Contrast that with a private loan for tuition.

You pay if you have no job, or any job. Debt has no expiration and is not disc arable in bankruptcy.

It is clear that ISAs are worse if you will be successful. It is also clear that traditional loans are worse if you are wildly unsuccessful.

The tradeoff is the tricky part.

Debt does generally have an expiration and is discardable in bankruptcy... unless you live in America. ISAs might be an attractive alternative to how terrible American laws about student debt are, but the real solution is to fix the awful laws.

A better alternative that you can pursue today is just to seek education abroad, Canadian universities are a fraction of the cost for an equivalent service - or be careful about the education you choose, most state colleges are very reasonable for in-state tuition and you can potentially save on room and board.

Ivy-league schools are overpriced and a waste of money.

If we are talking about higher education in general, the US also has a plethora of affordable colleges.

In California, tuition at community colleges is $1,300/year and $5,700/yr for state colleges.

Even the expensive Universities of California are 14k/year.

The real costs are room, board, and entertainment. For example, a shared dormitory room and food plan is easily 20k/year

> Debt does generally have an expiration and is discardable in bankruptcy... unless you live in America.

If we start with other countries, there will be many other catches. Such as personal bankruptcy not being a concept at all in many jurisdictions.

Only around 10% of total loans disbursements are private.

I don't know about other ISAs, but with Lambda school the job had to be related to your bootcamp learning for you to owe them money.

> get a better job that has nothing to do with the bootcamp

I'll take it.