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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

#181

Post by michaelchisari »

SkyBelow wrote: post #143
llamataboot wrote: post #101

Let's scale this up huge, let everyone take part, and have all of society invest in education and reap the rewards. We can call it "public education" and even capture the public externalities of having a well-educated population!

And watch the value of the college degree follow the trend of a high school diploma! If we offered free college, how long before we start dropping the standards to earn a degree (for the same reasons we did so with high school diplomas) and have students waste even more of their lives in extremely sub par education environments?

Why do you think this hasn't happened in Europe?

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

#182

Post by kian »

jklm wrote: post #171
kian wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It's a financial instrument, so it'll probably be bought and sold at some point. Some investors will want to increase their risk, and others will want to decrease it.

Upvoted you because you are correct, but the trick with indentured servitude was that they could sell where you work to a third party, and that in the meantime you had to work for them and no one else. That's what made it just another kind of slavery - the removal of freedom of association.

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

#183

Post by tvanantwerp »

simonsarris wrote: post #76
velcrovan wrote: post #60

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.

Absolutely not, at least not without making college much more difficult. Otherwise it is just subsidizing adult daycare. Many people do not belong in college and learn next to nothing, but go because they're shoo'ed along into it and the universities are in on the joke, and in on the money-making, and undergoing a drastic reduction of standards as a result. Some data on just how bad higher ed is getting, from 2017: h…

Agreed. College has become just another high-priced consumer good. And universities are happy to act just like day care if it means more happy, paying customers.

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

#184

Post by skookumchuck »

michaelchisari wrote: post #181
SkyBelow wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And watch the value of the college degree follow the trend of a high school diploma! If we offered free college, how long before we start dropping the standards to earn a degree (for the same reasons we did so with high school diplomas) and have students waste even more of their lives in extremely sub par education environments?

Why do you think this hasn't happened in Europe?

I know a German who avoided work by staying in university into her 40s. This was only possible because it was free to her. Despite 20+ years of university education, she managed to get a low level job.

I don't know how prevalent this is in Europe.

But it's a general economic fact that people don't value what they get for free. They need to have "skin in the game", so to speak.

If you want evidence, look at how people treat rental cars vs their own. Or how they treat those ride share bikes. Or how they treat public bathrooms. Etc.

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

#185

Post by pcstl »

zjaffee wrote: post #179
SkyBelow wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And watch the value of the college degree follow the trend of a high school diploma! If we offered free college, how long before we start dropping the standards to earn a degree (for the same reasons we did so with high school diplomas) and have students waste even more of their lives in extremely sub par education environments?

Universal college education is still a great idea, even if it lowers the value of an individuals degree across the broader society. A world where more people can make meaningful contributions to the development of new technologies, providing healthcare, educate others, and contribute to other areas of human understanding the better the world will be for everyone (short of issues relating to capitalism itself). The ke…

You are assuming that higher education institutions still have an incentive to actually make people able to make "meaningful contributions to the development of new technologies" and all that good stuff after a college degree becomes a requirement to signal to the rest of society that you're not useless.

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

#186

Post by pcstl »

michaelchisari wrote: post #181
SkyBelow wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And watch the value of the college degree follow the trend of a high school diploma! If we offered free college, how long before we start dropping the standards to earn a degree (for the same reasons we did so with high school diplomas) and have students waste even more of their lives in extremely sub par education environments?

Why do you think this hasn't happened in Europe?

I don't have data for the whole of Europe, but bachelor degrees in Germany are much less common than in my country despite the fact that higher education there is much more accessible. This seems to correlate to the fact that Germany also has a very well-established system of vocational schools and university there is seen as a way of becoming a researcher or for certain high-skill careers, not a requirement for being treated as a functional human being (which is what I see higher education becoming in the US and my country both).

I can't speak for all of Europe, but Germany avoids having university degrees becoming a mere piece of paper useful only for signaling by having alternate paths to a fulfilling career.

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

#187

Post by pcstl »

leggomylibro wrote: post #175
SkyBelow wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And watch the value of the college degree follow the trend of a high school diploma! If we offered free college, how long before we start dropping the standards to earn a degree (for the same reasons we did so with high school diplomas) and have students waste even more of their lives in extremely sub par education environments?

Who cares if we drop the standards to earn a degree? In a theoretical world where high-quality public education is freely available, who cares about earning a degree at all? The most successful and competent people who I have ever worked with don't share much in the way of education, but they all feel some sort of passion and drive for what they do. They see potential in their work and think about it all the time, so…

People will care about earning a degree because the rat race never ends. When you devalue university degrees, people will start earning degrees just because they can and because clueless employers grasp at any straw they can use to differentiate between applicants. That's how it becomes impossible to get a half-decent job without a college degree.

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

#188

Post by rudolph9 »

llamataboot wrote: post #101

Let's scale this up huge, let everyone take part, and have all of society invest in education and reap the rewards. We can call it "public education" and even capture the public externalities of having a well-educated population!

This is such revolutionary thinking!

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

#189

Post by travisporter »

skookumchuck wrote: post #184
michaelchisari wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you think this hasn't happened in Europe?

I know a German who avoided work by staying in university into her 40s. This was only possible because it was free to her. Despite 20+ years of university education, she managed to get a low level job. I don't know how prevalent this is in Europe. But it's a general economic fact that people don't value what they get for free. They need to have "skin in the game", so to speak. If you want evidence, look at how people…

People may not value it but can I argue that society improves as a result?

I personally treat rental cars, bikes and public bathrooms the same as anyone else. I don’t trash them but don’t clean them meticulously. I still value their presence.

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

#190

Post by dv_dt »

SkyBelow wrote: post #143
llamataboot wrote: post #101

Let's scale this up huge, let everyone take part, and have all of society invest in education and reap the rewards. We can call it "public education" and even capture the public externalities of having a well-educated population!

And watch the value of the college degree follow the trend of a high school diploma! If we offered free college, how long before we start dropping the standards to earn a degree (for the same reasons we did so with high school diplomas) and have students waste even more of their lives in extremely sub par education environments?

I'm highly skeptical that college degrees, or higher education follows a zero sum model, doubly so if you expand the value accounting to society at large.
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