , people somehow abusing student loans. I'm sure that happens, but using such examples to represent the situation is entirely wrong. As is the solution which is presented in the article on here. The leeches are on the other side. They're the people getting rich off this.

Re:The exploding cost of education

[tinkerton]

Looking at averages also underestimates the seriousness of the problem because it disregards the distribution of income.
When average income rises but mainly goes to a small minority, then the majority can actually have a lower income and they are even worse off.

Re:The exploding cost of education

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a GIANT bubble. Technology should have made education cheaper... instead it's gotten more expensive. They are full of shit and probably 1/3 of the university system needs to be gutted. It's going to come crashing down when the next global economic crises happens. Technology companies are on the verge of not caring about degrees anymore because it just means they have to pay an inflated value for someone that still doesn't know jack shit starting out.

Re:The exploding cost of education

[Anonymous Coward]

That's very misleading, because only the very rich families pay the sticker price, and frankly, that's ok by me. In my state, families with a low income who send kids to a state school basically pay nothing besides room and board - and that's just accounting for federal and state non-merit based grants. If you manage to score some merit scholarships, even your dorm costs can be paid for. And if you come from a low income household and you get into a place like Harvard or Princeton, they also cover 100%. The reason why colleges rake in so much money is because they tend to educate the kids of many wealthy people who actually do pay the sticker price. There is a lot of serious money sloshing around in America, and many families for whom paying $100,000 per year is a trifle.

Re:The exploding cost of education

[Immerman]

>Technology should have made education cheaper...

Why, exactly? Technology makes industry cheaper/more profitable, but there's not exactly much to automate in education to drive the cost down. Clerical overhead is about it, and that has never exactly been a a huge percentage of a college's operating expenses.

There's not much excuse for raising the price faster than inflation.

On the other hand, technology does allow *you* to lower the cost of your education substantially. Instead of taking real classes with feedback from professors and TAs, learn from the Khan academy and other free online courses (many of the big universities offer a wide selection of free online lectures), and then test out of the subject.

Re:The exploding cost of education

[Joe_Dragon]

next global economic crises happens = still have the pay the loans as chapter 11 and 7 make it very hard to get out of student loans.

Re:The exploding cost of education

[guruevi]

The government backing loans always leads to a bubble. Houses were increasing prices beyond their value due to banks having to give out loans at gunpoint to people that weren't qualified in the name of equality and social justice for all.

Same is happening in schools, government is forcing massive debt on the economy by forcing loans for people that don't qualify (either by intelligence or degree) and don't have the means to repay it. The colleges just want to collect the money since they're not holding the bag and they keep people going for years collecting money from the bank instead of telling them their dance theory degree won't help them get a job and banks are just going to get bailed out anyway.

Re:The exploding cost of education

[geekoid]

That's misleading. It only applies if you are sending your child to a private ivy league schools. Remove those from the equation and it's not nearly as bad as the chart misleads people into thinking.

https://trends.collegeboard.or...

pssst: Ohms law is the same at community college as it is at MIT

Re:The exploding cost of education

[themusicgod1]

For anyone interested in a deep dive into this topic, I highly recommend ScienceMart

Re:The exploding cost of education

[Anonymous Coward]

" test out of the subject" yes the IT industry clearly has benefited from this practice.

Re: The exploding cost of education

[Anonymous Coward]

I once took a community college class to fill in the last 4 credits I needed at a top-20 CS program. I didnâ(TM)t learn anything. Like literally nothing. The class was so fucking easy. I got a B+. Meanwhile, a 100-level class at the university I attended will give you an ulcer. They are not giving you the same education.

Re:The exploding cost of education

[Anonymous Coward]

That's very misleading, because only the very rich families pay the sticker price, and frankly, that's ok by me. In my state, families with a low income who send kids to a state school basically pay nothing besides room and board - and that's just accounting for federal and state non-merit based grants. If you manage to score some merit scholarships, even your dorm costs can be paid for. And if you come from a low income household and you get into a place like Harvard or Princeton, they also cover 100%. The reason why colleges rake in so much money is because they tend to educate the kids of many wealthy people who actually do pay the sticker price. There is a lot of serious money sloshing around in America, and many families for whom paying $100,000 per year is a trifle.

Your comment is very misleading. In my state, most ordinary middle class people leave the state-run college system with substantial student debt. Further, very few students in these schools are the children of wealthy people.

