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No Tuition, but You Pay a Percentage of Your Income if You Find a Job

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Re: No Tuition, but You Pay a Percentage of Your Income if You Find a Job

#141

Post by thedufer »

TheRealPomax wrote: post #115
MagicPropmaker wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't just _look_ like income. It is income. If I give you $100 as a loan then change my mind and say 'you can have it', you just made $100.

What if we turn it into something a little more analogous, and I loan you $100, and you use that $100, and I never asked for it back, but 12 years later go "actually you know what, never mind about paying me back", that's not $100 you now have. That's $100 you had 12 years ago. But we also need to make sure to keep the analogy in the same ball park, not the same county, so when we're talking $100, the tax on that isn…

That can't be right. You're saying that going from $50k in debt to a student loan lender to $12k or so in debt to the IRS is a bad thing? Why do you care so much about who owns your debt that cutting it by 3/4 is a loss? Not only that, but now your debt can be eliminated in bankruptcy (a unique feature of student loans is that they are immune to bankruptcy). This looks like an altogether enormous win.

Re: No Tuition, but You Pay a Percentage of Your Income if You Find a Job

#142

Post by CapnCrunchie »

ibeckermayer wrote: post #111
twblalock wrote: post #70

> At Lambda, students pay nothing upfront. But they are required to pay 17 percent of their salary to Lambda for two years if they get a job that pays more than $50,000. This appears to create a cliff: If you make $50000 a year, you keep $50000 a year. If you make $51000 a year, you pay 17% ($8670) and you keep $42330. That extra dollar cost you a ton of money. It really ought to be a marginal rate like tax brackets.

There is a cliff, as a person with an ISA with a similar program (Holberton School), there's really no disincentive to seek a high paying job. The ISA doesn't expire, if I'm making below the threshold then it just gets deferred until I make above the threshold.

At Lambda School, the ISA does expire after 5 years of not meeting the income threshold.

Re: No Tuition, but You Pay a Percentage of Your Income if You Find a Job

#143

Post by kartickv »

drieddust wrote: post #131
nthot wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it stepped at all? Do you owe nothing before 50k and then once you cross that threshold you now owe money? That would seem to incentivise staying below that threshold for a percentage of borrowers. I also have difficulty seeing the first benefit you list as being a benefit. I don't have a problem with people pursuing degrees in fields that aren't big money makers, but I also don't know that the government should b…

> I also don't know that the government should be in the business of incentivising people to study in these fields That's interesting. So do you want government to only fund the vocational courses and allow the rich class to be the torch bearer in research, art, and culture because only they can afford it?

I'd think taxpayer money should be spent in ways that create measurable benefit to both the individual and the economy as a whole.

I'm not seeing the downside of only the rich being able to understand how Post-Impressionists like Suerat were different from Impressionists like Renoir.

Re: No Tuition, but You Pay a Percentage of Your Income if You Find a Job

#144

Post by dahfizz »

deepnotderp wrote: post #137

You know, it's funny, there's a lot of comments saying something along the lines of "college isn't just to get a job". Which is really funny, since that's absolutely the primary reason why college educations are pushed. E.g. "if you don't go to college you'll end up working at McDonald's" Plus, I have yet to see the evidence that colleges provide this virtuous yet intangible quality of non-economically beneficial "wh…

I have never found the argument that "college isn't about getting a job" convincing. Yes, it's important to be well rounded and expand your horizons and all the other platitudes that people say. But I'm not paying tuition to be "well rounded", I'm going to college as an investment in my own human capital. I can read an interesting book in the evening to be "well rounded".

Re: No Tuition, but You Pay a Percentage of Your Income if You Find a Job

#145

Post by r00fus »

pkaye wrote: post #77
austenallred wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still have never seen tuition that low, even subsidized

In California Community College is $46/unit for California residents. Typically people take 10-15 units. There are a few additional fees probably total under $100/semester.

They used to be free, too, not too long ago.

Re: No Tuition, but You Pay a Percentage of Your Income if You Find a Job

#146

Post by drieddust »

kartickv wrote: post #143
drieddust wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I also don't know that the government should be in the business of incentivising people to study in these fields That's interesting. So do you want government to only fund the vocational courses and allow the rich class to be the torch bearer in research, art, and culture because only they can afford it?

