5 ms·

> I honestly wonder why more companies don't do that. Easy: generic education applies to any potential employer, not just the original sponsor, and there's no

> I honestly wonder why more companies don't do that. Easy: generic education applies to any potential employer, not just the original sponsor, and there's no legal way to force a person, once educated, to work for you. (I'm not arguing there should be, either.) Put another way, you'd be training your competitor's employees if you were to do that. No rational actor wants (or can afford) to do that.

lj3 10y ago
Would they be able to put a clause in the employment contract to trade X number of years for $X amount of education? I know the US government offers college scholarships that have similar terms, but I don't know if private industry would be able to enforce something like that.
- erichocean 10y ago
  To the best of my knowledge, what you're describing is called a "debt slave", and it's illegal in the United States. Here's Wikipedia on the topic: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debt_bondage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debt_bondage
  - Thimothy 10y ago
    Don't be silly, it's a common practice in some industries for a company to pay some expensive course in exchange for X (usually 2) years of work (paid, very well). You can leave whenever you want, you just have to pay back the course. I had a friend working for Airbus who just did that, the company he moved to offered to pay him back the cost of the bailing out. Though all the times I have seen this happening was for very specialised and well paid work, when the workers have quite a lot of leverage. It's not hard to imagine this becoming really bad if the worker does not have any leverage.
    - erichocean 10y ago
      > You can leave whenever you want, you just have to pay back the course. That's not the definition of a debt slave, because you're not paying back with work, you're paying back with money. In that scenario, the business is just a loan provider. Obviously, anyone can loan anyone else money for whatever reason.

lj3 10y ago

Would they be able to put a clause in the employment contract to trade X number of years for $X amount of education? I know the US government offers college scholarships that have similar terms, but I don't know if private industry would be able to enforce something like that.

erichocean 10y ago
To the best of my knowledge, what you're describing is called a "debt slave", and it's illegal in the United States. Here's Wikipedia on the topic: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debt_bondage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debt_bondage
- Thimothy 10y ago
  Don't be silly, it's a common practice in some industries for a company to pay some expensive course in exchange for X (usually 2) years of work (paid, very well). You can leave whenever you want, you just have to pay back the course. I had a friend working for Airbus who just did that, the company he moved to offered to pay him back the cost of the bailing out. Though all the times I have seen this happening was for very specialised and well paid work, when the workers have quite a lot of leverage. It's not hard to imagine this becoming really bad if the worker does not have any leverage.
  - erichocean 10y ago
    > You can leave whenever you want, you just have to pay back the course. That's not the definition of a debt slave, because you're not paying back with work, you're paying back with money. In that scenario, the business is just a loan provider. Obviously, anyone can loan anyone else money for whatever reason.