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by everforward 1526 days ago
I think it would need to be more nuanced than that if we want to escape second order effects.

The first is that if the college bears risks for financed students, the first seats will always go to people who can afford to not use financing. It'd be like the legacy system, but out in the open and encouraged by regulation.

The second is that it will likely make it harder to climb the social ladder. I'm too sleep-deprived today to find sources, but I would imagine that students that can afford to not work while in school tend to do better. Likewise, I would bet that wealthier students tend to do better by nature of connections. If your dad/mom is an engineer, and you want to be an engineer, you've already got connections.

It also pushes people towards the military, if the GI Bill is the only way for normal people from poor families to afford college. It's a little dark that wealthy families can pay their children's way, but poor families have to risk them dying to do the same thing.

I like the basis of the idea, I just think it needs a bit more nuance to prevent wealth inequality getting worse than it already is.

1 comments

Yeah, these are all good points, and I agree. But the bottom line is that currently no one profiting from the situation has any skin in the game, so when they start doing more harm than good, they have no natural alignments that would make them self correct.