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Income-sharing agreements let students trade future earnings for investment

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Re: Income-sharing agreements let students trade future earnings for investment

#81
post #69

Oh, hey. Somebody just reinvented indentured servitude. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indentured_servitude Good job.

Excepting that they aren't able to 'sell' your labor to a third party, nor are you expected to work for them after graduation.

Re: Income-sharing agreements let students trade future earnings for investment

#82

Make the college free and provide students with a living stipend. Return higher education subsidies (and tax brackets) to their 1950s levels. Join the rest of the developed world.

What do you mean by "the college"? Community colleges are already affordable. Other institutions only charge that much because of price inflation caused by reckless lending.

> Join the rest of the developed world.

Let me tell you about the situation in Germany with its "free" universities: First of all, there's a three-tier school system with the lowest tier barred from higher education altogether, the middle tier requiring further schooling to access second-rate colleges only and only the high tier allowing university access. Usually, children are separated into these tiers by their teachers, at the end of primary school. While it's technically possible get back on the higher track when they're 16 or so, it is rare. Parental income/education and race is a huge predictor on which bucket a child ends up.

So let's say you were a "good child" and are allowed to the universities, prepare for long waiting times (years) unless you have a near-perfect grade average, in case you want to study something "popular" like medicine, business administration or law. Don't expect to get a seat at one of those crowded auditoriums, prepare to sit on the stairs. Also prepare to be "weeded out" early, especially in the technical fields. Fail a test in a course three times and you will not only be thrown out of your degree program, you are permanently barred from getting any degree that has that course in it. Failed your law degree? Maybe try computer science then!

Okay, let's say you went through all those filters, you finally get a degree. If you're got one of those "popular" degrees, it turns out that job competition is actually quite tough, because far more people have a degree than what the job market actually can absorb. It's still better than in Spain, Italy, Greece etc, where degrees are handed out like candy but actual jobs are as rare as gemstones.

Bottom Line: "Free College" just produces over-education, because most people choose popular degrees beyond what the market actually needs. With ISAs, at least there's an incentive to only support those degrees that are actually in-demand.

Re: Income-sharing agreements let students trade future earnings for investment

#83
post #69

Oh, hey. Somebody just reinvented indentured servitude. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indentured_servitude Good job.

Indentured servitude requires someone to work for a particular employer for a fixed period of time. ISAs do not do this.

Words have meanings. You don't get to just ignore them to make an emotional point.

Re: Income-sharing agreements let students trade future earnings for investment

#84
post #77
post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And allow for students to file for bankruptcy on their student loans. That will force colleges to slash their insane budgets and stop building luxury dorms, new stadiums, and lay off the countless and unnecessary admins. Salaries for adjunct professors teaching the classes cannot get any lower, so the quality of education could remain about the same

Your proposal is unworkable because virtually everyone graduates from college with close to zero assets. No matter what someone's ability to repay their loans were, they would have a huge incentive to declare bankruptcy on the day they graduate to discharge the debt.

This is the natural fix. People then don't get the loans they can't afford. There is no limiters in place for a liberal arts major taking out 100k loans.

The future is in income sharing agreements. Let the market and investors decide if they can be paid back.

Re: Income-sharing agreements let students trade future earnings for investment

#85
post #62

Make the college free and provide students with a living stipend. Return higher education subsidies (and tax brackets) to their 1950s levels. Join the rest of the developed world.

And allow for students to file for bankruptcy on their student loans. That will force colleges to slash their insane budgets and stop building luxury dorms, new stadiums, and lay off the countless and unnecessary admins. Salaries for adjunct professors teaching the classes cannot get any lower, so the quality of education could remain about the same

The problem is the same as companies. Admins won't get slashed, but educators will. Then in many months to years later they wonder why they are on a sinking ship and fire more workers.

Re: Income-sharing agreements let students trade future earnings for investment

#86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And this is exactly what's wrong with the US right now. No one cares to help anyone else. Even in healthcare! "I have my money, if they die it's because they chose to be poor."

> No one cares to help anyone else. If people in Europe cared to help their money would not have been taken by force via taxes.

« People in Europe » have elected politicians who have enacted these tax policies. Money is not being taken by force...

Re: Income-sharing agreements let students trade future earnings for investment

#87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And this is exactly what's wrong with the US right now. No one cares to help anyone else. Even in healthcare! "I have my money, if they die it's because they chose to be poor."

> No one cares to help anyone else. If people in Europe cared to help their money would not have been taken by force via taxes.

You're assuming people don't see taxes as the preferred means of providing aid to those that need it.

Re: Income-sharing agreements let students trade future earnings for investment

#88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And this is exactly what's wrong with the US right now. No one cares to help anyone else. Even in healthcare! "I have my money, if they die it's because they chose to be poor."

> No one cares to help anyone else. If people in Europe cared to help their money would not have been taken by force via taxes.

"Taken by force" is a strange (very American?) way to put it.

As a European, I'm happy to pay taxes because it's a convenient and efficient way to get money out of my bank account and into the hands of people who need it more than me; I'm helping my fellow countrymen with literally zero effort on my part, which makes my country a better place for me to live in. If we cancelled taxes and required people to make individual donations, I would still want to, but I would probably be too busy / lazy to do it :P

(Not to say that the government does a PERFECTLY efficient job of distributing taxes to those in need, I actually disagree with much of their spending - but on the whole it does a considerably better job than I would if I had to do it all myself)

Re: Income-sharing agreements let students trade future earnings for investment

#89
post #84
post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your proposal is unworkable because virtually everyone graduates from college with close to zero assets. No matter what someone's ability to repay their loans were, they would have a huge incentive to declare bankruptcy on the day they graduate to discharge the debt.

This is the natural fix. People then don't get the loans they can't afford. There is no limiters in place for a liberal arts major taking out 100k loans. The future is in income sharing agreements. Let the market and investors decide if they can be paid back.

If college loans could be discharged via bankruptcy it wouldn't just be liberal arts majors with 100k loans who did it, EVERYONE would. Even people graduating and taking high paying jobs who could easily pay back the loans.

Saying that college loans should be dischargeable is basically saying that student loans shouldn't exist (which is a fine point of view, but people should be clear on what their position is).

Re: Income-sharing agreements let students trade future earnings for investment

#90

Fitting that in a world where all the same old labor fights that were settled in the past are happening again that someone would un-ironically invent a new form of indentured servitude. Makes me laugh at people who think that non STEM subjects have no value. Perhaps opening a book in one of those non STEM fields once in a while would help you avoid reinventing things consigned to the dust bin of history without reali…

The belief that this kind of knowledge and critical reasoning skills are exclusive to non stem domains is part of the reason non stem has a strained reputation
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