Corporate pillage and plunder of school children is not limited to testing, charters, etc. in Kindergarten through 12th grade. Remember indentured servants? College age students are being legally indentured. Here are start-up companies that specialize in this. HERE.
For those of you Vulture Capitalists and Sadists who enjoy inflicting pain while making an obscene profit, you may invest in Upstart, Pave, CareerConcept or a bunch of other creative enslavement corporations. The words “slavery” and “indentured servants” are never, ever, never used. That, of course, would not be polite or politic.
“The notion of ‘human-capital contracts’—or ‘social financial agreements’, as Oren Bass, a co-founder of Pave, prefers to call them—may seem creepy. To many, it sounds like indentured servitude. But the notion of acquiring a stake in someone’s future earnings is not unprecedented.” (Even George Orwell would be impressed by these media-savvy word spinners.)
This used to be illegal. Why is it now legal?
Deregulation has consequences. So does slavery – even wage slavery.
Please tell every parent of every child of every age about this 21st Century American horror. Yes, the American Dream is now officially a nightmare.
–
Reclaim Reform 
The “investors” monetize students, they buy life insurance on employees for their own benefit even if the employee no longer works for them. I’m sure there will be a start up next for the sale of kidneys and other organs. Baby selling? Who knows maybe a new division of funeral parlors who will sell human parts of dead relatives. In this world being human no longer counts unless there is profit to be made for the wealthy. A student’s future? Who needs a future?
But Pat–a corporation IS a person!
“Soylent green is….PEOPLE!!!”
I guess I’d have to read the contracts, but I’m not seeing how this is that much worse than indenturing yourself to the government for a minimum of 10 years at 6.5% interest for a student loan.
And no, I’m not some anti-gubmint right-wing nut job – exactly the opposite, actually. It’s just that, with the merger between the government and corporate interests these days, the dividing line between private plundering and public plundering is getting rather blurry.
Yes, the devil is in the small print; you, an accountant and a lawyer would have to read the contracts. The contract, like an apple, is always shiny bright on the surface.
Please read this month’s Harper’s Magazine article “The Scarlet Debt” by Jeff Madrick. It addresses debt traps.
Also, many lenders do not want to have the debt repaid. By compounding debt on debt, immense amounts of profit are made. My pharmacist has paid over $80,000 on his $50,000 school debt; he still owes $48,000. The so-called “public pension debt” in Illinois (over $85 billion) is a perfect example of annual state tax payments costing over 1/3 of the payment because of a special “pension ramp” repayment deal signed several years ago by legislators.
Debt on debt is, in reality, generally more burdensome than debt alone. Most of what is being offered today was illegal until recently.
Ken, we need to have someone at CPS figure this out, just like their new “per-pupil ‘spending formula'” (which I put in quotes because it’s more like a per-pupil savings formula–savings for the non-tax-paying corporation parasites living off the people of Chicago–more $$$ for TIFs!)
At the end, it can always be shredded–ooops!