Income Share Agreements
Mitch Daniels, former Governor of Indiana and now President of Purdue University, writes about income share agreements in the Washington Post:
In an ISA, a student borrows nothing but rather has his or her education supported by an investor, in return for a contract to pay a specified percentage of income for a fixed number of years after graduation. Rates and time vary with the discipline of the degree achieved and the amount of tuition assistance the student obtained.
An ISA is dramatically more student-friendly than a loan. All the risk shifts from the student to the investing entity; if a career starts slowly, or not at all, the student’s obligation drops or goes to zero. Think of an ISA as equity instead of debt, or as working one’s way through college — after college.
An excellent point. If you watch Shark Tank the entrepreneurs are always wary about debt because debt puts all the risk on them and requires fixed payments regardless. Yet when it comes to financing the venture of one’s own life suddenly equity becomes akin to slavery and debt bondage becomes freedom! It’s very peculiar.
Another advantage of ISAs is that they provide feedback. Is the university willing to educate you for free in return for a share of future earnings? That’s a good signal!
ISAs have emerged principally in response to the wreckage of the federal student debt system but they also represent an opportunity for higher education to address another legitimate criticism: that it accepts no accountability for its results. As the lead investor of the two funds Purdue has raised to date, our university is expressing confidence that its graduates are ready for the world of work.
Check out Lambda School. “We invest in you. Pay nothing until you get a job making over $50,000.”
At Purdue, the university I lead, hundreds of students have such contracts in place, and other colleges large and small are joining the ISA movement. Beyond traditional higher education, coding academies and other skill-specific schools are making the same offer: Study for free, and pay us back after you get the good job we are confident you’ll land.
Although the very nature of ISAs protects the participant, early adopters such as Purdue have built in safeguards. A user-friendly computer simulator provides quick, transparent comparisons with various public and private loan options. No investee pays anything for the first six months after graduation or until annual income exceeds $20,000. For those graduates who get off to fast career starts, a ceiling of 250 percent of the dollars that purchased their education limits total repayment.
I’ve been writing about income-contingent loans for years. Milton Friedman was an early advocate. It’s good to see forward movement.