A different way for students to pay for college

So here's an idea I heard recently. Instead of making college students go into debt just to enter college we make a law that says you owe a portion of your future income if, and only if going to college ends up helping student become successful in life by getting jobs that pay well. This would allow more people to attend college with the peace of mind that if it doesn't work out either due to academics or because the job market doesn't work out afterwords they won't be burdened with a large debt which would increase the success rate overall, and it would mean that we could have a more skilled work force which would be good for businesses in our country as well as our country's economic health.

What do you guys think? Would this be a better system for our country? Do you consider having a high skilled workforce to be a pro-business stance?

why dont we look at other countries and see how they do it for a point of reference?

I'd LOVE to hear what college admins and profs say about this idea. Let us know, please.

Or we could simply understand that our workforce has shifted to requiring a college education, thus it should be paid by our taxes...... you know... the same thing we did with grade school.

we could also....just a crazy idea here...look at how other countries do it who have better schools then ours...just a thought :)

Well, this is sort of a compromise between the two. Our taxes will pay for it if doesn't work out and you will pay some portion of it if it does. I do understand your position, but this was a somewhat more nuanced position I hadn't heard before.

I don't have a bunch of college admins and professors to ask. I can't tell if you are being sarcastic or not, but in case you are, they would still be getting paid, just through tax dollars rather than directly via students.

How long would you owe a portion of your income? What would be considered 'successful'?

no I dont think looking deeply into how the most successful school systems work in other countries is remotely a 'compromise'.

part of the problem with our school system is nobody appears to be smart enough to start with the most obvious, which is to closely inspect those that are successful at what you want to do.

Its education.

There is no middle ground here, we cannot have a privatized education system. It inherently creates inequality and will always lead to the problems we are having.

I keep trying to tell yall, capitalism is the enemy.

The idea of higher education for your populous is more then just GDP. Its also to reduce crime, a healthier population, better research for all, a more informed voting block, better at community service etc. it makes overall a better society not just better workers for a private company.

That is the idea anyway

Well, if we do that then the answer is obvious. Tax paid, limited or no private schools.

I don't have much in the way of specifics on this as it was not being proposed before congress or anything simply discussed by a person on the "Adam Ruins Everything" podcast. Obviously the details would need to be worked out of course, I'm simply asking about the general principal the idea.

Here's a crazy idea, you could give your thoughtsson what I originally asked about.

that is my thought.

Schools that do better than us do well for a reason, its not magic.

Its the first thing I say in a meeting when we talk about how to do something, I say 'how does our best competitor do it' and I am by leaps and bounds not the first time they hear it or think of it, its step number 1.

Why? BECAUSE IT WORKS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

but to humor you, your idea stinks because the idea of college for the common good is to make a better citizenry, not just better workers. That means better health, less crime, better choices.

Okay, so some of the problems with the cost of college right now is a snowball effect. Its not simply the cost, its that its had a massive impact on home ownership, a massive impact on an inability to pay for health care, its almost completely removed upward mobility, etc.

So instead of simply solving this with one swipe, lets make some elaborate plan to maintain an ignorant system........ okay....... College still costs the same as it does today, we put limits to ensure it cannot raise unnaturally and as part of a graduation gift from the state, you get a fuckin house.

but we dont have the money because we are busying bailing out large companies at the tune of 95billion a year

We're not even bailing them out at this point, its pure corporate socialism. Good enough for them, but not for us. Serraph105, pay attention.... Capitalism has failed.

I believe that would increase prices even more.

@horgen: How so?

@Serraph105: This idea has been floating around for awhile now, usually in the context as a private investment deal. I cannot tell you adequately enough how much I loathe the idea at the private investment level. I'd need to see a significant change in political attitude to get behind it at the public level.

Admins would probably love it. Professors who teach in-demand professions would love it. Professors who teach professions that aren't so in-demand would hate it. I can see one blanket objection being that students who don't do well are being rewarded and the colleges would probably have to pay for it, but in my experience most American colleges are pretty tone-deaf when it comes to listening to student concerns about their own educational experience. It's the one industry where customers aren't treated at all like customers.

