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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