> If they don't have a time limit on it, how can they claim my undergrad degree is driving my income 30 years later?
How can you claim that with any equity model? If you get 3% equity for being an early employee, you have a 3% claim to it forever (unless you sell), even if you can't realistically claim to be still driving the company's profitability 30 years later. That's just how equity models work. Now, you can critique them (Marxists, for example, make exactly that critique, that long-delayed dividends have lost any real relationship to the original service performed), but for better or worse it's a widespread model. I don't see why it'd be any worse with equity-for-education. Like a startup, you're betting that an n% equity stake is a fair risk-adjusted compensation to give a funder in return for them providing some up-front funding right now, and shouldering the uncertainty w.r.t. whether your future earnings will ever be sufficient to repay them. Sometimes it means you end up paying much more than the education is worth; other times, much less. Same as with VCs and startups.
How can you claim that with any equity model? If you get 3% equity for being an early employee, you have a 3% claim to it forever (unless you sell), even if you can't realistically claim to be still driving the company's profitability 30 years later. That's just how equity models work. Now, you can critique them (Marxists, for example, make exactly that critique, that long-delayed dividends have lost any real relationship to the original service performed), but for better or worse it's a widespread model. I don't see why it'd be any worse with equity-for-education. Like a startup, you're betting that an n% equity stake is a fair risk-adjusted compensation to give a funder in return for them providing some up-front funding right now, and shouldering the uncertainty w.r.t. whether your future earnings will ever be sufficient to repay them. Sometimes it means you end up paying much more than the education is worth; other times, much less. Same as with VCs and startups.