On this episode of Venture to Flourish, we explore how Education Savings Accounts (ESAs) they are unlocking $25 billion towards school choice, with 529 accounts adding another $450 billion. The panel includes Dan Lips, who invented the ESA, Julie Linn Minnehan, who just walked out of the governor's office, Glenn Gilzean, who implemented the first ESA for special needs students, and Preston Cooper, who is holding colleges accountable for student debt. We examine how ESAs help low-income families take control of their child's education and the potential for momentum leading to bigger programs. We also look at other initiatives, such as creating Montessori hybrid schools and legislative reforms in Texas that allow for full-time online programs and ESAs. Join us as we explore how policy changes and startups are disrupting education systems and bringing flourishing to students across the country.
Panelists:
In the first episode of a special three-part series, featuring panel discussions at the Flourish Conference, education savings accounts (ESAs), which are unlocking $25 billion towards school choice. Here are the pull quotes from each of the panelists:
"Putting financing power in the hands of parents unleashes innovation, puts parents in control, and leads to better outcomes." -Dan Lips
"46 percent of what the federal government spends on education is overhead. Only 54 percent of that money is spent on students."- Julie Linn Minnehan
"Education should be about the child and giving the parents the power to provide access and equity." - Glenn Gilzean
Keep Going:
Explore a map of School Choice Programs here.
Evan Baehr: [00:00:00] Next time you drive past the carpool pickup line at a public school, remember? One in every three parents of a kid in public school wants to leave but can't, they simply can't afford it. Right now, there are policy reforms, sweeping state after state driving educational choice that could really change this reality.
Last month, learn Capital hosted a Flourish conference, or over 300 of the biggest minds in policy, technology, and investing came together to talk about education and beyond, as well as the wild trends that are happening. Under our noses. I'm Evan Bayer. This is Venture to Flourish, a podcast from Learn Capital for founders, investors, and leaders who are working to build ventures to drive what we call human flourishing.
This is the first episode of a special three-part series in which we're bringing you panel discussions from this conference. Today's panel will talk about how education savings accounts called ESAs are transforming educational [00:01:00] opportunities for families. Unlocking 25 billion towards school choice, and when you add in 5 29 accounts, it adds in another 450 billion.
Yeah, that's a half trillion dollars. On the panel, you'll hear from Dan Lips, the guy who literally invented the esa, Julie Lin Minnehan, who joins us after literally walking outta the governor's office. Glenn Guine, who implemented the first e s A for special needs students. And Preston Cooper, who's tackling student debt by holding colleges accountable.
Join us for a deep dive into the world of alternative education funding and how these policy changes are opening the door for startups to disrupt education systems and bring flourishing to students around the country. Thanks for
Greg Mauro: joining. So I'm gonna start off with a, a few, , startling facts. One is a, a 2019 study from Bellweather.
Okay? So it's a pre covid study that in the United States, 82% of students go to public schools. Okay, guess what [00:02:00] of that 82% or, you know, if, if you look at the percentage that actually go willingly to public versus thoses, who would prefer to go to private? A full 36 per percent actually would prefer to go to a private school if they had access to an e s A.
That's back. In 2019 pre covid, we haven't gotten an update from from Bellweather, but can you imagine what, what percentage of of parents would actually like to send their kid to a quality private with something like an e s a, if they could today? Second context, there are. 11 million students or former students that are behind on their student loans today.
And we have a a system there that is very challenging and is, perpetuating some, major structural problems with the way student loans are provisioned today with no accountability on results and roi. So we'll touch on that, but we've got a fantastic panel.
I'm actually gonna let them. Introduce themselves as we go here. I'll point out some facts, but maybe Dan, you can start, Dan is actually accredited with [00:03:00] inventing or is the originator of the e s A concept. So Dan, if you would maybe start off with a little bit on your background.