Re:The exploding cost of education

[tinkerton]

Oh so the system works much worse(on average!) than other countries who use a less capitalistic system because it is not capitalistic enough!
I'm not going to defend my parent post since it lacks all nuance, but I read this https://www.theatlantic.com/ed... and it does point to the capilist mechanisms

Re:The exploding cost of education

[wisnoskij]

Why, exactly?

Because you should be able to pay someone less who is just their to start a projector at the beginning of class, and turn it off at the end compared to a real teacher.

Re:The exploding cost of education

[Immerman]

If that's all you want out of a class, watch the video lectures and test out. Don't blame other people for your inability to watch movies on your own time.

Learn Python

[wolfheart111]

Most $$ is made nefariously anyways :|

indentured servitude

[Anonymous Coward]

Nice.

More Creeping Socialism

[Anonymous Coward]

Just another big leap towards socialism...

This is not an income share agreement. This is a progressive tax where lazy, unemployable people get free tuition on the backs of high achievers.

Next step, grade inflation, since now they have created for themselves a huge financial incentive to make sure their students make more money for their first couple of years. It always takes a couple of years for a gold brick to manifest - that is - every fresh graduate can perform well for the first few years they spend learning the ropes - until they actually start getting real responsibility and crash and burn.

Just wait until government decides to jump in.. that'll make it even better (and for the sarcastically challenged, I really mean "worse")

Re: More Creeping Socialism

[Anonymous Coward]

every fresh graduate can perform well for the first few years

Clearly you've never worked in software development.

Re: More Creeping Socialism

[Anonymous Coward]

People perform well for many reasons, mostly so in a good collaborative and supportive culture. Degrees aren't a big factor, though helpful when someone can straighten course and bring in fresh knowledge. Many find out tech isn't for them late regardless of high grades and degrees.

Fun With Acronyms

[Anonymous Coward]

Indentured Servitude Agreement

Could this be the end of Liberal Arts programs?

[CrankyOldEngineer]

What percentage of Starbucks salary could they take?

Re:Could this be the end of Liberal Arts programs?

[TimothyHollins]

It depends on what Humanities degree you have. The women's studies majors generally get the lowest tips.

I predict a short run

[TimothyHollins]

This model will collapse when companies start offering a low salary for the agreed upon time period with a giant bonus to come after. It will also incentivize graduates to take low-income positions for the first few years (which may not be a bad thing for the graduates, but it will hurt the ISA programme). Unless subsidized, this programme will not be financially viable.

People will always take the best approach for themselves, and companies will be more than happy to capitalize on that. Paying out a large bonus after X years is much better for the company; 40k for 3 years + a 45k bonus is better than 60k for 3 years for the company and guarantees a 3 year employee retention. The graduate that can be paid less at decent retention is more appealing than the graduate that wants a full salary right away and might leave at any moment for better opportunities.

Re:I predict a short run

[Anonymous Coward]

Anybody who would agree to such a scheme should try to get a refund on their education first.

Re:I predict a short run

[nevermindme]

3 years first job contract. Should just as well sign up for the Military, be 24 when entering college and have it paid for. Health insurance will not be a problem.

Re:I predict a short run

[bugs2squash]

The model will die because if it fails early it just plain fails and if it is successful early on there will be colleges with a long term income stream ahead and current running costs, so they will be bought out by asset strippers who will keep the income and gut the rest of the university.

Re:I predict a short run

[GrumpySteen]

For the sake of argument, let's say that 20% is the affordable percentage mentioned in the article. Your basic assumption here is that people would rather make $32k (80% of $40k) per year rather than $80k (80% of 100k) per year.

By all means, show us this huge group of people would would rather make $32k/year rather than $80k/year and explain how they rationalize this as being "the best approach for themselves."

Re:I predict a short run

[GrumpySteen]

And no... huge signing bonuses are not a standard thing and will not become a standard thing. There's too much risk to the employer of losing that money to someone who will move on ASAP and the salary agreement with universities would quickly be amended to cover those bonuses as well, so it would give no benefit to the employee over a steady salary.

Re:I predict a short run

[Anonymous Coward]

"Health insurance will not be a problem."

You have to retired from the military or be disabled to get free healthcare after leaving. You don't know what you're talking about.

Re:I predict a short run

[Immerman]

I think their idea was more like get paid 33k for 3 years, plus a 100k "loyalty bonus" at the end of that time, for a total of 200k, where they only have to pay the ISA on the 100k salary. Rather than being paid 66k/year for the same 200k total, but having to pay the ISA on the full amount. Lower the salary a bit so that the employee and employer split the ISA savings, and everybody wins. Except...

