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Comment by mootothemax | Hacker News Reader

From the article:

"Upstart.com, a company founded last year by Google exec David Girouard, offers a bit of capital in exchange for a cut of a college graduate’s future earnings."

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I checked the link - it's not exactly right, they are funding graduates who have already completed their college course, and it has to be minimum a 4 year course.

What I meant, was funding 18-30 year olds to actually go to college, obviously, something like "history of art" would probably not have significant returns, but a Masters in CS? They would rake the money in.

(P.S. It's US only unfortunately and I'm in the UK)

I'd say that student loans in the UK work more closely to how this investment scheme works (you only pay back if you earn over a certain threshold)

How is this different from a student loan? Bank gives student $100k, student pays bank $250/mo for 30 years (or whatever the terms are).

Student loans are way too low, on virtue of the smaller returns, some people may prefer a little comfort than living on Ramen noodles for 4 years.

The bank wants their money regardless of how much you earn. With this scheme, if you don't earn anything you don't pay anything and when you do pay it is always a managable amount. This sort of arrangement could be very handy for a programmer-mendicant or compulsive volunteer.

Or a a nefarious person. Upstart deal sounds too good. With some Hollywood accounting, you might even be able to skip paying them anything.

This happened in the 90s with the Hope Scholarship, which failed for the obvious reasons.

The HOPE scholarship, if you're referring to the one in Georgia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HOPE_Scholarship) is still alive. I went to school, getting full tuition plus a book and fee stipend for my undergraduate degree. Eligibility became more difficult sometime after I graduated, but it's still around.

That can't be it; there's nothing in there about repayment or treating the loan as equity rather than debt.

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