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

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

#111

Post by reaperman »

wredue wrote: post #61
kklisura wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ...with inflated promises of job-placement rates as high as 86 percent, when the company’s internal metrics showed placement rates closer to 50 percent and in some cases as low as 30 percent. > BloomTech advertised on its website that 71 to 86 percent of students were placed in jobs within six months of graduation, when its non-public reporting to investors consistently showed placement rates closer to 50 percent.…

For the record, it’s actually far worse than this even, as many of your “teachers” are just people from the previous cohort. After a slew of negative reviews came from a few people that verifiably took the early courses, lambda decided not to improve their course, but instead to do two things: 1) they gave students financial credit for posting positive reviews on social media 2) they paid review shops out of India an…

#2 is a clear FTC violation if I'm not mistaken.

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

#112

Post by lazyasciiart »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #52
sandofsky wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think they should have listed “draft an arbitration claim,” on their enrollment prerequisites?

> Do you think they should have listed “draft an arbitration claim,” on their enrollment prerequisites? Unless you’re a total numpty, you can learn online how to draft an arb claim. And even if you are a numpty, you should be be to find—in a half-decent cohort—someone who can do this. The issue is rarely ability. It’s learned helplessness in the face of the legal system. The anxiety, not ability, is the limiting fact…

And fuck people with anxiety, right?

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

#113

Post by CPLX »

homefree wrote: post #107
martythemaniak wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

VCs would improve their public image if they took the occasional L.

I thought the idea behind lambda was good I was a lot more surprised by PG's strong support for Mighty which seemed a lot more bizarre. Though his recent tweets wrt Israel have been the most disappointing for me.

Thanks for reminding me of that.

That was one of the dumbest fucking startup ideas most people had seen in awhile. Many just sort of said the obvious out loud, which is that it made no fucking sense as a business, and then all these rich supposed geniuses tried to shout them down.

Even by the usual standards of the genre that one was a head scratcher.

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

#114

Post by reaperman »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #38
sandofsky wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At first I found it weird that the BPPE can't discipline a company until it's registered and operating legally. So for the first few years, it couldn't do anything. The twist is that until the BPPE approves a school to operate, any student debt obligations up to that point are not valid. In theory, anyone in California who enrolled before August 2020 owes them nothing. The problem is that Lambda School still tries to…

> If they do lawyer up, they end up being forced into arbitration due to an arbitration clause in their student agreements You’re literally describing why arbitration works. Someone low income can just file for arbitration with minimal work by a lawyer. Contrast that with the tens of thousands they’d need to pay a litigator.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40071539

> I went to a lawyer and was told it wasn't worth suing, because they required arbitration in NYC, which would cost more than I would save.

It sounds like arbitration does not work, according to people who had their lawyer look into it for this exact case. What are your thoughts on it given this new information available to you?

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

#115

Post by londons_explore »

majormajor wrote: post #65
solardev wrote: post #10

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…

The math ends up wildly unfavorable unless you are EXTREMELY confident in your teaching/transformation abilities. If you look good on paper before the school then you don't need it and won't be motivated to share your income. So the applicant pool reduces itself to those who on-paper don't have great chances. So you need to cause a really big delta in the ability of those people to make good money in the industry for…

There was a time about 5 years ago where tech companies were desperate to fill various minority quotas. The idea was those people were very valuable, there were very few applicants who were hotly contested by other tech companies, and lack of skills wouldn't matter - they'd learn on the job.

In that world, the school only has to get the students to do a "hello world" in python and apply for the right jobs. Such a school is very cheap to run, and very lucrative as long as a decent proportion of students fit into the desirable categories.

The students themselves usually aren't aware how desirable their application is - and therefore believe the school is their route in rather than a few youtube tutorials and a direct application.

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

#116

Post by throw123123123 »

ceejayoz wrote: post #12
willcipriano wrote: post #7

[flagged]

Any you’d like to highlight that come anywhere close to “we picked a sample size of one student” or “no finance charge means $4k finance charge”?

Do they tell students they may be saddled with debt for 30 years and that the cost of tuition is much larger than the incomes they get from their majors?

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

#117

Post by abdullahkhalids »

imzadi wrote: post #66

I attended Lambda when it was first starting out. I think I was in the third or fourth cohort. At the time, the sell was that you didn't have to pay anything unless you got a job using the skills you learned from them. I was pretty naïve, I guess. Things seemed fine in the beginning. The instructors were good, and I liked that there were actual live classes. Things degraded very quickly. They kept changing the format…

I am high level member of a volunteer based org that does online workshops in the tech space, and does dozens of workshops in dozens of countries every year. I fail to understand how you can mess up basic things like having a predecided curriculum, good teachers, a fixed schedule, or providing quality outside class support. We do all of this on a shoestring budget.

The stories I have heard about Lambda/BloomTech seem to show almost a willful attempt to not get the basics right. I understand the financial component might have been difficult, but the education is straightforward. To fail it with millions of dollars of funding is outstanding.

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

#119

Post by tamimio »

londons_explore wrote: post #106

> 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. A master of deception with statistics!

Isn’t this the case with a lot of these science studies? Keep tweaking the stats and inputs to achieve the funders’ agenda..
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