Dan Lips: Thanks, Greg. I'm a, a, my name's Dan Lips. I'm a senior fellow with the foundation for research on Equal Opportunity, preop a think tank focused on researching and developing policy recommendations that assist those living below median income or wealth. I've been working on public policy issues since 2000, largely focusing on education reform.
I Proposed the concept of ESAs as a vehicle for expanding school choice back in 2005. Since then, spent eight years working in the Senate and been with free op for the past three years.
Preston Cooper: I'm Preston Cooper. I'm also with a free op, and I work on a higher education policy. My, my area of research specifically is the ROI of a college education and how that varies across different institutions, different programs, and trying to make the case that you know, the root of our student loan crisis really is when education does not justify its cost.
And if we can find a way to solve that problem, to make sure that when [00:04:00] students are investing in post-secondary education, they're gonna get a financial return. I believe that's the way to solve the student loan crisis for.
Excellent
Glen Gilzean: question and good afternoon. Thanks Greg. And thanks everybody here.
My name is Glenn Guine. My career has always been focused on helping low-income kids get access to education freedom. So it's interesting to see the architect behind e esa. A few years back in 2014, actually in Florida, we were part of the team that actually implemented the first ESA for special needs students in the first around the country.
And then, Part of the team that actually expanded the tax credit scholarship program, which is also the defacto voucher organization in Florida. And we're able to grow that to about 1.4 billion in scholarships that goes out to kids to go to private schools in the state of Florida. Today the governor of this great state of Florida talked about pass the passage and the importance of House Bill one, which will create a universal e s A for all families in the state, which will open up the door to so many families.
So really excited about the conversation and
Greg Mauro: going from there. [00:05:00] Great. And just wanna point out that Glenn is also the chairman of the Governor's commission on Juvenile Justice and also heads the urban League of Central Florida and is running a stealth mode learned, backed studio company as well.
So he's got, he's a busy, busy guy these days. So Dan, you know, we've been saying at, at learn for a long time that the the revolution is the e. And that there, there is a Scandinavian model we are going to head to. It exists in Sweden and that is basically money following child in Sweden.
They don't discriminate between public and private school. You seamlessly go one or the other. A lot of people don't even know whether their school is public or private, similar to a state like Arizona. You know, we we thought it would happen a lot sooner. It's finally happening. Why are things happening?
Dan Lips: It's a great question. I think that there's many reasons why there's growing interest in giving families more choice. I think the pandemic certainly opened people's eyes to what was happening in our public school systems. And there's a, a number of other factors. I think that it just to level set [00:06:00] our conversation, does everybody know what we're talking about when we're talking about K-12 ESAs?
Basically the idea is to. Provide funding directly to families. In Texas, the bill under consideration would give 10,000 that could be spent for private school tuition, for tutoring, for saving for future college use. And it's, it's really a revolution is happening right now. 10 ESAs exist in 10 states.
We're likely to see that grow to 11 sometime soon with Arkansas with the passage of the Florida bill that we are very hopeful about this year. We're likely to see kids in up to 5 million kids have access to ESAs. They're not all gonna take them, but it'll be an option for those who are disserved by the current public school system.
And if Texas comes through, this could be an option for 10 million families and for those of us who've always believed. It's the disadvantaged families who don't have a right of exit when their child isn't being taught to read by fourth grade, which is the harsh reality for 50% of low income families in [00:07:00] Texas.
60% of families in Fort Worth, Austin and Houston, fourth graders can't read. What would you do if you were a parent and your child couldn't read in fourth grade? My kids are young, but I know that I would hire a tutor. I'd change schools. We might homeschool, but families without means can't do that. After this year, that could be families and up to 10 million kids are gonna be able to take control of their own destiny, which opens up a lot of opportunities for the kinds of people in this room to help meet that demand.
And I think also some real responsibilities to do that well and to make sure that this works. But I think it's a terrifically exciting.