I really don't see such a thing catching on - firstly because the ISA agreement probably lasts at least 10+ years, so that's a *whole* lot of loyalty to get out from under it, all while not building social-security equity or being able to get a decent raise (which usually requires changing jobs). And secondly, after 9 years the company has a huge incentive to come up with some excuse to fire you or pressure you out rather than paying the loyalty bonus.

Re:I predict a short run

[Anubis IV]

Most of these ISAs have had repayment terms that go FAR beyond 3 years. Think more like 10 or 15 years. Even if the person were to take a lower paying job for the first X years, it wouldn't help them at all if they received a bonus at year X if X is anything less than the repayment term. They'd instead need to forgo higher pay for the full 10-15 years (or more), at which point you'd be hard-pressed to find anyone fresh out of school willing to lock themselves in for that long.

Re:I predict a short run

[Anonymous Coward]

This model will collapse when companies start offering a low salary for the agreed upon time period with a giant bonus to come after.

Ha! You think Corporate America can be trusted to follow that agreement? What'd actually happen is that they'd "promise" to give you a bonus after the expiration, but then make up some excuse when the time actually came. If by some miracle this gets written into a contract, they'll find some way out of it through the legalese written into the contract. They have teams of lawyers for just this.

  It will also incentivize graduates to take low-income positions for the first few years (which may not be a bad thing for the graduates, but it will hurt the ISA programme).

How would making LESS money be good for you? Yes, you'd have less money go to the school, but you'd also lose out on an even larger amount that went to you.

Re:I predict a short run

[Anonymous Coward]

This model will collapse when companies start offering a low salary for the agreed upon time period with a giant bonus to come after. It will also incentivize graduates to take low-income positions for the first few years (which may not be a bad thing for the graduates, but it will hurt the ISA programme). Unless subsidized, this programme will not be financially viable.

People will always take the best approach for themselves, and companies will be more than happy to capitalize on that. Paying out a large bonus after X years is much better for the company; 40k for 3 years + a 45k bonus is better than 60k for 3 years for the company and guarantees a 3 year employee retention. The graduate that can be paid less at decent retention is more appealing than the graduate that wants a full salary right away and might leave at any moment for better opportunities.

What will really happen is that companies will offer you a low salary for the agreed upon time period and promise a giant bonus to come, then once you are near the payout period fire you.

Re:I predict a short run

[argStyopa]

Maybe they'll only accept graduates stupid enough to NOT game the system in these ways?

I entirely agree with you that this will be maneuvered around...cynically, I can see companies making this deal "we pay you little until the term is up then you get a balloon to your salary"...until just before the bell goes off, then you get let go BEFORE you get paid a decent $. Sorry.

Don't think so? Companies already sort of do this to H1's..."we're getting you your visa, so we're going to pay you for shit during that span. You can live in an apt with 8 other dudes in squalor, and you're not going to complain or we might lose your application entirely."
(then later, as the final approval is close"
"Whups, sorry, you're just not working out,. I guess we cancel the H1 and send you back home."

Sliding scales and opt-in are opposing economic co

[Anonymous Coward]

This is the reason they had the individual mandate for nationalized health care. If you expect there to be those who fall short, and need those who don't to pay more than the value of goods received, the "invisible hand" is actively working against you.

student athletes should have this min salary leagu

[Joe_Dragon]

student athletes should have this min salary pro sports league minimum

Burn These Predatory Institutions to the Ground

[Anonymous Coward]

They want to make you a wage slave, no better than perpetual leasing on a car. Sounds good because the human mind thinks monthly

Everything the Government gets into gets more expensive. Housing in the 1930s from Fannie Mae Freddie Mac because "everyone should be a homeowner". Student tuition from WW2 on (GI Bill, and then student loans). Medicine from the late 1960s on (Medicare, Medicaid from LBJ's great society.)

What basically happens is all this government credit inflates what people can pay monthly upfront. And where there is an inflation of credit, there's an inflation of rising cost. Imagine you gave every American a govt sponsored credit card with a million $ credit line. First, over half the people would have absolutely no self-control and would go bust. On the flip side, with all this credit swamping the market, inflation would be through the roof. Well same fucking thing here.