As for whether or not it's a good idea, I don't think it's so much a solution as it is a disruption. It would force colleges to take student concerns a bit more seriously and put a bit more effort into adapting the educational experience to individual student needs, which is a good thing. At the end of the day, though, you still run into the issue that people unwilling to invest more in education now probably aren't going to be swayed by this either. If you're going to make a pitch for making college cheaper it's going to be just as hard to make this pitch as it would be to make the one for universal college (not that I think raising taxes will solve all of higher education's problems).

In my neck of the woods superior education is free unless you want to attend a private college/university. Goddamn socialism that allows anybody free education on all levels ( from kindergarden all the way to doctorade ).

who would you owe the portion of future income to? that is, who is making the loan?

i doubt many entities would be willing to invest in such a venture as there is a lot of risk involved. a big issue w/ student loan debt is not being able to discharge it fully ( if i understand things correctly ) in bankrupcy, making them very low risk to the lender not getting his/her money back.

College is for further education. It does not always lead to jobs in the field studied. If you want a work force then trade/tech school is more in line with that ideology.

Education as a whole was once optional, when the majority of jobs didnt require a grade school education. But then, the majority of jobs in our nation did so, and we made it a requirement and tax paid.

What happened now? Well, the majority of jobs require a college education... so what do we do as a society? We do what every other first world nation figured out almost a century ago.

This is exactly why you cannot have a privatized system and it sthe single reason why American schools have gone from top in the world, to shit.

The plan in the opening post has a name, it is called taxes. This is just asking if it is worth raising taxes to pay for education. The answer to that is of freaking course. I can not comprehend the idea that there is a better investment then people who want to learn. Heck, house, feed, and entertain such people to.

I mean what is the worst that could happen, we would end up millions of welfare kings/queens with an encyclopedic knowledge of history, economics, and any given number of the sciences? Curious people from around the world would flock to our shores to take advantage of our lovely campuses? Political discussions might become more sophisticated then two sides screaming their cesspit is the least foul smelling? Yeah, lets stick to subsidizing communication companies that bribe our leaders into allowing them to restrict the flow of information.

Taxes should pay for higher education. It'd be interesting to see how many people don't go to college because they can't afford it vs how many don't go because they don't want to put in the extra years of school. I was in the second catagory at first... I graduated high school and thought I could make a decent living without college. Worked full time for several years, then realized I didn't make enough without some kind of extra schooling. Then I saw how much I could get in student loans and decided to stop working and get the max amount. My justification was that I could focus more on school that way. Well I've got about $30,000 in student loan debt and still need more college. Paying out of pocket until next fall, when the states college for adults program kicks in and pays for 2 years. The govt should know better than to hand "free" money to kids/young adults. As an adult now, it's nearly impossible to go to college financially. Fortunately I can work it into my work schedule though. Everyone should have a chance to go or go back to college as an adult. Money shouldn't hinder that. Also need more interships or on the job training.

the other problem which I have seen first hand when I went back to college a second time in my late 30s.

They arent (aren't for the anal...ha~) teaching.

If we could spend the money on good K-12 we might have the workforce we need educated at that point. Information flows much faster then before so I would think learning would as well.

Anyway....college originally was an aristocratic thing so I am not suggesting that the point of college 'was' to make for a better citizenry, but I am suggesting its a good argument today. maybe not college but good education in any form.

Don't know if you're talking about me, but when you completely ignore the entirety of my OP and just talk about your own thing I consider it trying to derail the topic.

yeah it was my mistake actually I got two conversations edited incorrectly sorry. that last comment was not for you or even this conversation I took it out of the orginal

I'm guessing you want to see a greater aspiational attitude towards higher education rather than the derision we often see it recieve?

@Serraph105: I would want to be assured that the conversations don't steer towards what I'm hearing when this is discussed as a private investment vehicle. "What kind of roi will such and such demographic provide? What recourse do I (as an investor) have if the expected roi isn't met or I get no returns at all?" Things like that. If it results in "the creditors" going after the students who don't make expected wages... No thanks.

