Friday, August 23, 2013

The new voodoo: paying for college….


Here's the latest wacky twist on paying for a college education: don't do it now.

Instead, promise to pay 3% of your annual earnings—for 24 years after graduation—to the state where you went to college.

Nobody knows if you'd end up paying more or less than the sticker price for your sheepskin.

After Oregon's governor signed a bill this month to study such a plan, at least four other states are looking into it (New Jersey, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Washington).

The basic idea is:  don't pay for your college degree at a state college now, go to college "for free" now and pay for it over the next 24 years.


No one has any answers for questions like:
… suppose a graduate dies 17 years after getting the degree, is anyone responsible for the remaining payments?
…how will the state government actually collect the payments if the graduate moves out of the state?  has multiple jobs? never gets a job? refuses to authorize payroll deduction, or otherwise refuses to make the payments?
…obviously some graduates would pay more for their degrees than others, depending on their post-graduation salaries, is everyone OK with this?
…how long will the state government continue to subsidize the education of current students if the stream of payments from graduates doesn't cover the cost of a bachelor's degree in future years?

This goofy idea is ethically, economically and legally challenged.

It seems so obvious: this is an undisguised proposal to get somebody else to pay for Fred Freshman's and Susie Sophomore's college degree, sometime in the future.

Isn't this the fundamental flaw of public finance?


http://barleyliterate.blogspot.com/2013/07/delayed-payment-for-college-tuitiongoofy.html





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