That's why we have textbooks that ought to cost $30 going into the hundreds with a few sentences swapped as an "upgrade" every year. That's why tuition keeps going up, up, up when the average student's major needs no more major equipment than they did from the 1950s. That's why we need more competition in accreditation, less state barrier with credits, and accreditation should mandate transfer of credits. It's like we gave the big guys all the benefits of subsidies of the EU, but the people have none of the benefits (migration of labor vs migration of capital, etc). We're a fucking joke.

Now they're coming for your livelihood perpetually. You know why this sucks? Many college educated people get jobs with absolutely no connection to their degree. And don't think they'll won't take a slice of that too.

For most people with a middle of the road career not expecting to be a STEM superstar, go to Europe, find a apprenticeship that will actually pay you (very minimum) and get actual job skills rather than learn about Shakespeare and other tired tangent bullshit for years on end. College wasn't about work in the beginning, it was about enlightened learning, but that don't mean squat in the job market and is a poor fit despite being sold as the "dream". The only dream here is that's it's a good value for 90% of people. Give it the finger and don't let it enslave you.

College can be cheaper

[Anonymous Coward]

Colleges have had giant lecture halls for skilled/expensive lecturers to lecture in. Less skilled (cheaper) TAs & grad students lecture the undergrad students in small groups, and engage in grading. This has been true for decades now.

However, colleges are throwing in luxury items, bloating up on administrators, and spending money on things like "Diversity Departments" (you only need 1 or 2 people for that).

This isn't 'innovative'

[Anonymous Coward]

Only clueless millennials that have no real-world experience would think so. Anyone that goes for this is a bloody fool, and you will regret it later in life. Worse, you will have no recourse. This is the height of corrupt stupidity.

Re:This isn't 'innovative'

[Immerman]

What exactly is the difference between an average student paying 20% of their income to an ISA, versus paying 20% of their income to a student debt?

Of course, it does mean that students that go into an above-average job pay more in total, while those below-average pay less, but even that is likely offset by the fact that you've got an experienced career-placement board doing everything they can to help you find a good job and negotiate as high a salary as possible, rather than just searching more or less aimlessly like so many graduates currently do. The increase in early-career salary is likely to continue boosting your salary for decades after the ISA has expired.

Re:This isn't 'innovative'

[geekoid]

The difference is power balance.

What happens when 'payback' percentage starts being based on your degree?

What happens when you don't take a job the university thinks you should?

You post is based on the false premise that they will be faithful actors.

Anytime someone has a direct hook into your pay, it becomes abusive. see: Entire history since the industrial age started.

What you are talking about would require a very expensive dept just to groom people into the 'correct' position, and the idea that the people running the college actual give a fuck about 5+ years down the road. They are not. They are worried about what they can get NOW, and it's i their best interst to control what you choose to do.

Re:This isn't 'innovative'

[themusicgod1]

The difference is that the 20% will not stay at 20%. It can be pushed to 100%. Student loans are capped by the risk falling on the person giving the loan, or the lack of ability to pay - this proto-bondage can always get tighter.

Re:This isn't 'innovative'

[themusicgod1]

They tried it a decade ago, and probably a decade before that. This has nothing to do with gullible millennials : it's almost certainly one of those perennial ideas that is a consequence of a broken education system.

Re:This isn't 'innovative'

[Immerman]

>What happens when 'payback' percentage starts being based on your degree?
Then you take that into consideration when choosing your degree. If an arts degree requires 40% while an engineering degree requires 10% (because of the much higher expected return), then maybe you should think really hard before wasting everyone's time on an arts degree.

>What happens when you don't take a job the university thinks you should?
What's specified in the contract you signed? Probably not much since they can't force you to perform, and thus you'd quickly get out of the job the hard way, while making them look bad in the process.

As with any contract, you want to be careful what you sign. You wouldn't sign a student loan contract without examining the details, I hope?

>They are worried about what they can get NOW,
You're describing current universities, that get paid NOW, in exchange for (implied) benefits to you after graduation.
If they don't start getting paid until after you graduate, and the total amount they get paid depends entirely on your income for the first 10 years (or whatever the ISA term is) after graduation, they have a strong incentive to make sure:
1) you're not studying something for which you don't show an aptitude
2) you're not being funneled into a career path you're going to be quickly disappointed in
3) you're not pissing away your time on "the college experience" instead of learning useful skills

That does mean that they have incentive to simply reject marginal students, but the students they accept, they're going to groom to make the largest possible amount of money for the first 10 years after graduation. It's still not 100% aligned with your own priorities, but its likely to be far more compatible than the current arrangement where they want you to rack up as much student debt as possible, as quickly as possible, and then good luck paying it off after graduation, because you're not their problem anymore.

