Income share agreement

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An income share agreement (or ISA) is a financial structure in which an individual or organization provides something of value (often a fixed amount of money) to a recipient who, in exchange, agrees to pay back a percentage of their income for a fixed number of years.

Contents

ISAs have gained prominence as an alternative to the traditional student loan system in American higher education, and a number of private companies now offer ISAs for a variety of purposes, including as a funding source for college tuition. [1] ISAs are often considered to be less financially risky to a borrower than a traditional private student loan.

In the UK this type of agreement received final FCA (UK financial regulator) approval, under a unique regulatory framework. So far StepEx is the only firm to operate as a regulated ISA provider, underwriting the credit with funds from large UK financial institutions. CAPSLOCK are the largest users of FCA approved income share agreements, with over 200 UK adult learners enrolling on their cyber security re-training bootcamp in 2021. [2] [3]

Characteristics

Income share agreements are characterized by a percentage share of future income for some specified period of time. They can function like non-voting shares in a company where the individual student is treated like a company. In the American system, this usually involves the investor transferring funds to an individual in exchange for a fixed percentage of their future income. [4] [5] Other features of income share agreements may include a) a fixed duration of time for the income sharing b) an income exemption where the borrower does not owe anything below a certain income, and/or c) a buyout option, where the borrower may pay some specified fee to exit the contract prior to the full duration of the term. Some ISA investors offer different terms to different students based on their predicted likelihood of success, while others offer the same terms to all students. Potential groups of investors could include for-profit companies, altruistic non-profits, alumni groups, educational institutions, and local, state, or federal governments. [4]

History

Milton Friedman originally proposed the concept in 1955, in his essay "The Role of Government in Education", in which he argued that students might beneficially be funded through an "equity investment" such that: [6]

[Investors] could "buy" a share in an individual’s earning prospects: to advance him the funds needed to finance his training on condition that he agree to pay the lender a specified fraction of his future earnings. In this way, a lender would get back more than his initial investment from relatively successful individuals, which would compensate for the failure to recoup his original investment from the unsuccessful.

In the 1970s Yale University attempted a modified form of Friedman's proposal with several cohorts of undergraduate students. At Yale, instead of making individual contracts for a fixed number of years, all members of the cohort agreed to pay back a percentage of earnings until the entire cohort's balance had been paid off. However, the system left students frustrated that they were paying more than their fair share, by being forced to make payments on behalf of peers unwilling or unable to pay back their loans. [7]

In 2013, Oregon legislators passed a bill that would investigate Pay It Forward as a college financing scheme. The model would allow students to attend college tuition-free, and then pay a proportion of their incomes post-graduation to finance the cost of their studies. However, unlike the income share agreement model, Pay It Forward would be publicly funded, and it would offer fixed percentage repayments across all institutions. [8]

Public debate over the Oregon plan led to renewed interest in equity-based funding models, including a prominent summit on income share agreements at the New America Foundation [9] and a policy paper from the American Enterprise Institute. On April 9, 2014, Senator Marco Rubio announced the introduction of legislation in the US Congress that would 'broaden the use' of income share agreements. [1] [10] [ needs update ]

In the United States today, ISAs are offered by some universities and by some skills training programs, such as coding boot camps. [11]

Advantages

Proponents of ISAs argue that they provide significant benefits over existing models of college financing:

Efficient allocation of resources

Since investors have an incentive to allow students to pay lower shares of their income when they enroll in high quality, low-cost educational programs, ISAs lead to a more efficient allocation of financial resources between colleges. [4]

Insurance and downside protection

ISAs reduce risk for students, [10] and therefore act as an insurance policy for graduates with low earnings:

[With an ordinary student loan] my nominal monthly payment is fixed but my income could change or go away altogether (making certainty just a monthly repetition of bad news). With an income share agreement the converse is true: I don’t know what my nominal monthly payment will be over the entire term, or how much I will pay overall, but I do know that I will always be able to afford it. [12]

This is a non-trivial benefit, since we know, based on current studies that student loans can impact both short-term career outcomes and long term wealth. [13] For instance, recent articles indicate that student loans make it difficult for individuals to participate in the stock market to build long term wealth:

"My money is spent servicing student loans," said Marcus Wallace, a 25-year-old waiter in Washington, D.C. Until that debt is reduced, he explained, the great stock market bull run will have to go on without him. [14]

Lower job search costs

Research indicates that income based repayments make students' career outcomes more efficient by making the job search process less costly. [15] [16]

Students that need education finance the most (including low income, minority, and first generation students) also typically have limited social capital like family-based networks and career mentors that are frequently critical to success in the job market. ISAs augmented with career development provide a nice way to overcome such limitations. [17] [18]

Relevant laws by country

United States

The US allows its citizens to have income sharing agreements.