I'd think taxpayer money should be spent in ways that create measurable benefit to both the individual and the economy as a whole. I'm not seeing the downside of only the rich being able to understand how Post-Impressionists like Suerat were different from Impressionists like Renoir.

> I'm not seeing the downside of only the rich being able to understand how Post-Impressionists like Suerat were different from Impressionists like Renoir.

You are picking the edge case here. Art and culture are much more then just rich class's pretense.

As far as wasting money is concerned, spending it just to create more replaceable cogs for capitalistic profit seeker is also a wasteful exercise. Why not ask the Industry to invest in producing those cogs and let government think the long term by focusing on things which cannot be measured in next quarter.

Why Government should subsidize the Industry?

Re: No Tuition, but You Pay a Percentage of Your Income if You Find a Job

#147

Post by utdiscant »

Congratulations on the round Austen and team!

One thing I have always thought about when it comes to incentives in this model is that you have an incentive to only take in students that are likely to finish the degree and get a high paying job. This could lead to pattern matching people from backgrounds that are likely to do well due to demographics. How do you think about this and do you have any systems in place for minorities?

(copied this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18856135)

Re: No Tuition, but You Pay a Percentage of Your Income if You Find a Job

#148

Post by simfoo »

atiredturte wrote: post #48

Australia has a system that, while different, has similar perks to this. We have a government loan system called HELP (formerly HECS). Basically students can get a zero interest government loan (rises with inflation), and only need to pay it off once they make above a certain threshold ($51,957 according to the official website[1]). The payments are deducted as a percentage of your income, with the payments increasin…

Germany has something like this as well (it's called BAFOEG). It's not for tution (because there isn't any) but for your cost of living during study. It carries zero interest, you only have to pay back half of it and the pay back is capped to 10k total.

Re: No Tuition, but You Pay a Percentage of Your Income if You Find a Job

#149

Post by chottocharaii »

nthot wrote: post #74
atiredturte wrote: post #48

Australia has a system that, while different, has similar perks to this. We have a government loan system called HELP (formerly HECS). Basically students can get a zero interest government loan (rises with inflation), and only need to pay it off once they make above a certain threshold ($51,957 according to the official website[1]). The payments are deducted as a percentage of your income, with the payments increasin…

Is it stepped at all? Do you owe nothing before 50k and then once you cross that threshold you now owe money? That would seem to incentivise staying below that threshold for a percentage of borrowers. I also have difficulty seeing the first benefit you list as being a benefit. I don't have a problem with people pursuing degrees in fields that aren't big money makers, but I also don't know that the government should b…

The only % you pay, is on the money above the threshold amount. So if you earn 52k, you only pay the 8% of your student loan back on the 2k above the threshold.

So yes, it is stepped, and no, there is no incentive for staying below that threshold.

re: your second point, there is no 'incentive' to study in those fields, it is merely possible to do so. It is good, as fields that are low-earning like literature and art; are not reserved only to people in society who have parents with disposable income. It's an egalitarian policy, more in line with Australian cultural values than American.

re your third paragraph: indeed. The result of our system however is that the vast majority of students major in commerce & science; perhaps because the incentive of a lucrative career is enough to stop everyone pursuing arts.

Re: No Tuition, but You Pay a Percentage of Your Income if You Find a Job

#150

Post by chottocharaii »

idrios wrote: post #132
BearsAreCool wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have to at least partially disagree with #1 being a benefit. Universities and loans for universities should not be encouraging students to waste many years of their life for a degree which does little to help them get meaningful employment. Additionally, with at least the american student loan system as I am more familiar with it, neither the university or the bank offering the loan faces any repurcussions for enco…

In regards to your first point, most US students when they go to college don't have the life experience to know which degrees will give them meaningful employment. A kid who was passionate about reading and was encouraged by their teachers and parents to follow their passions would, unsurprisingly, be likely to pursue a degree in English literature. After they've graduated the real world hits them like a sack of bric…

Indeed. Arts degrees have suffered large funding cuts in Australia in recent years. Perhaps for the reasons you describe.
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