Re:This isn't 'innovative'

[Immerman]

Well, I sure as hell wouldn't sign that contract, would you?

If you sign a contract saying 20% for 10 years after graduation, then the only way they can change that is if the contract also says "or whatever we decide to unilaterally change that to"

Re:This isn't 'innovative'

[themusicgod1]

Yeah I would have signed it in a heartbeat, as a 1st year student. I would have sold my body to a brothel if it were an option, too. I was sick of starving and watching my grades plummet from lack of food pretty quick and the options I was willing to consider were pretty large. I very nearly failed out, and was saved a couple of times by dumb luck.

Re: Burn These Predatory Institutions to the Groun

[Anonymous Coward]

No, you are incorrect, though I agree with the spirit of your comment. College was initially about learning the ins and outs of a trade - *primary* education, which was once better than our current college curriculums (and would have modern parents suing right and left due to its rigor) was about edification and enlightenment. It's only pretty recently that the liberal arts have become viewed as more than glorified electives (it began with uber far left liberals around the middle of the 20th century). The problem with millennials is that they have been pampered, sheltered, and spoiled to the point that they honestly don't believe they should have to contribute anything to life or society. I guarantee you that no one outside of your class, certainly not prospective employers, gives a rat's ass about your philosophical theses or SJW antics.

BEWARE: Deceptive ISA con game...

[Anonymous Coward]

Let the buyer BEWARE: I've seen some of these Coding Boot Camps offer not only tuition, but a stipend to cover room & board. But the education they're selling you is just already freely available open-source lessons that you do on your own time. And afterwards you're on the hook to repay 150% or more of what they loaned you.

I'm not saying all ISA agreements are bad. But there's no governmental oversight. It's Caveat Emptor. The Wild West. Some of these places will happily pass off youtube videos or give you a degree in underwater basketweaving, and then take 150% of their costs back from your minimum wage salary in the fast food service industry.

Let the buyer BEWARE!

More, or less trouble for white men?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you are required to land a job in a highly specialized field in order to pay back your college, I'm worried that a lot of these colleges will be enrolling even less white men. What with social justice quotas and affirmative action being all the rage in hiring lately, these colleges would be realistic to assume that white men are less likely to be placed in jobs. If you're less likely to have a job, you'll be less likely to be accepted into a college that requires you to get a job in order for them to get paid.

On the other hand, maybe this is a blessing in disguise. If colleges can actually *see* the struggles that white men face in the workplace, maybe they'll change their tone and start advocating and lobbying for fairer employment laws that aren't based on visible minority status and leaning on ever-decreasingly-true racial stereotypes about poverty and struggle. Of course, that's assuming colleges won't be too scared of the backlash they'd get if they actually helped white men achieve anything.

All being said, I'm interested to see how this will affect the social landscape as well as the economic landscape. I just hope it's handled properly and fairly for everyone. I want this to be an opportunity to fix problems, not make them worse.

Re:More, or less trouble for white men?

[Immerman]

Poor snowflake, can't handle competing in the job market without the full unmitigated advantage of white privilege?

Seriously - the only place where white men are at a disadvantage is in companies whose current employee base is overwhelmingly white men, *and* who are hiring minorities as fast as possible to try to rectify that racist and sexist imbalance.

If they're predominantly white men and don't care (which is many) you still have a big advantage. And if they already have an equitable mix of races and genders - the only disadvantage you face is the fact that the minorities and women had to work a lot harder to get to the same point in their careers. And if you can't be bothered to work as hard as them, why should you expect to do as well?

Re:More, or less trouble for white men?

[geekoid]

"the struggles that white men face in the workplace,"

as a white middle aged man, let me tell you:

You're full of shit.

Re:More, or less trouble for white men?

[Anonymous Coward]

You're old. Try being young and getting a job.

Good luck with that ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry, I will never be anyone's indentured servant.

decline and fall of higher education

[harvey the nerd]

Overpriced, over the top, politicized non educations for liens on kids' lives.

FOAD to any colleges and universities that can't deliver cost effective options with modern media.

Ideal for MRS degrees?

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

Does payback apply if someone, er, "marries well"?

Re:Ideal for MRS degrees?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's a really interesting question! I'm sure they thought of this, because if it doesn't, it's basically an offer of free tuition to the non-working spouse of a single income household.

Re:Ideal for MRS degrees?

[geekoid]

Going to college for your Mrs. Degree?

