At Lambda, students pay nothing upfront. But they are required to pay 17 percent of their salary to Lambda for two years if they get a job that pays more than $50,000. (Lambda says 83 percent of its students get a job with a median salary of $70,000 within six months of graduating.) If they don’t get a job, or their salary is lower, they pay nothing. Payments are capped at $30,000, so a highly paid student isn’t penalized for success, and if a student loses a job, the payments pause.

It is a model that so far has been aimed at vocational education but has the potential to end the crushing cycle of student debt and change the way schools think about students.

“It aligns the incentives fully,” said Mr. Lewis, the venture capitalist.

The school is incentivized to only enroll motivated students who won’t drop out; it is incentivized to successfully teach them the skills they will need on the job; it is incentivized to find them a job; and it is incentivized to make sure they are a success once they’re on the job because the school relies on employers to keep hiring its graduates.

“There are no schools that are incentivized to make their students successful anywhere,” said Austen Allred, co-founder and chief executive of Lambda. “The schools get paid up front, they get paid in cash, whether that’s by the government or whether that’s by an individual doesn’t really matter. At the end of the day, the schools get paid no matter what.

“I think in order to create better outcomes the school has to take the hit,” he said.

Mr. Allred said he doesn’t see Lambda as a replacement for a four-year education — yet.

“What we’re built to do right now is close employment gaps,” he said. “So if you have a field where there is a shortage of employees the obvious place for us to start is by building programs to fill those holes.”

Whether this model can — or should — be applied to the larger education system remains an open question. It clearly improves the financial incentives for the school and the student. But, if expanded more widely, it could press programs to ignore a traditional liberal arts education, where the earning power is reduced. If a student dreamed of a major in Russian literature, she may struggle to find a school that sees a knowledge of Tolstoy to be particularly marketable.