Glen Gilzean: Excellent. Can, can I piggyback off of that? Sure. Oh no, go ahead. Please go ahead. So what's really exciting. What you just said is how, think of a child who's a low income child, whose parents who don't have the means to cover the cost of private school tuition and being able to get them aqui, high quality education in central Florida.
Lemme just give you some, some stats as [00:08:00] zip code 32,805, 70% of the families in that community don't have a high school. In Orlando, 19% of African American kids can't do math. I said that wrong. 19% of kids can, who are African American, can do maths. So as 81% who are not proficient, then that number goes up slightly up to about 20% who are not proficient in reading.
People think of Orlando as the tourism capital of the world. The Disney, the happiest place on Earth. But what you don't see is that we have a really thriving military aerospace def defense community, almost 20 billion. So as an urban league putting on my urban league hat and I fight for economic justice and giving people access to equal opportunities through upskilling and et cetera.
How can I advocate to a corporation and say, please hire this individual. If, if I just said less than four fifths of African-American kids can't do math in the aerospace, it's impossible. So what ESA [00:09:00] does, it helps level that playing field. So I just want to give that context of, and that's just Orlando.
But if you go to every age, major urban. In across the country. Those statistics are the same, if not worse. So e ESA will be a level playing field for all, all families and all communities. Thanks
Greg Mauro: Greg. No, helpful. That's great, Glen. Thank you so much. I actually wanna talk about how, how Glen and I met and and, and, and touch on a, on a, on an issue here.
So I mean, obviously it's civil rights issue of our time to level this playing field and to provide these access , out of these depressing scenarios you guys have outlined, however, The, at the end of the day, you need quality supply and you need that to be pervasive around the country on both bricks and mortar and online models.
And that's, that's where learned capitals come in. And one of our dreams was that we could back premium school operators that could start out private, but could then eventually operate and serve students in the full voucher charter market. So I met Glen through through Evan a number of years ago and recently, Tell him what I toured recently.
So [00:10:00]
Glen Gilzean: you were able to come and visit the first ever Montessori hybrid school in the state of Florida, powered by our good friend Ray with his higher ground model. But what's exciting is that in my market, Montessori education costs roughly $25,000. There's two premier schools, lake Highland Prep and Wir.
So African American family or Hispanics, which also, or just low income individuals don't have access to it. And with the help of Greg where he got up and he spoke at an event, he said, my daughter is in this awesome Montessori program and everything. And I jokingly said, so Ray, I mean Greg, that's great for affluent families, but what we're gonna do for low income black.
And then that's when he connected me with Ray. And ever since we've been able to transform number of students' lives and we're excited about this coming future, this fall to grow and scale the school. Our thesis is that one of the biggest assets in the African American community is the church and it sit vacant Monday through Friday.
So with the help of [00:11:00] Ray and others, we're going to basically CR leverage that space and turn that into learning centers, and then use this hybrid approach of leveraging EdTech community-based organizations and then public policy. And lastly, I would say is that Greg and I coined the term that what we're developing is the new public-private partnership
Greg Mauro: 2.0.
Excellent. Glen. I know Julie's on her way from the Capitol. She's actually former education advisor to Governor Perry and is actually working actively on the Texas legislation right now. And we'll hopefully make it before the end of the panel. But Preston maybe you can talk about the higher ed and where that intersects with, with K-12 in the future to solve some of the problems we're talking.
Preston Cooper: Absolutely. I mean, the higher ed and the K-12 conversations really are inseparable. I mean, so if we look at, you know, what is the number one risk to students when they begin post-secondary education? It's that they won't graduate. 70% of students who default on their student loans never got a degree or certificate.
And so what's the number one predictor of whether [00:12:00] you're going to graduate or not? It's your academic performance In high school, if you have a higher s a t score, if you have a higher gpa, if you take more AP classes, if you get more college credits, that way you are far more likely to finish college.
And if you control for these these indicators of academic performance, we see that Graduation rate gaps between rich and poor students narrow dramatically. So really, if we're trying to de-risk, you know, higher education, if we're trying to make sure that more students can benefit from this, it really starts at the K-12 level.