Welcome to Australia

[Anonymous Coward]

We do that here, and have done for decades - only itâ(TM)s the government backing you

Re: Burn These Predatory Institutions to the Groun

[Anonymous Coward]

Not a millennial but I'm pretty tired of reading this rants from frightened plantation owners lashing out. Nobody owes you cheap labor or a compliant consumer base. Take your own advice: shut the fuck up and earn what you want.

Free college for gender studies students

[walterbyrd]

Not as if they will ever earn anything with that degree.

Re:Free college for gender studies students

[geekoid]

No degree earns anyone any money.

It's what the person does with it that counts.

So, shove your BS back up your ass.

Percentage of Future Income?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Percentage of Future Income" = Student Loans (most students pay that NOW.)

So, pissed that they are not getting ENOUGH MONEY out of students, the Colleges will now go down the "indentured servitude" route?

Sure we will ALLOW you an education, but we demand TRIBUTE from you in the form of a portion of every paycheck you get for the rest of your life.

and they say Slavery is dead.

move to trade jobs

[Anonymous Coward]

While this sounds good, then the universities will optimize their own programs to better fit the future labor market. Will these universities stop offering humanities degrees and move to trade jobs? Because a pipefitter takes a only about 1 year to train and the average pay is $52k + overtime, whereas an English major takes 4 years and the average salary is $49k usually with no overtime.

http://www.dearenglishmajor.com/blog/how-much-money-do-english-majors-make

https://www.politifact.com/florida/statements/2018/may/10/adam-putnam/how-much-do-welders-and-pipefitters-make-according/

It's an interesting solution to align university interests with market forces, but I still don't think it'll work. Education is an inefficient market: you have people who make poor decisions (18-22 year olds) picking degrees with no understanding of the economic value or future and not feeling the effect of the price (because it's put off until much later due to student loans). As a result, the demand for inefficient education drives up the price of education and the suppliers (universities) will simply follow the money. Fixing universities is not solving the problem: the problem is the demand side of the equation (students and their parents) make decisions that are economically efficient. Addressing that problem will fix the education problem.

Good for humanities majors!

[Anonymous Coward]

I know that slashdot is probably not the right place for this comment, but I actually think that humanities studies are important. As tuition has kept rising, that's been chasing people away from fields like philosophy, and I wouldn't want that to continue. If you sign one of these income-contingent contracts, I think that you can feel a bit more secure in choosing a non-lucrative major like Russian Literature: If you end up working a crappy barista job, well at least you'll be a barista who can think deeply about the human condition, and you won't have debts to pay back.

The Unincorporated Man

[SuiteSisterMary]

Hot damn, somebody read The Unincorporated Man and thought 'Hmmmmmmâ¦..'

Indentured servitude?

[plopez]

It sure as hell sounds like it.

Re:Indentured servitude?

[Amouth]

Except your not working for "them" directly - rather in the market place.

There is an aspect of this which i can see making schools act more in the student's best interest long term - by focusing on actual skills and job placement rather than keeping them enrolled for more "tuition"

But there is a very very slippery slope on this one, and i'm sure it will go down with some slick lawyer....

Re:BEWARE: Deceptive ISA con game...

[Immerman]

The point is, with an ISA you've been loaned *nothing*. All they get is a percentage of your income - if they can't help you find a good job, they get x% of jack squat.

Of course, you could still run afoul of a crappy university that offers degrees in advanced slacking just to claim your income - but even they have incentive to at least get you good job placement so they get x% of a bigger number. Compare to modern scam universities like you mention, that get paid exactly the same amount no matter how little value they offer.

You must be jewish

[Anonymous Coward]

You love usury and debt slaves. Sounds good!

College was initially an place for rich kids trade

[Joe_Dragon]

College was initially an place for rich kids trades where for others.

Distopian BS

[geekoid]

"Learn today, pay forever"

Re:BEWARE: Deceptive ISA con game...

[geekoid]

This history of this sort of thing is pretty nasty and abusive.

While it might start well, eventually it will get to the point where interest will mean forever servitude and you will be liable to pay them back in full if you don't take the job they want you to take.

indentured servitude

[susanjane]

Indentured servitude is unconstitutional.

UK is a loan, NOT ISA

[Roger W Moore]

This has been happening in the UK for a couple of decades, basically a loan that you only repay once you are earning.

