What Are Income Share Agreements? Holberton School Explains
By:Coding, a high-quality education, and ultimately a great career in tech should be accessible to everyone. In the United States alone, there are more than 44 million borrowers who collectively owe $1.5 trillion in student loan debt. At Holberton School, we strongly believe that Income Share Agreements (ISA) are a fantastic opportunity to prevent student debt in advance of a job.
Holberton School's mission "High-quality education for the many" means that we want to make sure that candidates' financial situations aren't a barrier to an education and a career. That's why we have been offering Income Share Agreements (ISA) to our students since the creation of the school in 2016. This means that students pay nothing until they have a job.
Holberton School trains full-stack software engineers in San Francisco, California, New Haven, Connecticut, and just announced, Bogotá and Medellín, Colombia.
About Income Share Agreements (ISA)
An Income Share Agreement (ISA) is a financial structure in which an organization provides something of value (here it's high-quality training) to a recipient who, in exchange, agrees to pay back a percentage of their income for a fixed period of time.
What's great about ISAs is that the organization's and recipient's interests are aligned. In the case of Holberton School, the student will only contribute financially if their annual income is $40,000 or more. If the recipient does not have a job or makes less than $40,000/year, then no payment is due.
The issue with a classic student loan is that the amount is fixed and the full amount must be repaid, regardless of the loan recipient's income. Often, the loan recipient accumulates interest, making repayment even more challenging. With a Holberton School ISA, the maximum amount a student will pay over three and a half years is $85,000. If the student has not paid $85,000 by the end of the three and a half year payment period, the remaining tuition balance is forgiven.
ISAs at Holberton School
To help you understand how ISAs can help you finance your education at Holberton School, we have created an ISA Tuition estimator that you can use on our website to determine an estimate of your tuition.
Holberton School's Tuition Estimator helps you plan the cost of an ISA.
At Holberton School, we do not select our students based on their existing coding skills or even their educational history. Our application process is based on curiosity, determination, and a passion to learn. We believe people of all backgrounds, ethnicities, and education deserve the opportunity to learn. Our admission process consists of 3 levels and will test your ability to follow through:
Once you are an accepted student (passed level 3), to qualify for an ISA, you will have to meet the following criteria:
If a candidate does not meet our ISA criteria (most of the time because of visa reasons), they also have the option to pay via upfront tuition.
Outcomes at Holberton School
The average full-time, starting salary for Holberton students is $105,000 per year. Holberton students are currently working in software engineering jobs at startups like PagerDuty, Scality, and Darby Smart but also large companies like Tesla, Apple, Pinterest, Facebook, and Google. Download our syllabus on our website to find out more about our school and our curriculum. You can start your application process now here.
This post was sponsored by Holberton School.
Want to learn more about Holberton School? Visit https://www.holbertonschool.com or check out their reviews on SwitchUp.