Common concerns

Indentured servitude

One of the most frequently cited concerns with Income Share Agreements is that they are a form of indentured servitude. Critics argue that because students owe a percentage of their income, the investor therefore own a piece of the student. For instance, Kevin Roose wrote in New York magazine that ISA companies give "young people in the post-crash economy the chance to indenture themselves to patrons in the investor class." [19]

However, advocates of ISAs contend that since students have no legal obligation to work in a particular industry, and since it is illegal for investors to pressure them into a certain career, students are no more “indentured” than those with a student loan. In fact, someone with a traditional student loan has less choice than someone with an ISA, because the student with a loan needs to be in a career where they make at least enough income to cover their monthly payment, whereas someone with an ISA can choose to never make any money, and would never owe the investor a dime. [4] [12]

Uncaptured positive externalities

Since Income Share Agreements are priced based on likely economic success, critics argue that programs that are not economically viable but still valuable to society may not receive ISAs. For instance, a Masters of Social Work is an expensive degree, but social workers often are not paid very much. Therefore, investors may not offer Income Share Agreements for social workers given current tuition rates. [4]

Discrimination

In 2014, the conservative think-tank, American Enterprise Institute (AEI) argued that there are no documented cases of discrimination based on race or gender with ISA agreements, but some worry that should ISAs become a more popular model, the potential for discrimination could increase. [4] While there are already anti-discrimination laws in most financial markets that would likely apply to ISA investors, the question, as of now, has not been completely resolved. AEI also argued that ISAs are less discriminatory as compared to loans:

Even when everyone receives the same interest rate, loans discriminate intensely on the dimension that really matters: affordability. Under a loan program with the same terms for all borrowers, a group who earns less than another despite having identical qualifications ends up with proportionally lower income after paying off that loan than the other group. To the extent that any systematic difference in income between two groups is unfair, loans in effect amplify the unfairness. If ISAs pool groups with similar qualifications but different income potential, then ISAs will partially address the unfairness that loans amplify. [4]

In 2022, a national education and workforce policy non-profit, Jobs for the Future (JFF) published a study on a proprietary data set of 7,639 ISA contracts from an education ISA program manager for 51 education providers. The study's findings found:

Creaming

Some worry that ISAs would have the effect of "creaming" the best students and only fund elite institutions. However, ISAs should theoretically fund all economically viable programs (that is the future income of their graduates proportionately aligns with the cost of the degree), so the only way that could be true is if the vast majority of institutions are not economically viable. [4]

Institutions That Offer Income Share Agreements

Income Share Agreements are steadily gaining traction among professional investors, skills training programs, accredited colleges and universities, with many prominent programs offering Income Share Agreements as a part of their tuition options. Institutions offering ISAs include:

Northeastern University

Northeastern University is a private research university located in Boston, Massachusetts. It offers both undergraduate and graduate level programs. Northeastern accepts Income Share Agreements as a means of financing for its accelerated online nursing program. [21]

Purdue University

Purdue University is a traditional, 4-year university offering both undergraduate and graduate level programs. Purdue offers a limited funding ISA program that allows select Sophomore, Junior, and Senior level students who need additional funding to finish their degree programs. Purdue offered this program because they saw a gap in their student financing options for students who had exhausted their other financing sources. [22]

University of Utah

University of Utah is a public research university offering undergraduate and graduate level courses. Their Income Share Agreement program offers students in all majors who are within 2 years of completing their degree an ISA valued between $3,000 and $10,000. Their Income Share Agreement program is designed to fill any gaps their students may have that are not filled by other forms of financial aid. [23]

See also

Related Research Articles

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Loan</span> Lending of money

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Student loan</span> Type of loan for educational expenses

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Preferred stock</span> Type of stock which may have any combination of features not possessed by common stock

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A human capital contract is a finance product that allows for the provision of funds to an individual through an "equity-like" arrangement, where the provider of the funds receives a portion of the individual's future income for some specified period of time. Human capital contracts have been advocated by a number of Nobel Prize–winning economists, including Milton Friedman, Robert Merton, and Gary Becker. Adam Smith in The Wealth of Nations described the knowledge and skills of workers as a form of human capital.

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EdAid is a funding platform for higher education, based in the United Kingdom, with offices in Dubai, London, New YorK, Sydney and Toronto. EdAid partners with university and professional schools to defer tuition payment, interest-free.