This is NOT the same as an ISA. The key point of an ISA is that you pay a fixed percentage of your income for a fixed amount of time. This means that high earners pay far more than their education costs and low earners pay far less. The UK system is a loan where, once a high earner has paid it off, they no longer pay anything more. As the article points out this has the effect of cancelling out the investment risk from low earners because high earners will pay a lot more back than the cost of their education while low earners will never repay the full amount.

The UK loan system has a huge problem in that lower earners may actually end up paying far more back because the slow repayment rate allows interest charges to build up. A high earner may end up paying it off in a few years, minimizing any interest accrued, and so pay less overall.

Re:BEWARE: Deceptive ISA con game...

[Anonymous Coward]

Some of these places, even with a crummy minimum wage job, they get x% for decades until it's all paid off. And with interest it's never paid off. And what did I get in return? Stuff that's already freely available.

How many folks do you know who survive on no income, no job of any kind, in America?

There are a lot of party schools today. But even there you get the sheepskin, the school is accredited, and that's enough to get an office job, put in your 40 hr/week, and keep eating. The ISA scams, it's unregulated, and really nasty! You have nothing afterwards but a large debt. Watch what you sign!

...but here is why it will not work

[Roger W Moore]

I agree that there are a lot of attractive things about ISA's but they have a fundamental flaw that will prevent them from working: they are voluntary. Students ending high-earning degrees like medicine, law, science and engineering where they are reasonably certain that they will have significant earning potential will be far worse off financially signing up for an ISA vs a regular loan. Since loans will certainly be available to these students why would any of them sign up for an ISA which will cost them far more?

The result is that the high income students will sign up for loans and so the ISAs will only attract low income students making them financially unfeasible because they will have lost their upside.

The only way to make this work is to have ISAs compulsory for all students...but we already have a system exactly like that called income tax which is how University education always used to be funded. So how about we go back to that and then when high earners end up paying higher tax rates they will at least know that they benefitted from those taxes when they were a student and so perhaps they may object to them - and try to avoid them - a bit less than they do now?

Re: ...but here is why it will not work

[Anonymous Coward]

Ouch. Painfully realistic.

Re:...but here is why it will not work

[wisnoskij]

I agree that it won't work, but it's still probably not a bad idea for high earners. Many people with insane high earning potential still drop out or get burnt out by graduation. I know engineers with degrees who simply have no drive to do any more engineering ever again post graduation, so I can guarantee you that their are loads of doctors would rather cut off their left arm than ever practice medicine, and that is not even counting the millions of students who never finished their education.

Re:...but here is why it will not work

[Roger W Moore]

True, but do you really think that a student who has worked hard at high school to get good grades and who has just heard that they have got into the University program they always dreamed about is going to think it is at all likely that they will either drop or burn out?

The only way ISA's make sense is if they are compulsory in which case why not just fund everyone's university education through income tax just like we already do for schools? The argument for funding schools - that society as a whole benefits from ensuring there is a supply of educated citizens - works just the same for universities. It seems a strange choice to only fund education up to a certain level and not beyond.

ISA

[Anonymous Coward]

Indentured Servitude Agreement...

The 13th amendment abolished involuntary servitude

[michaelcole]

"Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

Section 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation."

Wanting an education in a high tech economy is not a crime.

Re:BEWARE: Deceptive ISA con game...

[Immerman]

Again *there is no loan* which means that *there is no interest*

You're thinking of existing student loans, where you incur a definite dollar-value debt, which must then be paid off, with interest - perhaps limited to x% of your income per year until such time as it's paid off, but if it takes you 80 years to pay it off, well then it sucks to be you.

That's not how ISA works. There is no loan. There is no principal to pay off. There's just you, getting a completely "free" education in exchange for paying X% of your future income for Y years after graduating. Can't find a decent job? Can only pay $10 per year toward your ISA obligation? It doesn't matter - you're still only on the hook for the same Y years you agreed to, and then you're free even if they only got a total of $100 from you.

Corporations?

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Isn't this called "workplace education"? The company trains you, and then it takes away a part of what you've created.

Re:BEWARE: Deceptive ISA con game...

[Immerman]

You're talking about student loan debt. There's no debt with ISA - just an agreement to pay x% of your income for y years, and then you're free. If that's 20% for 10 years, and you're making $10k/year for all that time, then they get $2k * 10 years = $20k. If you're making $100k, then they $200k over the same 10 years.

The more you profit, the more they profit. And either way, in year 11 you're free of any further obligation.

The issue is that not all degrees are equivalent.

[Anonymous Coward]

Most of the degrees are useless.

