Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

211–220 of 221 posts

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

#211

Post by jdeibele »

why_only_15 wrote: post #200
grecy wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

You make the mistake that the relationship between income and value to society is inverse. Delivery people, for example, or store clerks or the like are all not paid well, but their impact on society isn't particularly profound either. The loan payment structure gives people an incentive to have a lower paying job as opposed to a higher paying one, which isn't the right way to go about it.

Option #1: low-paid job. Probably routine job where you're not expected (or allowed!) to contribute anything that the last person who had the job could do. Live with roommates, rent your whole life, insecurity due to lack of savings, poor (if any) health insurance (US applicable).

Option #2: higher-paid job. Have to pay back loan, which might be a problem if you're just at the bottom of the "you have to pay it back" scale. May have your own apartment or possibly a house, savings, hopefully good health insurance, etc.

I've worked with people who would choose option #1 permanently. Their life was outside their work. They started thinking about the job when they clocked in and stopped when they clocked out. Most of them didn't go to college.

Others did go to college and graduated but didn't know what they wanted to do with their lives. Having the equivalent of a gap year or two (or ten!) after college without worrying about loan payments doesn't seem like the worst thing in the world.

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

#212

Post by agentphil »

austenallred wrote: post #76

Hey, co-founder of Lambda School here. Yes, some countries have similar structures, where you pay after a certain threshold. The difference is: 1. In those structures the school gets paid no matter what, the taxpayer just swallows the cost. With Lambda School we will literally go out of business if a large percentage of our students don't get jobs. That causes a lot of stuff. For example, we have an entire sales team…

Hey, your startup is really good and I'm pretty sure it will be a hit. I have been thinking to implement such a system myself and I have done plenty of basic research on this topic. The idea comes at the right time.

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

#213

Post by setr »

tonyedgecombe wrote: post #186
setr wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is, if you have any interest in convincing him otherwise, and successfully holding a conversation. If your goal is to argue aimlessly, and simply make your anti-claim with no new information (thereby convincing no one), then yes, you have no further tasks to be executed. But then you might as well have not spoken in the first place. Otherwise, all you’re claiming afaict is that the posters should argue with themse…

The "citation needed" type of response is also antagonistic in what is a discussion site rather than an academic paper.

Sort of; if the other party is making clear what evidence he’s looking for to disprove his thinking, I think its fair — especially when his ideas run counter to the norm (which naturally people put a lot of belief in, with nothing to support it, because everyone else believes in it). Ofc, if he just counters everything with citation needed, its pointless.

But in this case, evidence was requested for a particular idea, and the response was completely tangential to the request. And it wasn’t really an issue of citation needed, I think, so much as just anything to support the idea that colleges actually offer non-job value (and that they offer courses across multiple fields is insufficient, which is true, its a thing they’re doing but says nothing about effectiveness).

Ofc, the difference is in the intent. And the problem I have with “its not my job” is the intent; it’s a belief/defense whose primary purpose/outcome is to kill communication, and I very much like communicating

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

#214

Post by popcorn49 »

wbronitsky wrote: post #42

While interesting, this is not a new approach. I graduated from App Academy in San Francisco over 5 years ago, paid a percentage of my income for 6 months in my first engineering job, and after roles at Stripe and Bain Consulting, have never looked back.

App Academy has replied back to the New York Times through twitter: https://twitter.com/appacademyio/status/1082723232782868481

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

#216

Post by TheRealPomax »

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.

And how long, exactly, does the IRS allow you to pay off that $12k? Because if it's "a few months", and really even just "a year", you're proper fucked. Not everyone gets a nice $60k/yr job after their $50k loan investment, and having a $50k loan over 15+ years is manageable, whereas $12k in one will ruin you.

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

#217

Post by gigatexal »

mercutio2 wrote: post #209
gigatexal wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No I wouldn’t want to owe the entire amount of the loan but if I can’t pay off the loan or the forgiven amount I’m screwed either way. Just in the latter situation I’m relatively less screwed.

You appear to be pretty attached to the idea that IRS liabilities are worse somehow than student loan liabilities. Other people seem to be trying in good faith to understand why you think this. IRS liabilities can easily be repaid over long time scales, usually at much lower interest rates than you can get on unsecured loans such as a student loan. A $50k non-dischargeable loan, at a relatively high interest rate, wi…

Back to the point: Lambda school and schools like it are the for profit schools we needed. And I hope the model scales to other industries and that education is flipped on its head because of it.

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

#218

Post by aaaaaatttuyy »

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…

College is education, not training. Crucial aspects of working in the real world are learned on the job, things that how to operate in an office environment, how to collaborate, how to write, present and justify your ideas and render them into applied things. These are not things taught in university.

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

#219

Post by aaaaaatttuyy »

raverbashing wrote: post #166
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…

Don't get me started College education is hugely overrated, and especially by using bad reasons like that Spare me the hyperboles, using the "well rounded" adjective makes no sense except for objects that are supposed to be round. College is essential if you are in a regulated profession and/or is it too expensive (or impossible) to learn it yourself (like medicine, other engineerings, law, etc) For other areas? Not…

I'm curious about what you consider 'other areas' to be, and about how competent you think you are at them.

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

#220

Post by thedufer »

TheRealPomax wrote: post #216
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.

And how long, exactly, does the IRS allow you to pay off that $12k? Because if it's "a few months", and really even just "a year", you're proper fucked. Not everyone gets a nice $60k/yr job after their $50k loan investment, and having a $50k loan over 15+ years is manageable, whereas $12k in one will ruin you.

6 years is standard, plus the time between the forgiveness event and filing, which gives you another 3-15 months or so. Down to 3 years if your balance is And as I mentioned before, if it was too short you could declare bankruptcy, which is an option you don't have with student loans. My point that even in the worst case you're in a better position than before still looks valid.
Post reply on HN