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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

#151

Post by gigatexal »

thedufer wrote: post #141
TheRealPomax wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don’t care about who owns it. But paying income taxes on 50k of forgiven debt would be hard for me.

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

#152

Post by austincheney »

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…

> Plus, I have yet to see the evidence that colleges provide this virtuous yet intangible quality of non-economically beneficial "wholesome" education.

The biggest performance dilemma I noticed upon entering college is basic literacy. I saw most people reading at a 9th grade level, which is average for most Americans, and struggle to write a 2 page paper. That 2 page paper was hardly competent once written.

The problem was so pronounced that in order to be awarded graduation of a bachelor's degree you had to take and pass a writing competency test at any time during your undergraduate education.

In the real world, as a software developer, the biggest barrier I see to the success of many developers is basic literacy. I see so many people who cannot communicate at a professional level. They struggle to reason about the problems they encounter and struggle further to put their thoughts into words that a make sense to an outside party.

Most developers I have ever worked with spend their entire careers struggling with a variety of concerns that ultimately (when you remove the bullshit and excuses) boil down to struggles of basic code literacy. I suspect we have all encountered this when everything is an argument of code style, spaces vs tabs, OOP vs functional, and so forth. Code literacy is the difference between thinking in terms of algebra (instructions) versus thinking in terms of calculus (process). When you are literate you form visions of what you want and simply build the vision accordingly.

As somebody who rewrote their personal application from scratch last year (about 40,000 lines of code with minimal boilerplate) while also working for two separate employers and having a spouse and kids I really don't have patience for people who fill their time with literacy bullshit. As somebody currently deployed with the time military to a conflict zone this is the thing I dread most about returning to the corporate world.

Holy shit people. Pick up a damn book and read. How you communicate will influence how you write code.

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

#153

Post by thedufer »

gigatexal wrote: post #151
thedufer wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don’t care about who owns it. But paying income taxes on 50k of forgiven debt would be hard for me.

Sure, it might be hard. But my point is that it can't be harder than paying the debt itself. Debt forgiveness does not leave you in a worse position unless your marginal tax rate is more than 100%, which is vanishingly rare.

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

#154

Post by ksec »

austincheney wrote: post #152
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…

> Plus, I have yet to see the evidence that colleges provide this virtuous yet intangible quality of non-economically beneficial "wholesome" education. The biggest performance dilemma I noticed upon entering college is basic literacy. I saw most people reading at a 9th grade level, which is average for most Americans, and struggle to write a 2 page paper. That 2 page paper was hardly competent once written. The probl…

>Holy shit people. Pick up a damn book and read. How you communicate will influence how you write code.

This is a problem when most information consumed are now either in Video ( TV / YouTube, etc ), Pictures ( IG with short or no description ), and Short form of writing ( Blog Post / Internet Comments ), even worst is when most of these are for Entertainment. And there is a trend of basic literacy falling even those coming out of College ( Or Universities ).

Not quite sure how we could fix this. People aren't reading books any more. Steve Jobs once said we need Editorial more so than ever, and not fallen into a nations of bloggers, and that was nearly 9 years ago.

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

#155

Post by grecy »

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…

> 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 be in the business of incentivising people to study in these fields.

It's actually one of the best things about the system. Maybe you want to be a social worker who will never earn much but will make a meaningful difference in peoples lives, or a lawyer that only works for non-profits, or a doctor that only works for doctors without borders, or any one of ten thousand other examples where a person can make an extremely valuable contribution to society, but doesn't earn a ton of money.

You made the mistake of assuming that only people earning a ton of money make valuable contributions to a society.

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

#156

Post by leksak »

atiredturte wrote: post #105
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…

The link I sourced [1] answers this better than I can. Please give it a read. Although in conjungtion I would note that hardly any university-educated students would wish to live below 50k AUD (~35K USD) forever. I'm not sure that avoiding such a relatively small payment each year would be worth stunting your earnings growth. It could be possible, but I don't see why anyone would shoot themselves in the foot like thi…

How long can you be on HELP? For as long as you are a student? In my country, we have a similar system but you can only be on loan for _exactly_ as long as a medical doctor degree is which is 6 years. Say for instance you study an engineering degree (5 years), that leaves you with one more year that you can take a student loan which is rarely enough to reskill.

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

#157

Post by jessedhillon »

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…

> Plus, I have yet to see the evidence that colleges provide this virtuous yet intangible quality of non-economically beneficial "wholesome" education.

1) what evidence would convince you?

2) when you consider that education is a social policy, and is designed with the purpose of delivering benefit at scale, does that change your opinion? (That is, when you consider that it's meant to shift the median student's outcome more than that of the p99 student)

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

#159

Post by 9dev »

rjf72 wrote: post #136
idrios wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Just to hit on your last point (that result oriented loans could kill "unprofitable" university programs) I'd add that universities existed for centuries when, relative to the entire population, practically nobody attended them. This "businessification" of university education is an extremely new thing. I know you didn't intend it this way but that comment in a way hits me like when the music industry was trying to c…

That's an interesting thought. Amusingly I just assumed I'd still pay for Spotify in that case, since they save me the time of maintaining and carrying my library around. Similarly, I'm pretty sure that industries may shift or change fundamentally, but we're far better off with these changes ultimately.

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

#160

Post by Semaphor »

simfoo wrote: post #148
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.

It should be mentioned that a) your parent's income (or yours if you are over 25) needs to be low enough for you to qualify b) it requires you to finish within the expected timeframe (possibly also have certain grades? Not sure about that as I didn't qualify) and c) it's not just for university but also for vocational training.
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