This is Planet Money from NPR.

As we enter a new school year, it is worth noting that college is as expensive, if not

more expensive than ever, and inflation is not helping that.

But you know, three years ago, we did talk about this novel, seemingly new to the United

States at least, this new way of paying for college.

Income share agreements.

Now if you have no idea what an income share agreement is, do not worry.

We have an episode to play for you as some background, but we wanted to play that episode

now so that we could give you a bit of an update.

Now that this income share agreement product has been around and in the world and in the

United States now for a little bit of time.

Here is that original episode from about three years ago.

Lauren Newworth is a junior at Purdue University.

She studies biological engineering and food processing sciences, which means she knows

a lot about how food works.

As a technical expert, is there some artificial flavor that's just like where they just nailed

it?

I would say like banana.

Banana is actually pretty cool from a chemical standpoint.

It's like a volatile confidence.

Lauren obviously is super into this stuff.

And she knew that Purdue was a good place to get into the food engineering industry, but

...