Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Lambda School is a predatory bootcamp that lies about students outcomes

twitter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 142 posts

Re: Lambda School is a predatory bootcamp that lies about students outcomes

#61

Post by maxerickson »

austenallred wrote: post #58
maxerickson wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The cash to train students needs to come from somewhere. So in Lambda School's case that's either VCs or some other investors. This makes sense for liquidity, but ultimately the ISAs are what has to provide the funding (or it's not a viable business). As the investment terms improve, the portion of the ISA payout spent on training has to go down. You are correct that the ISAs need to pay out to be an interesting inve…

You’re forgetting the student in all of this. At the end of the day the decision maker is the student who decides if it’s a good deal. The financing is all cashflow management behind the scenes that doesn’t really matter.

Sure, they can decide if the think the deal is worth it to them or not, but they probably aren't the one with the most information about the training spend and value of the ISA.

Re: Lambda School is a predatory bootcamp that lies about students outcomes

#62

Post by luxuryballs »

sellyme wrote: post #17
potions wrote: post #5

Lambda School seems questionable for a few reasons I was already aware of as a semi-habitual hirer of bootcampers: trying to scale too fast & degrading the product, possibly disaligned incentives if ISAs are sold off immediately, etc. If I weren't aware of these issues, this tweet/thread would not have taught me about them. However -- "Naturally they're partnered with Amazon"...to get people jobs as programmers at Am…

> an Amazon FC job @$15/hr + healthcare is a "holy shit amazing" job. This is true tons of places. It's double minimum wage! Affordable healthcare! I don't disbelieve you, but the fact that this "holy shit amazing" job in a highly-skilled and in-demand field pays less than I was earning at McDonald's when I was 14 makes me extremely concerned about what Americans have been convinced is normal.

There’s nothing to believe, he’s saying that when you live in an area with $8/hr jobs getting a $15/hr one is a boon. Thus it’s clearly not a reference to the area you lived in?

Re: Lambda School is a predatory bootcamp that lies about students outcomes

#63

Post by luxuryballs »

seriousquestion wrote: post #7

Colleges are predatory, putting kids deep into debt that they may never be able to repay and can't even remove with bankruptcy. And said debt has exploded in recent decades with no corresponding improvement in outcomes. Whereas Lambda aligns their interests with the student. If their students don't get a job, Lambda doesn't get paid. Why is a better model being attacked like this?

Peter Schiff said it best “these kids are graduating with a mortgage and no house”.

Re: Lambda School is a predatory bootcamp that lies about students outcomes

#64

Post by austenallred »

maxerickson wrote: post #61
austenallred wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re forgetting the student in all of this. At the end of the day the decision maker is the student who decides if it’s a good deal. The financing is all cashflow management behind the scenes that doesn’t really matter.

Sure, they can decide if the think the deal is worth it to them or not, but they probably aren't the one with the most information about the training spend and value of the ISA.

It doesn’t really matter. As a purchaser of x it doesn’t matter to me what it costs to make x so long as I know clearly what x is.

A Stanford grad doesn’t know what the marginal cost of their enrollment is.

Re: Lambda School is a predatory bootcamp that lies about students outcomes

#65

Post by maxerickson »

austenallred wrote: post #64
maxerickson wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, they can decide if the think the deal is worth it to them or not, but they probably aren't the one with the most information about the training spend and value of the ISA.

It doesn’t really matter. As a purchaser of x it doesn’t matter to me what it costs to make x so long as I know clearly what x is. A Stanford grad doesn’t know what the marginal cost of their enrollment is.

It doesn't matter particularly to the student, but there is some utility, even from the outside, in estimating how much direct value a school provides and how much of a matchmaking service it provides. Your whole premise is that universities mostly provide matchmaking!

Re: Lambda School is a predatory bootcamp that lies about students outcomes

#66

Post by Tarsul »

barry-cotter wrote: post #59
Tarsul wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

thanks for that link. "More than 53 million people— 44 percent of all workers ages 18–64 in the United States— earn low hourly wages", which is defined as earning 2/3 of the median male worker. The median hourly wage for those 53 million people is $10.22. One might argue about semantics but these stats are devastating nonetheless.

