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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

#201

Post by monetus »

travisporter wrote: post #189
skookumchuck wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I agree with your sentiment, but understand his as well. I think it's mostly a cultural problem rather than some instinctual problem with humanity. Japan has a culture of cleanliness as far as I can tell. In my area, however, a handful practices seem to persist because of the fun derived from exploiting the commons.

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

#202

Post by skookumchuck »

monetus wrote: post #201
travisporter wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I agree with your sentiment, but understand his as well. I think it's mostly a cultural problem rather than some instinctual problem with humanity. Japan has a culture of cleanliness as far as I can tell. In my area, however, a handful practices seem to persist because of the fun derived from exploiting the commons.

Many times I hear the phrase "what do you care, it's a rental!" People who buy used cars tend to avoid ex-rentals.

Once a group I was in was staying in a hotel. We were all heading out to dinner, and one person came out of her room, leaving the light on. I asked why she didn't turn out the light. She replied: "why should I? I'm not paying the electric bill."

Apparently that's pretty common, as most hotel rooms I stay in these days require you to insert your room key into a device that enables turning on the lights, so they turned off when you leave.

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

#203

Post by wolco »

pcstl wrote: post #187
leggomylibro wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

mba anyone?

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

#204

Post by eosophos »

barry-cotter wrote: post #13
sct202 wrote: post #9

Am I reading this right? You have to pay 2.5% of your income for 7 years as a comp sci graduate for a loan of only $10k. Seems like a pretty terrible deal. Edit: Avg comp sci grad salary from Purdue is $72k, assuming 5% raises on average including promotions, you'd pay about $14.6k for this loan, which is roughly equivalent to a loan with an 11% interest rate per year over 88 months. Edit2: I was a business major, an…

It is a terrible deal. Lambda School’s stipend programme (places limited) pays students $2,000 a month for the nine months of their job training, while they get trained 40 hours a week and that includes interview prep and placement and job search help that makes university careers offices look like they’re going through the motions, not trying to get the students a job. And after paying students $18,000 and spending…

Just went to apply, but seems they shut down the stipend applications for now because of overwhelming interest.

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

#205

Post by throwawayjava »

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!

Income sharing applied to four year degrees is almost always more expensive than federally subsidized loans (which taxpayers still make money on...)

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

#206

Post by Matticus_Rex »

cowpig wrote: post #168
stale2002 wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or how about we give people the voluntary choice to participate, or not participate, in these efforts? That way those that prefer more expensive forms of education, can be free to do that and pay for it, and those who don't, don't have to do so.

An educated population is a public good. Particularly in a democracy.

Okay, even if we accept the basic logic there uncritically, it's not infinitely good. For example, the 24th year of schooling is not a public good, because there's no plausible argument that the social benefits it provides are greater than the cost. What about the 20th? The 16th? At what point does it cease to be a public good?

(Hint, we have some attempts to answer this question, and it suggests that college is a private good with a value that is mostly in signaling rather than skill acquisition, and casts some doubt on whether high school really meets the criteria)

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

#207

Post by dahart »

dsfyu404ed wrote: post #151
dahart wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you pay for your own roads & police? It’s very likely you’re using some publically funded resources more than others. If you actually got your wish and paid for all of your own responsibilities, isn’t there a pretty good chance it would completely bankrupt you? Think about it and be honest about what benefits you’re actually receiving. Paying for education for all is something we could very easily afford by moving…

Based on the demographics of HN (and software in general) it is highly likely that whoever you are talking to is a net contributor by a long shot, not net recipient.

Even if true, that doesn't really contradict what I said in any way. Net contributors still use some resources more than others, and they are still the recipient of benefits. It's quite common for people who oppose public services on principle to dramatically underestimate the public services they're receiving themselves.

Also, net contribution has nothing to do with whether you can afford to pay to build private roads, or pay for doctors without insurance, or pay for private education. Almost nobody could afford to pay for their own roads, freeways cost billions; that's precisely why we share the cost, even if not every single person uses them. It should be somewhat evident that transportation and distribution businesses and the executives that run them benefit financially more from public roads than individuals do.

By using the term "net contributor" you're comparing tax payers against each other and painting a picture of what's more or less fair from person to person. What I'm suggesting is you should compare the services that come with taxes to what you get with no shared services at all, which is the logical conclusion of the GP comment. I care less about the fear of paying 2% more taxes than someone else when I think about the fact that the services I get would cost me many orders of magnitude more money than I have if I had to pay for them individually and privately.

For the sake of conversation, I wouldn't mind hearing why you think HN demographics makes people net contributors. I'm quite skeptical that services for the poor cost more than the sum total of tax breaks and infrastructure the rich enjoy, if that's the direction you were headed...

And, of course, the entire concept of contributor/recipient is irrelevant if we fund education without raising taxes, and moreso if a national education system were to bring in more money than it costs, which may be the case in Norway & Finland among other places. Fretting over what's fair and worrying excessively about freeloaders might be costing us a lot more than it saves.

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

#208

Post by Matticus_Rex »

rexpop wrote: post #192
dsfyu404ed wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Based on the demographics of HN (and software in general) it is highly likely that whoever you are talking to is a net contributor by a long shot, not net recipient.

We're all net contributors. Even "the poor," who spend their lives in the jobs to which they're corralled. Dollar-for-dollar, perhaps they pay fewer individual taxes, but hour-for-hour their labor's just as constitutive of the commonwealth. Moreso, perhaps.

"If I define the terms differently, I can say whatever I want."

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

#209

Post by skookumchuck »

travisporter wrote: post #189
skookumchuck wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I attended public high school, where everything was free, and a private college, where everyone paid to attend. What a difference.

High school was populated by people "doing their time", who wanted to get by doing as little as possible, thought it was cool to be disruptive, cut classes, etc. They definitely dragged the whole thing down for the others.

College was different. People paid to be there, the work was hard, people wanted to be there and would take the hard classes to get their money's worth. There weren't any disruptive students.

What a difference.

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

#210

Post by Matticus_Rex »

RankingMember wrote: post #165
barry-cotter wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is a terrible deal. Lambda School’s stipend programme (places limited) pays students $2,000 a month for the nine months of their job training, while they get trained 40 hours a week and that includes interview prep and placement and job search help that makes university careers offices look like they’re going through the motions, not trying to get the students a job. And after paying students $18,000 and spending…

This seems pretty amazing. If anyone who's gone through this program sees this, what's the catch/is there a catch? Seems almost too good to be true.

They're a YC company. I've seen their students on Twitter talking about how it transformed their lives.

I think it's just the first salvo in a disruption that's been waiting to happen for a while.

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