Buy now and pay later schemes might fly for furniture stores and car dealerships but it’s no way to approach higher education.

Kevin Kiley of Inside Higher Ed reports.

Oregon plan would shift tuition payment to after graduation

When an advertisement says “No money down,” an asterisk and some fine print typically follow. And it’s probably wise to look for that.

That seems to be the case with an Oregon proposal that has generated headlines such as “Plan would make tuition free at Oregon colleges,” “Oregon is doing free higher education the right way,” and “Oregon looking to eliminate tuition and loans for higher education students.”

Despite the headlines, the state didn’t suddenly abandon all plans to charge tuition. Last week the Oregon legislature took the first steps toward possibly implementing a plan that would allow public college and university students to forgo upfront tuition payments in exchange for paying a portion of their wages back to their alma mater for about 25 years following graduation. While it may mean no money down, it could still add up to large tuition bills.

But the program is a long way from actually being instituted. The bill approved by the legislature, if it is signed by the governor, would only direct the state’s Higher Education Coordinating Commission – a relatively new agency created amid broader governance changes in recent years — to create a pilot program for legislative consideration in 2015. If the governor signs the bill, the commission would work between now and the 2015 legislative session to figure out how to overcome significant logistical barriers to implementation and the pros and cons of implementing such a system.