Forty four percent of the workforce earns less than two thirds of the median male wage is devastating? There are hundreds of millions of people who live on less than $2 a day. The US has the highest average household consumption in the world by a very large margin. If you think US living standards are inadequate the rest of the world is much, much worse.

if the US starts to orient itself after third world countries, then you're correct: It's really going good. It's all relative. I thought the US would rather compare itself to Europe, Japan, etc. but okay.

Re: Lambda School is a predatory bootcamp that lies about students outcomes

#67

Post by etripe »

Tarsul wrote: post #48
beckman466 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the fact that this "holy shit amazing" job in a highly-skilled and in-demand field pays less than I was earning at McDonald's when I was 14 makes me extremely concerned about what Americans have been convinced is normal. “Amazon Can Only Claim Their Jobs Are Decent Because American Work Has Gotten So Miserable Amazon maims its workers and drives wages down, yet the company still attracts job applicants and claims t…

thanks for that link. "More than 53 million people— 44 percent of all workers ages 18–64 in the United States— earn low hourly wages", which is defined as earning 2/3 of the median male worker. The median hourly wage for those 53 million people is $10.22. One might argue about semantics but these stats are devastating nonetheless.

A quick search tells me that the median is 35k per year, the mean time off is 10 days and there are 13 national holidays.

So that would put it at roughly $15 * 48 hours * 48 weeks. For 35k. I agree, that's devastating.

Re: Lambda School is a predatory bootcamp that lies about students outcomes

#68

Post by konaraddi »

agd wrote: post #35

As someone who used to work in this industry, I'm kind of torn on Lambda School. It's clear that Austen lied in the past about outcomes and the company perhaps preferred growth over customer experience early on. However college education is so broken in the US that any alternative can look good in comparison. Long term I'm bullish on Lambda, they're in a rapidly growing market, signing good partnerships like this, an…

> Long term I'm bullish on Lambda

How long is your long term? I’m bullish on Lambda’s current business model in the short term because in the long term it’s not fair for job-seekers to sell a chunk of their future just so they can make it through the present and arrive at the future. Wealthy people don’t have to do that. And the impoverished can’t afford to spend the time to attend Lambda school.

Education should be as accessible as possible and I’m optimistic that it will be on the long term. Lambda school is progress but it’s not the end game.

Re: Lambda School is a predatory bootcamp that lies about students outcomes

#69

Post by sugarwater »

austenallred wrote: post #52
sandofsky wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Colleges are predatory, putting kids deep into debt that they may never be able to repay and can't even remove with bankruptcy. We're not talking about colleges. The fact other scams exist in the world has zero bearing on whether one specific company is scamming people. > Whereas Lambda aligns their interests with the student. They align themselves with their investors. That's their fiduciary duty. If you want to u…

That isn't how any of this works. There has been a constant allegation that Lambda School sells its ISAs and therefore no longer has incentives that are aligned with students. The assertion is that, in “Big Short” style, we sell off all the risk of our students being placed to someone else and don’t have to care about outcomes. Nothing could be further from the truth. When Lambda School finances ISAs here’s how it wo…

After Lambda School completely removed code review, grading, attendance, TLs when I was enrolled... I just couldn't see how the incentives were aligned anymore. There was no one looking at my assignments, my assessments, my projects and telling me what I got wrong and how I could do better.

Those choices made by Lambda only hurt students' learning and therefore chances to get a job. And when students complained, the school addressed the complaints but barely made a change.

Re: Lambda School is a predatory bootcamp that lies about students outcomes

#70

Post by jpindar »

peter_retief wrote: post #6

Oh no I actually thought it was a really good idea to give people a chance to work hard and get a better life. I still dont completely write it off as a bad idea. I mentioned it to my son but he was sceptical.

I think it could be a good idea, if it were run by an existing organization that was already financially successful and didn't need to optimize for growth or cash flow, such as a university or one of the existing MOOC providers.
Post reply on HN