REGULATING ISAs: Two bills introduced by Republicans, including Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, could set “new legal frameworks” for income-share agreements, or ISAs, POLITICO reports. The agreements generally entail investors pay students’ tuition and living expenses in exchange for a percentage of their income after graduation.
According to POLITICO, the more recent of the two bills takes a page from Purdue University’s ISA program, which stipulates that payments can’t be greater than 15 percent of a student's income, and that students only pay back investors if they have a job and are earning 150 percent above the poverty line.
"It's a little bit ironic—you usually think of Republicans being less inclined to regulate," Jason Delisle, a resident fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, told POLITICO. "It's an attempt to say, maybe if there were more legal clarity and protections around what an income-share agreement is and how federal law would treat them, that might encourage more entities to offer them. It's trying to get out in front of the market."
