This is obviously different in that it's entirely optional, and relatively sane rates (whatever the real university decides). But because of that clawback I could maybe see it getting caught up in a carelessly written ban.
I passed on a job opportunity early on in my career because there was a clawback provision in my employment agreement that was very transparent and yet very brutal. I couldn't imagine taking that job and being entrapped by that clawback provision after I'd started.
My first employer told me how they once paid a very expensive (6 figure) training for someone who immediately left after finishing that training, so they introduced a clawback to prevent that in the future. I think that's reasonable, but there needs to be a balance. You shouldn't be able to lock people into shitty jobs for years just because they got some shitty training when they joined.
It seems like situations like this are ones where "we'll agree to pay $25K for your training and you agree to work for us for two years" is reasonable, particularly since the training costs are generally deductible for the employer, but are often not for the employee.
- Pilot training comes with a certification for the person that applies to any pilot job.
- Pilot training is usually provided by a certified training organization and follows an industry-established curriculum.
- The price of the training is discoverable in advance and there is a competitive market for providing the training.
Whereas the PetSmart program comes with no certification, doesn't follow a published industry curriculum, and the price is fixed directly by PetSmart with no ability to obtain the training elsewhere.
The pilot training situation may not be ideal, but it's clear to me the PetSmart program exists primarily to lock employees into jobs at PetSmart.
Sure, they could change the requirements to make it easier for someone to drive around in a 80,000lbs death machine but is that in anyone’s best interest?
What the companies do is put you through enough training to get your license, more training on top of that and stay with them for a year or you have to pay whatever they say it costs[0] for the training. All in all it’s a working system.
[0] as spelled out in a contract but really has nothing to do with what it costs to train a person. The company I currently work for has this racket where owner/operators pay the trainees’ wages (along with every other expense to operate the truck) during on the job training for the most part and are pretty aggressive trying to get people to train the new drivers. Annoyingly aggressive.
Not to mention that having enough well-rested folks with a CDL means that everyone is a little more secure, and we are more likely to have enough people to drive busses and transport goods in emergencies. (Yes, I know it'll take more than lowering the schooling costs to fix all this, but it is a start)
I know your house is further away from city center than mine, so we'll end up spending more of our pooled resources to get the road to your house finished. But, if we refuse to work together, NEITHER of us get roads. So honestly, this still feels like a good deal for me, even though you're objectively benefitting "more" (in some ways, by some cherry-picked measures) than I am.
I'd rather you get more road than me if the alternative is that NEITHER of us get roads.
If this works out, maybe we can figure out some way to work together on other things that are too big for either of us to solve as individuals. That's kind of an exciting idea, like maybe we could actually make the world suck a little bit less.
No computers. No internet. No modern medicine. No roads, no electricity. No locks on your house. No modern clothing materials, no modern tents with polyester or nylon. No cars. Heck, at this point you couldn't even buy a horse without benefiting from other people's education.
Or maybe you mean impractical degrees? So... no professional art or music. Or maybe you mean degrees that don't make money? Ok. No preschool teachers, no regular teachers either. They get paid poorly, after all.
Maybe you just don't want others to be educated, but I don't know how you intend to get along if fewer folks know how to read and good luck teaching your own children everything they need to know. A lot of places use tax money to educate children, after all.
That's probably far enough: not wanting to pay for others education is just someone wanting to benefit from said education without contributing to it. Education of others helps you, and there really isn't much you can do about that.
Companies will only pay so much to ship their products (which caps wages) and there isn’t a whole lot that can be done to improve working conditions without retraining every single person in the country on how to drive around big trucks because that’s 99% of the job. And weather, nothing to be done about weather. Everything else is just trivial bullshit, really.
Doesn’t matter either way since Silicon Valley is promising to obsolete the job “any day now” so who cares about making improvements.
You can even enter into agreements with them, that if they pass you must employ them.
There's no need for an agreement tying someone to an employer. Such things are very dangerous, since it has the potential to give the employer very great power.
Nothing says you have to stay with that company, once you get your CDL you’re free to do whatever you want with it. You can also get a CDL other ways or just tell anyone who will listen that driving a truck is the worst job ever.
Most of the training is just driving around with a more experienced driver for a couple months to learn the job and it isn’t like they chain people to the steering wheel, they get a decent salary (not based on mileage) during training and once you get your own truck you make whatever you make based on mileage. Or you can drive team with someone and make more than a solo driver.
The only part you have to pay for is getting a CDL but that on its own is relatively worthless.
If the "higher taxes" argument is what's implied, the return on an educated populace would show in GDP, likely reflect in lower crime rates, improvements in quality of life, among other things.
My point is that if "post high school" education (aka university) is accessible to/an option for everyone, then everyone benefits, from the individual, to their community, all the way up to GDP/tax dollars.
It's not a bullshit blue vs white collar "culture war" talking point, it's a matter of everyone having the same shot at furthering their education via university regardless of whatever their income is/their living situation/what family they were born into.
Some HN readers do live in countries where higher education is free ish.
And when it isn't, everyone suffers. When it is low-cost to free, you get folks that want to be doctors and qualify. When it costs more than a nominal fee, you take those folks and sort them by whoever can afford it, which may not be the best candidates. It also makes it more of an "elite" profession since poor folks are priced out of it.
By free, I do mean low-cost to free for the student and funded by taxpayers. Educated people benefit society at large, and especially so when folks are doing public service of different sorts (like doctors).