“Student Debt Relief For New Hires” with Marc Zwetchkenbaum of Marc Z Legal Staffing

Jonathan (1s):
Welcome back to radio entrepreneurs. I’m Jonathan Freedman and our next guest up is Marc Z, a Marc Z moment. Give us an employment update. What are you seeing in the marketplace Marc?

Marc (9s):
John first. Great to see you. And thanks for having me on the show. What I thought we should talk about now that we’re, we’re returning to the, to regular employment balance. They say because what a lot of employers would decide to have sort of a hybrid arrangement, because a lot of major employers have had people and employees working totally remote for the last few years, and we’re going to a remote. The next subject now that was sort of on the back burner was tuition. And the, the people who have joined these companies or joined the law firms in terms of any job what’s affecting them are loan debt and tuition debt.

Marc (60s):
And there’s sort of two things that are really come on the radar screen. Now in the marketplace. One is different students, especially, or parents have pride too, but, but students who have paid for their tuitions are suing you the universities to try to get some kind of a discount on the tuition they paid during the pandemic and

Jonathan (1m 25s):
With the argument being that they didn’t get the full value that they paid for by not having all of the I’m guessing live interaction experiences and beyond just that the whole collegiate experience.

Marc (1m 39s):
Correct. Well, the argument of the students is that it’s an online degree. And you know, if you, if I wanted, when the proverbial, you wanted to go to a university of Phoenix or a, a college that’s really based on online learning, that’s fine, but that their tuition is substantially less than a university where you have in-class learning. And so they’re saying that they attended the classes, but they didn’t have that physical in-class learning. They didn’t have that physical being able to have that interaction with the professor.

Marc (2m 21s):
And just what goes into that in class learning versus remote learning. And the argument of the universities are, first of all, we provided the best possible education. At the time, it was a temporary solution to keep education going. We still had to pay the teachers the same. We still had our same course. You did have the proper credits that you received. And it was a temporary solution, the best solution due to the health pandemic that was going on. And initially a of the courts passed on it and they said, look, you don’t have standing and to Sue.

Marc (3m 7s):
And the court said that we’re not going to let these cases to proceed. In fact, many states are coming up with a, a law that will say to protect the university that will say the universities are not responsible for paying back tuition, because we told them that for the safety of their students, they needed to, you know, to have students go into sort of stay in place type situations in their homes, in their apartments. And you and I have family members that went through that. So

Jonathan (3m 44s):
It sounds sorta like the insurance clause says, act of God, you know, we’re not responsible for any acts, God pandemic probably falling under that category.

Marc (3m 53s):
Correct? Correct. But the, but the families come back and the students come back and say, well, that was, then that was now, this is then and get didn’t have that. And that’s great. They have a bill, but what happens before now, what’s interesting is the argument it’s, that’s really heating in terms of George Washington and American university. And there was a lawsuit with Catholic university. One of the, one of the points that was made by the Supreme court justice nominee to tangy brown Jackson is that this was a temporary solution. We are not an online learning degrees center or university.

Marc (4m 37s):
And so she pushed back and said that it should not go forward. But some of the, the majority of, of district of circuit court judges are saying to the district court, let’s revisit this because a lot of district court judges had passed on this.

Jonathan (4m 58s):
And I think one of the challenges that you point out is once the door is open, so to speak, you know, it would probably lead to a flood of, of litigation. I would imagine. So what’s the implication for employers for prospective employees. I’d imagine, you know, you’re, you’re, there may be a shift in terms of, I think you alluded to a little bit of a shift in terms of prospective employers, trying to attract talent, dealing with potential, to either pay tuition or reimburse for tuition costs. And I know a lot of students struggling with debt loads, you know, ability to, to actually, you know, not only fund their debt, but to live in increasingly expensive urban environments, you know, the old 30% of your salary going towards housing costs, doesn’t really apply in a marketplace where, you know, your housing costs 60% of, of what you earn.

Jonathan (5m 49s):
So what’s the implication or what are you seeing in the market and how do employers deal with it?

Marc (5m 55s):
Great, great question, John, a few years ago, I would say probably five to five years ago, maybe eight years ago, the government or major whether it was the federal government of the state government said, if you take a job in the public domain, working for an agency, working for the government, working for the, for the attorney General’s office, the district attorney’s office, we will help you. If you stay here over X amount of years, pay down your tuition. So that was a concept that was used. And I know we’ve worked with different aspiring lawyers who said, yes, this is a better opportunity.

Marc (6m 38s):
And I’m interested in the private sector, but I have to balance between paying back my tuition. Now the private sector employers are saying, if you, if you come over, it’s sort of like a signing bonus. If you come over, what is your tuition debt right now? So you provide what the tuition debt that is. We will pay down this amount, sort of like as a signing bonus, we will pay this off. And in a lot of cases, it won’t be taxed because it’s a company, it’s the company that’s doing this and the company can pay it on behalf of somebody as a benefit. So that needs to be worked out with the IRS, but different companies have different concepts.

Marc (7m 19s):
But the, the, the bottom line is what they’re saying is we’ll pay off that debt. So in return for you staying here X amount of years, or it coming for a certain period of time, and then obviously there’s a clawback. If the person leaves after a certain time, just like there’s a clawback, if they leave state or federal government. So these are definitely situations that beyond the federal government, with the federal, government’s trying to say, okay, we’ll dismiss this. It’s, it’s an incentive that a lot of employees are taking seriously.

Jonathan (7m 59s):
Yeah, well, I would imagine that it needs to be, and as I alluded to earlier, you know, we’re really caught in a situation where, you know, let’s not talk about, you know, college and graduate school, people barely getting by, but you know, you got people earning minimum wage. How do they afford to live in any sort of urban area with cost rising so dramatically? You know, we’re seeing inflation, it’s, it’s easy to say 10%, 12%, oh, a tank of gas is an extra four or five bucks, but started aggregating those numbers. And it just doesn’t add up if, you know, you’re talking about four or five bucks to fill up a gas tank, and if you’re doing it once a week and you know, that’s three, $400 to somebody earning $15,000 a year, that’s, that’s a big deal.

Marc (8m 41s):
Right?

Jonathan (8m 42s):
So, you know, it would seem to me that in an employment environment, that’s increasingly challenging to attract and retain good people. Employers need to get creative with the extent of the benefits that they’re offering. And, you know, tuition seems to be a hot button for a lot of people, obviously for good reason. You know, as, as those of, as we all know, outpaced inflation for the better part of the last four decades. So good stuff is always marked well, if people want to reach out to you talk more about services that you offer in your employment staffing, what’s the best way for them to reach out to you.

Marc (9m 20s):
Thanks, John. Well, as always, it’s been a pleasure talking to this morning. First of all, I’m you can Google mark Z M a R C, and the letter Z will come right up or Marx’s illegal.com, M a R C Z L E G a l.com and 6 1 7 3 3 8 1 300.

Jonathan (9m 40s):
Excellent. And we’ll be right back with another segment on radio entrepreneurs.