No Tuition, but You Pay a Percentage of Your Income (if You Find a Job) - Polidicks

Don't get me wrong, this is a vastly superior alternative to the current US education system. I just really fucking despise that they're spinning a private tax as being somehow revolutionary.

Not quite; university tuition is entirely free to the student in Scotland (provided you are Scottish or an EU/EEA resident except England and Wales cause fuck those guys apparently and under 25 at the start of your course, which is the case for the vast majority of students.) If you do end up needing to pay fees they are almost always required to be paid in full to the institution in question (although fees in Scotland are many thousands of pounds cheaper than elsewhere in the UK, generally speaking) You seem to thinking of the student maintenance/living costs loan, which is the case for most of the UK and not just Scotland in that regard. Source: did my BMus in Scotland.

The system is basically designed so that you can't pay it back - I'd have to start with a salary of around £55-70k to just be covering the interest on my loan (4 years at 9k + minimum maintenance loan). The interest scaled with your income so it's inflation at £25k or below, then it scales up to inflation + 3% at £45k. Over the past 7 years this has averaged 5.6%, this year it's 6.3% Also, while you're in uni it's at the inflation + 3% so by the end of my degree I'll have an extra £8k in interest for a sum total of around £60k of debt. My degree will result in me paying around £250k+ more in taxes than an average non graduate, but then I'll also end up paying ~£100k in student loan repayments (based on some rough calculations). If you're rich, however, you can get a buyout of this tax.

In the UK loans accrue interest at RPI + 3%. I paid £6000 interest whilst still at university

It is revolutionary America is privatizing taxes now, that's unheard of. Such a novel idea /s

You realize we have more STEM graduates than jobs, yes?

the education system isn't privatized (except for the private schools). The Schools are government-chartered, partially government-funded, and the student loans borrow from the government. The issue is not privatization but that the government should not be in the business of loaning money, at least not for profit. The government should instead be drastically increasing its investment in public universities so that tuition doesn't require a loan in the first place. Additionally, I feel like schools waste a lot of money providing services and sponsoring things that have nothing to do with education. For example, most schools provided a free or low cost clinic for students, when the responsibility of providing healthcare should not on a university. Additionally, schools spend a lot of money on sports facilities, though from what I understand they pretty much break even on the teams themselves via the NCAA

It's definitely not innovative as a base concept, but finding a way to make taxes for the public good a notion that Republicans don't reflexively riot about is pretty notable tbh

because its the invisible hand of the free market!

Even that is silly though, there's hardly an actual economic argument for charging for education though: educated people contribute more to the economy than it could ever cost to educate them. Some governments go as far as to (effectively) pay people to get educated. I hate to frame it this way, because I don't believe that we should be educated for market value it seems no different to fattening pigs for slaughter to me. But if you are going to frame it that way then, done correctly, education is the single best investment any companyor government can make. This is why I believe that education should be available at no cost for everybody, and in many cases subsidised so that the opportunity cost and the offset cost of living doesn't bar people from lower income backgrounds.

It's actually the opposite right now (at least in Engineering) - engineering positions are hiring like crazy across the country. It's almost impossible not to find an entry-level engineering job at the moment. Also I'd like to mention that Purdue is my university - they're one of the cheapest top-ten engineering schools in the country. Being in-state I was able to get an even better tuition rate but many people who come from out-of-state also say it's much cheaper than a school like MIT, USC, etc. I've got issues with this income-sharing concept and I think it's probably more of a scam than tuition costs, but I will say that it's absolutely possible to get a quality education without putting yourself in immense debt. Then of course there's also the other conversation that college isn't necessary to get a good job either, but that's a different topic altogether.