It requires making sure that all students have access to a solid academic foundation that's gonna prepare them for success in college and beyond. And so that's really where. Say conversation comes into play not only in a offering students access to tutoring or to a better quality high school or to those other academic supports, but also, you know, helping them cover fees for AP clip exams, ar areas where they can get a college credit before they even set foot on a college campus in order to maximize their odds of graduating and therefore maximize their [00:13:00] odds of receiving return on investment from their educat.
Greg Mauro: Excellent. And just following up on that, I know governor Youngen of Virginia, who Evan and I were with last year tweeted that in the future he wants all Virginia and high school students to graduate with either a certificate or with an associate's degree. Pretty, pretty ambitious vision.
But I'm curious, what do you, what do you, what do you see happening in the sort of dual degree or early college?
Preston Cooper: Yeah, well, I think that there's obviously a lot of concern about the cost of college right now. And I think students are looking for ways that they can cut maybe a year or even more off of their their college expenses.
And one of the great ways to do that is to try and take college credits while you're in high school, whether that's through a dual enrollment program, which I think more and more states are becoming interested in or trying to get college credits through those club exams, those AP credit.
Greg Mauro: And if that dual enrollment is, is on top, if that's, if that's an esa that's effectively, is that competing in your mind with the ESA for, for the completion of high school or is that an, is that specifically an e ESA for basically college that you happen to take early?
Yeah, so. [00:14:00] Well, you not mutually exclusive. Yeah, they're, they're
Preston Cooper: definitely, they're definitely not mutually exclusive. And I think that's one of the wonders about es, wonders of ESAs is that you are putting that money into the hands of parents students and their families so that they can figure out how to use that money to the, their best advantage to get the most out of their education.
And so I really see it as leaving it up to the parent, to the student to decide what path is right for.
Glen Gilzean: Greg, could I just add I think where you're gonna see especially what we're working together on is more of a blended funding approach. So in Florida, we envision being able to do both the vertical integration of helping a child, but then also helping the family or helping the child through certification.
So, The bucket of funds that will be an ESA fund that will handle the day aspect of it. But in the afternoon, imagine that child going to an apprenticeship using we a fundings, which is the Workforce Innovation Opportunity Act. Right? So I see more of a blended approach where you will allow the child to still get their core, but then supplement it with additional public funding [00:15:00] that exists.
Greg Mauro: So Dan, give us a, give us a sense of the future here. So as Glenn pointed out, you know, my the school where my daughter goes to higher ground education is now free in Orlando, thanks to an e s a equivalent. The, how do you, I mean, how important is Texas in, in what's gonna be happening nationwide?
And w you know, where do you see this movement on, how's it been driven by Covid also so where do you, where do you see it over the next sort of 36 months?
Dan Lips: I think that there's a lot of momentum. I'm, I'm really optimistic about Texas, but I think that the momentum will exist with or without Texas.
And one of the trends we've seen is that once small programs are created, they lead to bigger programs. That's been the experience in Florida over the past 20 plus years. A Arizona at. And there's little programs in other states in Tennessee, Mississippi, Indiana, that could grow into much bigger programs.
So a few years from now, we could be talking about 15 to 20 million kids having this as an option. I think that. There's another big aspect of this, which are 5 [00:16:00] 29 accounts, and I think there's some really huge policy opportunities for that to go into the funding model that Glen was talking about.
Right now there's 450 billion in five 20 nines. After the 2017 tax bill there was a change to allow those funds to be spent on K-12. Congress almost expanded that to include tutoring and more of the outside of school expenses that address some of the enrichment gaps that we see. Adding to that, there's a big movement in the states to provide direct funding into, to low income children's five 20 nines.
So that could be a really exciting way to drive more consumer power to parents, particularly those who don't have means adding in those. Funding revenue streams of other government
Greg Mauro: programs. Interesting. Do you actually I wanna, I'm gonna switch over to Preston. So Oh, Julie, as, as Julie has a fresh, fresh update straight from the capitol.
