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Lambda School wants to teach nursing

economist.com

81–90 of 137 posts

Re: Lambda School wants to teach nursing

#81
post #43

I love Lambda's concept. I think aligning the interests of the school with the interests of the student are a fantastic evolution, and committing to only charge students for payback in the case that they have a positive outcome is great too. That said, the "only pay us back if you get a good job" commitment seems like lip service as long as the cutoff is $50K (for software dev at least). Lambda school's team is super…

Most of our students are in rural areas where $50k is actually really good money (though this is changing). There’s not really an existing legal framework to say “if you make x in this kind of city or y in this kind of city.” Certainly, in San Francisco, $50k isn’t a win. Luckily our median salary there is well into the six figures. Lambda School’s income share agreement is also (to my knowledge) the only in the indu…

Consider using a base amount modified by cost of living, esp locational, with a formula that adapts when it changes. Buffer does this for their transparent salary calculations:

https://open.buffer.com/transparent-salaries/

Btw, love what you're doing. It might have helped me back when I was in a rural area. We didn't have Internet, though. So, would've been whatever I could do at libraries during narrow windows of computer use. These days it's McDonalds' Wifi for lots of folks. Do factor that into your offerings somehow if you don't already.

Good luck LS! Looks like awesome stuff you all are doing.

Re: Lambda School wants to teach nursing

#82
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If people can self learn they will. I think doing so is much, much more difficult than others pretend like it is. Given that you could earn the entire cost of Lambda School (at the cap - the most expensive) in about three months of engineering time, it’s a rational decision even if you just speed up the process.

> If people can self learn they will. I think doing so is much, much more difficult than others pretend like it is. I'm not sure. But what's definitely true is that it's WAY harder as an adult. Most self-taught programmers I know (including myself) learned to program as children/teenagers. Learning at that age is easier -- if not biologically, then at the very least because you have tons of free time. The few I know…

> Learning at that age is easier ... at the very least because you have tons of free time.

That isn't really a valid argument here though because Lambda School is a full-time program to my understanding, so it's expected you somehow have 8 hours a day to put into it.

Re: Lambda School wants to teach nursing

#83
> If Lambda can turn a profit by offering people a stab at a decent job, that would be a fine lesson in capitalism.

I'm not so sure. The solution might not be to train more nurses, but to retain the exiting nurses. Nurses have a really high turnover rate in the U.S. The problem is nursing is demanding work and it often requires long hours.

> Nurses who work more than 12 hours in a single shift and more than 40 hours a week are likely to leave the nursing workforce within a year. Overtime for nurses should not be commonplace. Instead, hospitals and other healthcare organizations should reduce the length of shifts and the number of hours in a workweek. Hospital administrators should not push nurses into working extra hours.

https://rnbsnonline.unm.edu/articles/high-cost-of-nurse-turn...

> A study by Compdata Surveys of 11,000 healthcare employers with more than 11 million employees found the average turnover in healthcare jobs in 2017 was 20.6%, up from 15.6% in 2010, putting healthcare’s turnover second only to hospitality’s.

https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/finance/will-2018-be-t...

> Turnover rates also varied significantly across countries with the highest rate reported in New Zealand (44·3%) followed by the US (26·8%), Canada (19·9%) and Australia (15·1%).

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/jan.12483

This might be a lesson in capitalism, but maybe not the lesson that The Economists thinks.

Re: Lambda School wants to teach nursing

#85

I'm torn on Lambda. On one hand, it seems far superior to traditional higher education, since the schools success depends on the success of the students. At the same time, profit sharing is a terrible financial decision. When compared with other bootcamps, it's basically a bet against yourself. You're willing to risk tens of thousands of dollars more money for some risk insurance. I have such a hard time accepting th…

A lot of people aren't driven enough by themselves. So although they -could- look things up and start working on projects, they -don't-.

Another thing is the teachers/mentors. I'm not sure about Lamba School's quality but in general having a teacher or mentor who can guide you is very beneficial. The thing with programming is that there's so much you have to learn at first.

I am also completely self taught. I learned Ruby to apply into one academy but got rejected. But I continued to work through their recommended materials anyway and now I work remotely fulltime as a software developer.

Re: Lambda School wants to teach nursing

#86
(I don't know about Lambda School specifically; just speaking of fields here.)

Any talk of transferring anything cultural from current software development practice to somewhere else important... makes me nervous, by default.

Right now, we have huge problems in software development practice, with both design&implementation quality, and ethics.

You don't want your medical device or bridge developed in any way like the majority of software right now. You don't want your ER nurse to be smug about how smart they are, while they do shoddy work with fad tools and halfwitted cargo cult processes. You don't want your doctor or lawyer selling you out to 'analytics', for starters, like almost every dotcom startup does.

As startups try to bring the greatness of Webrogramming to other areas, are they going to suddenly say, "Oh, but this is actually an important area, unlike the information infrastructure of humanity, so this one we'll do with more responsibility than obviously we have been."

Re: Lambda School wants to teach nursing

#87

Lambda school is a blessing for those of us born into unfortunate circumstances with limited time, money and an urgent need to support a family and hopefully pull them out of poverty. I start in May wish me luck

Good luck! Things might get hard or seem confusing at times. I still feel that way after years of programming experience. You'll get through it and enjoy the benefits!

Re: Lambda School wants to teach nursing

#88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What was the worst part of Lambda? What are we really bad at?

My biased view: - Teaching assistants and section leads play a huge role in the quality of student experience. I think sometimes a supply/demand for filling these positions can result in not the best people filling them, which then can undermine the experience if your teaching assistant isn't the best. - The system relies on teaching assistants for reviewing student code, and determining if students pass their tests.…

Perfect, thank you!

Re: Lambda School wants to teach nursing

#89
post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a friend going through a boot camp, and the financing was eye opening. They are indeed expensive, but consider: what if an applicant does not have the credit history or collateral to get a student loan? This is a pretty common situation for people looking to pick up a trade skill to get out of the unskilled labor market, or for people looking to transition into a more desirable field of work.

Lambda School doesn’t currently look at credit history or require collateral.

Neither do traditional Federal student loans.

Re: Lambda School wants to teach nursing

#90

This is ironic. My girlfriend, a nurse of 10+ years, got accepted to the Lambda School web dev track and is starting at the end of May, to get out of nursing.

The end goal of Lambda School is to be somewhat of an economic clearing house. Move people from where they are to where they want to be quickly, cheaply, and taking care of the entire stack at no risk to the student. So this is actually in line with where we want to be in the future.

What if someone wants to go somewhere where they most likely won't be paid much? (e.g. art, music) Can Lambda School extend there?
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