Here’s how your kids will pay for college

Lots of crazy things going on in the world of higher ed. A big change is coming and it’s starting to take shape.

• They’re not special. We learned this week that wealthy and caucasian kids are getting roughly 4x more “special time” considerations on standardized tests than everyone else.
• Operation Varsity Blues continues to take down prominent families who paid millions to cheat their kids into college.
• Morehouse Class of 2019 had their entire debt paid by a billionaire…
• Prompting call outs of other celebs like Oprah for not.

It would appear the inequality machine that is the American higher-education system is beginning to break down.

Problems and Solutions

Problem: The student debt crisis is eliminating the opportunity for many Americans to enter the middle class.
Solution: Companies should create “401(k)s for student debt,” matching student loan payments as an incentive to attract talent. Fidelity, Random House, and Peloton already do a variation of this.

Problem: The average US family has 828% more student debt than in 1999.
Solution: Reduce negative stigma around trade schools. OR ban the billions colleges spent on cheesy marketing (see pic at top of the page). Either allows families to make better, more realistic decisions about their kids’ futures.

Problem: Predatory colleges take advantage of low-income students.
Solution: Force colleges to provide more detailed and transparent data to better inform the public of the true risks of paying for higher ed.

The Future. Hoping for billionaires to bail us out of student debt isn’t realistic, but with crisis reaching a fever pitch, there are huge opportunities for innovators who can reduce stigma, incentivize employers, and capture better data around higher ed.