Profit and Loss Sharing refers to Sharia-compliant forms of equity financing such as mudarabah and musharakah. These mechanisms comply with the religious prohibition on interest on loans that most Muslims subscribe to. Mudarabah (مضاربة) refers to "trustee finance" or passive partnership contract, while Musharakah refers to equity participation contract. Other sources include sukuk and direct equity investment as types of PLS.

A repayment plan is a structured repaying of funds that have been loaned to an individual, business or government over either a standard or extended period of time, typically alongside a payment of interest. Repayment plans are prominent within the financial industry of a national economy where liquid funds are in high demand to assist in investment opportunities, governmental expenditure or personal finance. The term first saw prominence with its use by the International Monetary Fund to describe its form of financial loan repayment from individual nations. Typically, the term "repayment plan" refers to the system of Federal Student Aid in the United States of America, which assists in covering tertiary education expenses of domestic students.

Bloom Institute of Technology, also known as BloomTech, is a for-profit massive online course. When it launched in 2017 under the name Lambda School, it gained attention for being a coding bootcamp that offered income share agreements as a method of financing. Following several layoffs and cost cutting measures, it transitioned from a bootcamp model to MOOC, and refocused on traditional student loans. It currently faces several lawsuits for deceptive marketing, allegedly lying about how many students find jobs, among other issues.

The Student Borrower Protection Center (SBPC) is a nonprofit organization aimed at protecting borrowers of student loans and improving the student loan system.

References

  1. 1 2 "What Would Happen if Investments in People Succeeded". Archived from the original on 2012-10-24.
  2. ↑ "StepEx whitepaper".
  3. ↑ "CAPSLOCK blog".
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 "Investing in Value, Sharing Risk" (PDF). p. 1.
  5. ↑ "Home". Jain Family Institute. Retrieved 2016-08-24.
  6. ↑ The Role of Government in Education, 1955, Milton Friedman, Economics and the Public Interest, ed. Robert A. Solo, Rutgers College Press, New Jersey, accessed 30 January 2019.
  7. ↑ Palacios Lleras, Miguel (2004). Investing in Human Capital: A Capital Markets Approach to Student Funding. New York: Cambridge University Press. p. 126. ISBN   0-521-82840-6.
  8. ↑ "Can 'pay it forward' pay for college?". Politico .
  9. ↑ "A Future With Zero Education Debt".
  10. 1 2 Shindler, Michael (March 15, 2016). "Students Need Investors, Not Lenders". Real Clear Policy. Archived from the original on 4 April 2016. Retrieved 21 March 2016.
  11. ↑ "Two emerging players on ISAs, with deliberate and different approaches". www.insidehighered.com. Retrieved 2020-10-24.
  12. 1 2 Holt, Alexander. "You Want a Piece of Me? The Case for Income Share Agreements". New America. Retrieved 23 June 2019.
  13. ↑ Batkeyev, Birzhan; Krishnan, Karthik; Nandy, Debarshi (March 2016). "Student Debt and Personal Portfolio Risk". Northeastern U. d'Amore-McKim School of Business Research Paper No. 2777062. SSRN   2777062.
  14. ↑ Otani, Akane; Dieterich, Chris (2018-01-04). "As Dow Tops 25000, Individual Investors Sit It Out". Wall Street Journal. ISSN   0099-9660 . Retrieved 2018-01-05.
  15. ↑ Herkenhoff, Kyle; Phillips, Gordon; Cohen-Cole, Ethan (May 2016). "How Credit Constraints Impact Job Finding Rates, Sorting & Aggregate Output". NBER Working Paper No. 22274. doi: 10.3386/w22274 .
  16. ↑ Weidner, Justin (November 2016). "Does Student Debt Reduce Earnings?" (PDF). Working Paper.
  17. ↑ "A New Solution to the Student Loan Crisis: Income Share Agreements Augmented with Career Mentorship". 19 June 2018.
  18. ↑ "How It Works - MentorWorks". MentorWorks. Retrieved 2018-01-05.
  19. ↑ "In the New Economy, Everyone Is an Indentured TaskRabbit".
  20. ↑ "Exploring Racial and Gender Differences in ISA Contract Terms and Repayment Patterns | Jobs for the Future (JFF)". www.jff.org. Retrieved 2022-05-20.
  21. ↑ "Northeastern University ISA".
  22. ↑ "Income Share Agreements - Division of Financial Aid - Purdue University". www.purdue.edu. Retrieved 2020-10-05.
  23. ↑ "Income Share Agreement". isa.utah.edu. Retrieved 2020-10-05.
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