So I gave a, a, a, a brief bit of your background, Julie, that you advised governor Perry in education policy and now a, a lobbyist working with a variety of education fighters and [00:17:00] others on, on pushing legislation here in Texas. But maybe give us hot off the press update on ESAs in Texas and, and I know there's a host of policy initiative.
That you're that are ahead in, in front of this session, but maybe you can give us an overview. Sure.
Julie Linn Minnehan: There were Meetings at the Capitol Today Education Committees meeting. Hi Jake. Yesterday, today, tomorrow. So apologies for the delay, but looking at the participants that would be here in your audience.
I narrowed down Texas Education. Policy is very broad. But I wanted to narrow down some subject areas that I thought the audience would be particularly interested in. And I see Catherine there. Hello, a partner of ours here in Texas. Jay Hyler with Great Hearts America. Good to see you. So ESAs, you mentioned that off the bat.
Texas is interesting. Our legislature meets every other. For five months, and by law we're not allowed to hear legislation for the first 60 days. You're not allowed to pass legislation for the first 60 days. So really your [00:18:00] policy making is accomplished within three months, so March through May, and it's, it's very intense.
And I'm here with my partner, Florence Shapiro. She was a 20 year state senator and led the education committee in the Senate for, for two decades. So we spend a lot of time in the interim because we then have a year and a half. We spend a lot of time in the interim looking at interim studies and studying topics very deeply.
And then through the fall to mid-March, develop. Legislation and the filing deadline for all bills in Texas is this Friday. So there are numerous pieces of legislation that will be very important that are still being drafted, that are due to be filed by Friday, one of which is the e s A bill. So the Texas Senate in previous legislative sessions has passed some form of school.
In the form of an e s A bill. And this is the first legislative session though, where the governor is very [00:19:00] engaged and very supportive of ESAs. He's actually made it his number one priority. Every few days he's somewhere across Texas at parent empowerment nights talking about ESAs. So while we're still waiting for the final version of the bill, the governor is supporting.
Very broad ESAs that would be eligible for any Texas student. I think there will probably be a couple of versions of the bill filed this week. One version will probably limit it to, to free and reduced lunch students, economically disadvantaged students. And another will be included in a broader piece of legislation around parent empowerment and transparency and decision making and include an e s a piece.
So that's certainly. A significant piece of legislation. The Texas House, though, has typically not been supportive even though it's a Republican dominated house. So many of those districts are rural districts and the political dynamic there is those districts are Their largest employers are typically the school districts, and [00:20:00] so they're very conflicted on voting for e s a legislation.
So it'll be interesting, once again to see how the house aligns.
Greg Mauro: What are your professional odds on it at the moment?
Julie Linn Minnehan: Oh goodness. I think if an e s A bill passes that it will likely not be a broad e bill, but rather a much more streamlined bill In Texas policies, sometimes we bracket legislation to certain geographic areas.
So there have been discussions around do we bracket it to just major urban districts. Interestingly though, the data there was a recent poll that showed the highest support for e ESAs in Texas are actually from parents in rural areas. So it'll be interesting to see if policy aligns with data. So they could bracket it to large urban areas.
They could bracket it to students who have sped learning needs or free and reduced lunch students. So my professional guess is if a bill passes, it will be bracketed in some
Greg Mauro: form. Okay. Fascinating. Now, there's some other ways to skin the cad. [00:21:00] As you know there's, there's charter schools, there's virtual charter schools.
How do you, how do you see those evolving in this. Sure.
Julie Linn Minnehan: The number one priority for charters this legislative session is Texas is interesting. It's known nationally as one of the most difficult states to be approved as a new charter. But then once you're approved, because our current commissioner of education who's appointed by the governor is very charter supportive.
