3 ms·
Only read the abstract (rest behind paywall) but I have a lot of thoughts here. I speculate that coming years will see a significant increase in the fractional
by 58x14 5y ago
Only read the abstract (rest behind paywall) but I have a lot of thoughts here.
I speculate that coming years will see a significant increase in the fractional value vertical, encompassing material deliverables and performance prediction markets.
Skill and knowledge acquisition is a speculative investment of effort, usually made from a hypothesis around expected value. "I will take X months to learn Y skill because Z industry is (stable, expanding, pays more, exciting)" is pretty parallel to "I will spend X $$$ for Y course/mentorship/degree because Z is..."
Angels and VCs are often vocal about funding people and teams first, products after. Sentiment in talent acquisition is continuing to shift away from "do you have a degree and from where" and towards "what, how have you learned and what can you do." Remote, distributed work, freelancing models, and open collaboration structures like FOSS starkly contrast bloated enterprises and academia.
I suspect there will be, and there probably are right now, numerous entities that pursue direct-to-consumer lending or crowdfunding based on various characteristics. Instead of taking on 6 figures in debt to join a 4 year program, only to spend unknown time to find suitable employment, take 5 figures of debt to account for your regular expenses, bootstrap your lifestyle, get paired with other members of the program, learn the same material in 2 years instead of 4 while also delivering a "product" and even if that fails, you're far more likely to have a collection of organic relationships that will endorse your job application.
The commissions alone in the recruiting industry lead me to believe it's economically feasible to use these types of loans as a loss leader, in return for the network effects and valuable data that an operator could benefit from.
And if 1 in 10,000 students launches a unicorn, the operator probably got in at seed or even as an angel, because they were able to watch all of the leading indicators that are currently extremely fragmented and subjective. A virtuous cycle emerges.
I could go on... but I'll save it for somebody who ships.
- netaustin 5y agoI agree that a more practical future is likely if the government backs off its subsidies of "normal" college experiences. What we have in the U.S. is essentially collusion between higher ed and government to place excess value on such a normal college experience. This might not be such a bad thing, given the research outputs of many universities that benefit both from outright government grants, and implicit sponsorships in the form of student debt that carries interest rates lower than any private competitor could carry.
- asdff 5y agoI think a lot of the student debt debacle is bad decisionmaking on the part of the student thanks to how much financing is available. In short, since its become so normalized to put school on the credit card so to speak, you have people that don't bat an eye at 6 figures of student loan debt. I did a whole lot more than bat an eye at that, I opted for going to a public school in state and saved hand over fist compared to my out of state classmates. Even a school like Berkeley is only 14k a year in state, not much more than a cal state school. I think if people had less financing available they would just end up in less debt and somewhere in their respective state schools rather than spending massive amounts out of state.