Live data from Hacker News

CFPB Takes Action Against Coding Boot Camp BloomTech and CEO Austen Allred

consumerfinance.gov

11–20 of 384 posts

Re: CFPB Takes Action Against Coding Boot Camp BloomTech and CEO Austen Allred

#14

Are there any legit income-sharing schools of this type, tech or otherwise? Done fairly, it sounds like an interesting alternative to upfront tuition. On the surface it doesn't seem like a bad model, but of course it could be twisted to evil ends. From the article: > The loans carry substantial risk, as a single missed payment triggers a default and the remainder of the $30,000 “cap” becomes due immediately. > Studen…

App Academy (in a much hotter 2013 job market) honored its 10% of my first year’s salary ISA when I attended. Anecdotally from my cohort, they worked with people on missed payments without triggering a balloon repayment.

Re: CFPB Takes Action Against Coding Boot Camp BloomTech and CEO Austen Allred

#16
There's probably a good argument to ignore rule breaking and little deceptive marketing if the student outcomes are good but it looks like in-aggregate that they weren't and that students were better off taking a loan and attending Oregon State's Post Bac in CS or Hack Reactor.

Re: CFPB Takes Action Against Coding Boot Camp BloomTech and CEO Austen Allred

#18
post #5

This is the boot camp school formerly known as Lambda School, that came under a lot of fire in the past for these types of practices, and other issues. Previous trouble they've been in: https://dfpi.ca.gov/2021/04/26/lambda-school-reaches-settlem... https://techcrunch.com/2021/05/13/lambda-school-lawsuits/

This is one of those situations lending support to the corporate death penalty. Allowing name changes like Worldcom, Spectrum, and so on to write off some liabilities while operating as if nothing happened.

Re: CFPB Takes Action Against Coding Boot Camp BloomTech and CEO Austen Allred

#19
post #8

Unreal: > Allred tweeted that the school achieved a 100 percent job-placement rate in one of its cohorts, and later acknowledged in a private message that the sample size was just one student.

Aha that’s a gem, it’s like that crypto company listed “audited by ”. They do not mention they failed the audit, but they “did” get audited.

Re: CFPB Takes Action Against Coding Boot Camp BloomTech and CEO Austen Allred

#20
Am I crazy, or do fines never come close to matching damages? Or jailtime? I'm constantly seeing rulings or indictments where an article says "defendant faces $1500 in fines or two years jail time", as if those are in any way equivalent. Were all the fine quantities written up in 1875 and just never got updated?

In this case, defendants are accused of conning "at least 11,000 income share loans" "carrying an average finance charge of around $4,000", but their fine is $164,000? A fraud of $44M just for the financing charges produces a fine of $164K? As I missing something?

Post reply on HN