Once you're approved, If you show success financially and academically for three years, you have great opportunity to expand. You write charter expansion amendments every year. We've done it at great hearts and, and expanded across the state. Expanded great hearts into an online program, but. You can expand through charter expansion amendments, increase the number of campuses, increase your geographic area, increase the number of students enrolled.
The number one barrier to growth though is certain municipalities, when you try to go into Dallas, i s d for [00:22:00] example, you wanna expand your charter into Dallas. Great Hearts hasn't expanded into Dallas. And one of the reasons is there's. A huge coordinated push at the, at the local level, municipal level with regard to permitting and zoning and fees that don't apply to traditional districts.
And so the number one bill of the session is a municipality bill. And then with regard to online charters. So in response to Covid there was this really deep discussion around. Emergency response online learning versus high quality online learning and the experiences that families and students have.
And so we created a Bill LA and passed it two years ago to create the Texas Commission on Online Learning to look at best practices and models because. Our existing code that we've been operating under for about 20 years has a lot of limitations. Very few districts or charters were able to offer full-time or supplemental online learning and hybrid learning wasn't allowed at [00:23:00] all because of our funding model as a seat based funding model in Texas.
So you weren't incentivized to do interesting hybrid programs because if students didn't have a but in a seat that day, you weren't funded for it. So we passed a bill to create the Texas Commission on Virtual Education. And that commission was appointed by Governor, Lieutenant, governor, speaker, and they spent the last year, all of 2022, studying national best practices.
We had experts come in and had a really comprehensive report, and that report is now resulting in legislation. The house bill was filed last week. The Senate bill will be filed this week. They'll be very similar. And we're working deeply on the bill. Great Hearts, for example, operated a full, they stood up innovated a f a full-time online program using a lot of the flexibilities that Commissioner Morath allowed just during Covid emergency response.
And then we got that extended for two [00:24:00] more years. And now this bill will allow if passed, which I do believe that it will pass this session. It will allow districts and charters to. To provide full-time online programs, hybrid programs that suggest changing the funding model away from an ADA based model for full-time online and hybrid programs, and then supplemental course providers.
So you probably have some supplemental course providers here in the audience. Hoping to take some barriers away for student enrollment. Right now, districts can deny students enrollment in online courses for a myriad of reasons. So we're trying to tackle that
Greg Mauro: as. Fantastic. Super helpful. Well look, I wanna, I wanna ask Glen and Dan about I mean, Glen, maybe you can talk about, I mean, Florida started in a restricted fashion as well with their vouchers.
So, and now we seem to be in a competition among governors healthy competition of wanting to outdo each other. So maybe you can touch just really quickly where, where, where Florida is and the e evolution of how it got to where it is right now.
Glen Gilzean: Yeah. Everything that we, you just [00:25:00] heard. And we're just really excited that we have a governor who's very ambitious and leading the charge.
I'm hearing from other states there's like, whatever Ron DeSantis is doing, follow that lead and everybody else is following, which is really good. But with H Bill ho one that will hit the floor in the house. This week it will create that universal e s a for all families. The governor just did a press goggle not too long ago.
He had the state of the state today, and he talked about how it's important to make sure that every child get access to education, freedom going forward. We've evolved from. Where the, the initial fights were very similar, where it was all about we, in order to get something passed, we had to go after lo free and reduced lunch and families.
And then every year we had continued to say, okay, how can we increase that, increase the, the wages and the the family household incomes and things of that nature. So it's a great time to be in Florida and it's a great time to have access to this education.
Greg Mauro: You know, it's, it's, it's fascinating actually.
We have Patty Buoys here doing consulting work for us on, on the tis history of [00:26:00] takeovers of school districts. And what's fascinating is Florida having this choice over the last, you know, 15 years almost has actually enabled, its, its public schools to really respond and improve. And if you look at the takeover environment in Florida, there's really, you know, unlike Houston or a lot of other places where there's just, you know, you know, should be taken over, should be taken over, should be taken over You know, Florida has actually had a massive turnaround in their public school performance because of choice.
