Giving Compass' Take:

• EdSurge explores how income-share agreements — in which students give a portion of their future salary to fund their education, rather than paying for tuition up front — could upend college financing models.

• While the use of income-share is still in its early stages for traditional colleges and universities, it's worth looking at how we can address the rising cost of higher education in order to expand opportunities for all.

• One military university is trying this idea out. Here's how it's going.

This month the U.S. Education Department announced a proposal to remove a set of higher education regulations meant to punish college programs that turned out to be bad deals for students — specifically, ones whose graduates’ student-loan payments were higher than a specific portion their incomes.

The policy, known as “gainful employment” was proposed in 2011 under the Obama administration to hold higher-ed institutions accountable to student outcomes after a string of for-profit colleges were accused of fraud, including massive closures like ITT Technical Institute. Yet as the policy faces threats of repeal, a tuition financing model that emerged with similar goals around tying student outcomes to accountability is quietly gaining more attention.

An income-share agreement (ISA) is a form of tuition financing where students pay back a percentage of their income after they graduate, rather than taking out loans or paying for tuition up-front.

The model has grown popular at non-accredited education programs such as coding bootcamps, where students don’t have access to federal student loans and grants. But increasingly, income-share agreements are showing up on traditional campuses, too. Take Purdue University, which in 2016 launched its “Back A Boiler” program, where students can choose to finance their education by paying nothing now and forking over a percentage of their income after graduating for up to 10 years.

Purdue works with income-share agreement provider Vemo Education to provide the alternative financing option. The startup, which was founded in 2015, currently works with 30 institutions, including six colleges and universities, some coding bootcamps, and a few other alternative education providers.

Read the full article about income-share agreements and colleges by Sydney Johnson at EdSurge.