As long as the for profit remains as strong as it does today, they will claim a higher percentage rate than necessary because they never have a guarantee to get their money.

Change the attitude about squeezing as much as money as they possible can from students and you will see a much bigger change.

I thought investors were aware that investments always comes with some risk of it not paying off. Or are investors some kind of sacred in US?

The current system should receive a healthy amount of derision. There is a lot more wrong with it then how it is paid for. Over half of college graduates are sitting in jobs that don't require a degree. Only one in four actually use their degree for their job. That is a huge problem even if you detach the wad of debt that currently comes with the deal.

Indentured servitude we meet again.

@horgen: Being aware of risk and graciously accepting the consequences of said risk are different things :-P

When an investment goes south (such as a company going bankrupt or a home foreclosure, for instance) stakeholders make their claims for the remaining assets. The fewer stakeholders to the asset in questions, the more chaotic it is, but a general rule of thumb is that creditors take precedence over investors. In this case I'm not even sure what the lender would be classified as - a creditor or an investor - but what's more troubling is that the assets to be divvied up are the person. There is no real foreclosure/bankruptcy process that divvies up the remaining assets and allows for the person to continue on with their lives after the process is complete. If they fail to return an ROI, what happens? Are they hounded by the investors/creditors to pull themselves up by their bootstraps because they've been a bad investment? If they fail to return a sufficient ROI, does that responsibility fall to their estate when they pass away? If the investor offers them a salary position that pays high enough to net an ROI and demands that they work 70 or 80 hours a week to keep it, what does the law say about that? (I've been in that situation WITHOUT the creditor around my neck, so that will definitely happen).

This is one of those things like the pass-through exemptions in the current tax bill. There are a lot of ways to take advantage of it, people will take advantage of it, and the consequences could be significantly more troubling than the issues it seeks to solve. At the very least, it would need to be implemented very carefully by people who genuinely care about the issue.

This is essentially wage slavery but of another kind. No thanks.

Just fund it via taxes. Trying to find alternate, wacky ideas just so the lunatics can get on board is a fool's errand.

@horgen: A tax program would cover the costs of tuition so schools would be guaranteed to be paid. In turn successful students would pay into that tax program and unsuccessful students would not.

How much can one get through FAFSA using grants only instead of student loans?

This

Free Education is the way forward if we are talking a education that has a purpose and not shit like women studies or BLM movement 101

Especially tech and renewable energy is areas where it would benefit America to have a well-educated workforce.

That's all you need is affordable schools.

In my experience, not enough. I usually had MAP and PELL grants, plus subsidized loans and it basically covered my tuition at an in-state state college. I still had to find a way to pay for books, housing, and food. Without the loans I wouldn't have even had all of my tuition covered and I know others who had no choice but to take unsubsidized loans (which start earning interest while you're still in school).

Basically creating some sort of fond for paying colleges and universities? Guaranteed to be paid, they will increase prices even more. Because they can.

If you can tie it more directly between graduated students and the school they went to, instead of paying into one large pool of money that is later on distributed among the different colleges and universities, you could probably get somewhere.

I'm 100 percent behind something like this. College debt is ridiculous and is hampering too many people.

The only way to make higher education work in this country is to do something about the skyrocketing costs of it. College administrators get paid rock start salaries. they can claim to be student advocates all they want, but they're a large part of the problem. You'd just be shifting the cost from the student to the taxpayer. So either you have skyrocketing national deficits or skyrocketing personal debts. Shouldnt cost 100-200k to send a student to college.

You know what is interesting.

With all the tech/non-tech billionaires who claim to be for social justice and giving back to the community, it´s interesting to look at why they have not made their own free universities , it's not like they can't afford it.

Or pay for students at the established universities.

@kod:Or we could simply understand that our workforce has shifted to requiring a college education, thus it should be paid by our taxes...... you know... the same thing we did with grade school.

nah, man. We need that money for war boats. You don't have war boats you can't fight the desert peoples gud. Maginot Line 2.0. We have to be ready in case WW2 happens again.