So it's, it's pretty fascinating. You know, Dan if, if Texas ends up being a, a limited some limitations as as Julie described, Is, is that a, is that still a big win for the movement? I mean with Florida and Texas is sort of as they go, shall everyone but the zombie California? Absolutely. It's a,
Dan Lips: absolutely, it would be a huge win.
That's been the case in Arizona. It started off 20 plus years ago with charter schools and tuition tax credits expanded to vouchers. Now ESAs just like Florida, so it's a natural model. Programs to grow that way. And I [00:27:00] think one of the best things about these experiences is that when a program like this is very revolutionary, it's introduced to a community, there's some concerns.
They realize that the, the, the world doesn't end. Especially when you see the value it's provided in Arizona and Florida to special needs students people become comfortable with the idea which grows.
Greg Mauro: Excellent. Now, Preston, let's, let's close with you cause you had some you know, some of your research is fascinating on how you're proposing to fix higher ed, which obviously I think part of that solution feeds back into high school and doing perhaps, you know, dual enrollment, early college and high school.
But it, it, it seems like we have a shared belief in that ultimately you, you need the universities who basically have this free financing stream to stand behind what they're actually. I've always said that like, if you would just get them to guarantee 5% of principal going up 5% per year eventually you, you, you know, you you, you'd see some real transformation in, in higher ed, but it was fun to read some of your research here.
Maybe you can gi give a gi if you could [00:28:00] summarize some of your, your advice on how to restructure higher ed lending and the probability of, of that happening based on your read of the political environment. Absolutely. Well, I
Preston Cooper: think the root of the problem, as you, as you said, is that colleges really do not have a direct financial stake in their students' future success.
So we put out a, a comprehensive proposal just last week that would basically ensure when the federal government is making a loan to students. If that student is not able to pay back their loan because their income is too low or they default then the college is going to have to compensate taxpayers for all or some of that loan.
And we believe that if colleges are on the hook for some of that, that they will say, Hey, you know, if we are charging too much for a program that does not deliver, you know, an economic value that is commensurate with what we are charging, we are either gonna have to lower that price or we're gonna have to find ways to make sure that our education has more labor market relevance.
And we estimate that if the, if enacted this proposal would save taxpayers about 13 billion per year. We reinvest a big portion of that [00:29:00] into increased financial aid awards you know, grant aid, not loan aid for low and middle income students who are pursuing high return low cost uh, you know, high ROI programs.
And so we believe that if enacted this would be both kind of a carrot and a stick to ensure that colleges do have financial incentives to ensure they're serving their students.
Greg Mauro: Now, have you met Ken Rug Ruggerio from the last panel? Are you familiar? I'm not sure, but Okay. So he, I looked at a lot of what he, he's in the scent and he invented the, the outcome-based loan where if the loan is if you don't get gainfully employed after taking his loan, it's forgiven, tax free.
And he's also tried, I think, unsuccessfully to get the the, you know, the student loans are currently non-dischargeable. Another scam. Right, that you that they can sell you this horrible product, but then you actually can't discharge it in personal bankruptcy. And he's tried, I think, to actually be the first student lender that can remove that criterion.
And I think he's on the, he's on the finish lines of that. I don't see him here. So in any event, Wonderful panel guys. Thanks so much for participating. Julie, thanks for running over. Really appreciate it.[00:30:00]
Evan Baehr: Thanks for tuning in to Venture To Flourish. If you know someone who should be listening to the pod, would you do me a favor and just send them a link and check out the site learn.vc/flourish. There you can subscribe to our newsletter, read transcripts, find related articles, and even upcoming events, and.
On a personal note, I'm really glad you're here. There are a lot of parts of my own life where I feel like I'm languishing, so I love your interest in the topic and look forward to figuring out what we can achieve together. Signing off, it's Evan Bayer from Venture to Flourish.