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Lambda School leaked documents show poor performance over the last two years

businessinsider.com

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Re: Lambda School leaked documents show poor performance over the last two years

#71

Post by gigatexal »

sam0x17 wrote: post #24

It isn't just Lambda School. I mentor for [insert large coding bootcamp here] and I will say things have been going badly across the board for more than 50% of students. They recently had to cut a lot of staff, and completion rates seem to hover around only 50-60% when you take into account all the students they remove from this calculation when they withdraw for "personal reasons". The employment numbers I don't hav…

I think this sums up the issue with bootcamps:

"That said, two of our best junior devs (at Arist YC S20) are Lambda School and Ironclad grads respectively, and neither of them had any background in programming and went right from bootcamp into their current positions. So it definitely works for some people."

Some folks thrive in this environment either by natural ability or their learning style and others do not. For whatever the reason the coding bootcamp gets the flack for underperforming folks and it seems to me unfair: Why are they held to this super high standard to teach a difficult subject (computer programming at a high level) to all kinds of learners at all levels?

Re: Lambda School leaked documents show poor performance over the last two years

#72

Post by devteambravo »

arthurwu wrote: post #37
devteambravo wrote: post #15

I come from the failed Lambda School UX program. It wasted more than a year of my life. And to add insult to injury, after having succeeded in learning UX on my own + finding employment, I now send them a mortgage payment's worth of $$$ every month, until I reach that $30k limit. What a damn scam.

How did it suck?

Students graded students papers. Racism. Unending trolling on Slack. Peers panicking as they realize the program was not "finished". (ie: We were paying beta testers) Being roped in to the web dev program when I didn't want to be a dev (This happened after the UX program was shut down).

I could write a book

Re: Lambda School leaked documents show poor performance over the last two years

#73

Post by missinfo »

sam0x17 wrote: post #24

It isn't just Lambda School. I mentor for [insert large coding bootcamp here] and I will say things have been going badly across the board for more than 50% of students. They recently had to cut a lot of staff, and completion rates seem to hover around only 50-60% when you take into account all the students they remove from this calculation when they withdraw for "personal reasons". The employment numbers I don't hav…

> things have been going badly across the board for more than 50% of students

How does this compare to traditional colleges? We hear a lot about students saddled with massive debt and useless degrees, but I don't have a good sense of what percentage that is.

And my understanding of Lambda is that you don't end up with debt if the school fails you?

Re: Lambda School leaked documents show poor performance over the last two years

#74

Post by ResearchCode »

wly_cdgr wrote: post #47

Having majored in English Literature at an Ivy, let me just say, 30% is a pretty damn good industry placement rate. That said, I'm sure the large majority of those people could have done just as well through self-study and $1-2k worth of MOOCs

While not having majored in medicine myself, I see no reason why CS couldn't have a 99% placement rate too.

Re: Lambda School leaked documents show poor performance over the last two years

#75

Post by mplewis »

temp8964 wrote: post #20
999900000999 wrote: post #12

>The school recently sent him a letter demanding his banking information so that it could track direct deposits from a job. If he doesn't comply, it threatened to charge him his full tuition of $30,000 regardless of whether he gets a job. How disgusting. He should probably tell them no. Even if they wrote some non sense allowing this in the income share agreement, let them go to court. I've never met a successful boo…

Can you explain why is this disgusting? Why the income share agreement is non sense?

Send me your bank's routing number and your checking account number and I'll be happy to explain.

Re: Lambda School leaked documents show poor performance over the last two years

#76

Post by akanet »

ggreer wrote: post #67
akanet wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It depends on what you conceive of the school as - is it an educational institution that has an incentive to improve the lives of each one of its students, incurring variable cost for each? Or is it a fishing expedition to land as many students as possible for as cheaply as possible, and letting the ones who were going to get jobs on their own anyway pay for the rest?

If we judged colleges by the same standards, I doubt they'd come off better. Normal colleges are fishing expeditions to land as many students as possible for as cheaply as possible and burden students with inescapable debt. Students have to pay even if they don't graduate or get a good job. 4-year graduation rates are below 50%. After 6 years, only 62% of college students have gotten a 4-year degree. The rest are stu…

I agree that colleges suffer from the same perverse incentives. That is why transparency in outcomes reporting is so important, and why fraudulent reporting is so dangerous.

edit: oh, you're geoff greer. I emailed you a couple times about floobits when I was still running coderpad

Re: Lambda School leaked documents show poor performance over the last two years

#77

Post by temp8964 »

mplewis wrote: post #75
temp8964 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you explain why is this disgusting? Why the income share agreement is non sense?

Send me your bank's routing number and your checking account number and I'll be happy to explain.

What? Do I have any signed agreement with you?

Re: Lambda School leaked documents show poor performance over the last two years

#79

Post by spoonjim »

sam0x17 wrote: post #51
sam0x17 wrote: post #24

It isn't just Lambda School. I mentor for [insert large coding bootcamp here] and I will say things have been going badly across the board for more than 50% of students. They recently had to cut a lot of staff, and completion rates seem to hover around only 50-60% when you take into account all the students they remove from this calculation when they withdraw for "personal reasons". The employment numbers I don't hav…

This one particular student sticks with me. He was in his 60s-70s, and had a burgeoning career in IT/Security in the late 90s, but quit his job to take care of his ailing mother around 2001 or so. He took care of her, living off of her reverse mortgage for 20 years, but now she has passed away, and the term of the reverse mortgage ends soon (or I believe by now has ended) so the bank will be re-posessing his house, h…

Does any country do a decent job of retraining 70 year old men for developer positions? This does not need to be a high priority for a society if the 70 year old can afford a roof of their head and a meal.

Re: Lambda School leaked documents show poor performance over the last two years

#80

Post by temp8964 »

sam0x17 wrote: post #24

It isn't just Lambda School. I mentor for [insert large coding bootcamp here] and I will say things have been going badly across the board for more than 50% of students. They recently had to cut a lot of staff, and completion rates seem to hover around only 50-60% when you take into account all the students they remove from this calculation when they withdraw for "personal reasons". The employment numbers I don't hav…

Is 50% really bad? How much did they pay?

Compare to graduation rate of traditional colleges: https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=40

"The overall 6-year graduation rate for first-time, full-time undergraduate students who began seeking a bachelor’s degree at 4-year degree-granting institutions in fall 2012 was 62 percent. That is, by 2018 some 62 percent of students had completed a bachelor’s degree at the same institution where they started in 2012. The 6-year graduation rate was 61 percent at public institutions, 67 percent at private nonprofit institutions, and 25 percent at private for-profit institutions. The overall 6-year graduation rate was 65 percent for females and 59 percent for males; it was higher for females than for males at both public (64 vs. 58 percent) and private nonprofit (70 vs. 64 percent) institutions. However, at private for-profit institutions, males had a higher 6-year graduation rate than females (26 vs. 25 percent)."

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