If you're getting into debt over a sociology or psychology undergrad degree, you're wasting your time. A degree in HR? You can probably pick that up with a liberal arts degree.

Gender studies degrees only have one potential hiring place: a job at a university teaching gender studies.

Unless your degree is CompSci, Engineering, Business, Accounting, Medicine or something equally useful, don't take out a loan for it.

If you want a degree in Russian Literature, get a degree in accounting. You can learn all about Russian Literature reading in the library, and taking a class or two fro the local community college.

If you don't have that level of common sense, then avoid college altogether.

Many Factors Involved

[bussdriver]

not in order just off the top of my head:

1) Inflation. don't forget and remember that they no longer have to report exactly what it is.

2) Lower income for everybody but the top. Wages have gone down for half a century now; people didn't notice as women's freedom was hyped at the same time the quality of life with 1 adult working was becoming unsustainable.

3) Cheap commodity items like food, junk food, clothing, technology made TV cheaper etc. This gives the illusion of increased prosperity relative to more wealthy past generations who could only afford 1 TV etc. REAL costs that can't be artificially changed will appear to rise. Just look at the % of income spent on food now vs past.

4) Union protections of wages at most universities have kept salaries rising with inflation (I think it is less than inflation) but I would guess rising higher than everybody else who has been losing income which makes the cost of school rise relative to people's incomes. BENEFITS like healthcare remain while the anarchy we call a healthcare system continues to infect costs of everything made locally.

5) Administration costs seem to rise as it gets more top heavy despite increased clerical automation.

6) SPORTS and other money pits which are essentially marketing that claim to pay for themselves (even so, it's entertainment and teaching teamwork is pure BS.) Sadly, my state college funding in general rises when the state football team does well. So the problems are wider and deeper.

7) Government subsidies have dropped resulting in higher prices in the public sector. My state 40 years ago payed 80%. now it's in the 30s.

8) LOANS. the financial sector and it's corrupting influence of government have setup a huge mess on top of everything else.

9) Growth. More people have to get degrees and trade skill training as automation and outsourcing expands; this has been going on for decades already. Expansion costs and adds overhead; look at your local colleges etc. How many new building projects have you seen? I bet you've noticed. Those buildings last a century but must be built in advance.

10) Only a guess: Private schools have to compete more due to online courses, increased advertising... about 1/3 is MARKETING to get you to sign up, scholarships (aka coupon "discounts") , referral deals (kids,) and to make you feel great about your purchase. Private schools waste a ton of money they have no accountability for this; higher prices make it more elite and can be spent appearing more elite.

Aside: Corporations do not train anybody; rates are extremely low. They want everybody else to pay for training and this is in a time with INCREASED specialization. In the tech field the specialization is at insanity levels that it's not only a joke but not uncommon to have impossible job requirements. They want schools to teach their specific niche fads years before the buzzwords have been coined. As good MBAs, they shift all responsibility elsewhere.

Re:The 13th amendment abolished involuntary servit

[Anonymous Coward]

Indentured does not necessarily mean involuntary.

Negative interest rates

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds like an innovative approach at negative interest rates...

Re: Burn These Predatory Institutions to the Groun

[Anonymous Coward]

No, you are incorrect, though I agree with the spirit of your comment. College was initially about learning the ins and outs of a trade - *primary* education, which was once better than our current college curriculums (and would have modern parents suing right and left due to its rigor) was about edification and enlightenment.

No, you are incorrect. College education for centuries were based on the education needed for the priesthood, covering topics such as Religion, Latin, Greek, History, Linguistics, and Philosophy.

The addition of practical degrees - such as degrees in fields like science and engineering - was a fairly late arrival, and for a long time the classical education (or "humanities") degrees far outnumbered the technical degrees in many places (well into the 20th century).

Britain, for example, had a lot of problems in both WW1 and WW2 caused by the fact that they STILL had too many people who had a classical education - and not enough with modern degrees. They had some excellent scientists and engineers, but they had far too few of these people compared to other nations such as Germany and the USA - with all kinds of negative consequences for the war effort. See the writing of military historian Corelli Barnett for details.

People who like this should read this book

[Anonymous Coward]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Unincorporated_Man

So, kinda like a tax

[Anonymous Coward]

If only there were a better way to make this apply to everybody...

students and plagiarism

[Farton]

We all know that students are assigned a lot of academic papers. Writing is often used Internet resources and the work of well-known professors. When you finish writing your paper don't forget about plagiarism check. This will help you avoid many learning problems.