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

consumerfinance.gov

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

#251

Post by eadler »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #219
eadler wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have a source for that? I'd like to read it and add it to this list: https://arbitrationinformation.org/docs/references/

That looks like a biased source, concluding in the first sentence of its introduction that "pre-Dispute Arbitration agreements force people into a form of ‘Rustic Justice’ whose primary purpose to evade meaningful accountability for violations of contract or statutory rights" [1]. That said, I do know bank lobbying group who want to outlaw arbitration for unaccredited investors. Will pass this along. [1] https://arbi…

I wrote that page after reading every one of those sources. In full. Including all cited supreme court cases. I actually initially felt that mandatory arbitration was fine and somewhat pro consumer. I changed my mind as a direct result of the research.

To the extent possible id like to strongman arbitration but need to find sources.

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

#252

Post by [deleted] »

abdullahkhalids wrote: post #117
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…

[deleted]

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

#253

Post by ceejayoz »

throw123123123 wrote: post #116
ceejayoz wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

More than these folks did, for sure.

> BloomTech falsely claimed its “income share” agreements were not loans, did not create debt, did not carry a finance charge, and were “risk free.” In fact, the agreements are loans with an average finance charge of $4,000. The loans carry substantial risk, as a single missed payment triggers a default and the remainder of the $30,000 “cap” becomes due immediately. BloomTech further hid the cost and nature of the “income share” loans by not disclosing key terms like the finance charge and annual percentage rate, as required by law.

Student loans from a legitimate lender don't come with balloon payments, the APRs and any finance charges are clearly disclosed, etc., and they're not making up graduation rates.

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

#254

Post by willcipriano »

dudeinjapan wrote: post #243
adeon wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If 90% of students have a good experience but the 10% of students have a similar experiences to the poster there, then I still think Lambda is another ethical disaster of a start-up. "It's better than a typical USA student loan" is a very low bar.

[flagged]

No, beacuse if my alma mater loses it's endowment where will the fightin' sharks or whatever play?

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

#255

Post by pge »

debo_ wrote: post #153
sandofsky wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In January 2020, as news broke about Lambda School's scummy behavior, Graham gave Austen a pep talk which he later expanded into the essay, "Haters." It has aged like a fine milk. https://paulgraham.com/fh.html

From the footnotes: > There are of course some people who are genuine frauds. How can you distinguish between x calling y a fraud because x is a hater, and because y is a fraud? Look at neutral opinion. Actual frauds are usually pretty conspicuous. Thoughtful people are rarely taken in by them. So if there are some thoughtful people who like y, you can usually assume y is not a fraud. I guess all those folks calling…

I wish PG was right about this, but there are plenty of examples of frauds that were not conspicuous and took in lots of thoughtful people (Bernie Madoff being one of the most obvious and public examples).

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

#256

Post by busterarm »

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.

Here he is just today going after the regulators in this situation... https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1780897522778554841

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

#257

Post by busterarm »

ignoramous wrote: post #249
reducesuffering wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lambda School and Mighty having the biggest PG cheerleading support of anything else kind of seals the deal. You can be great at something for awhile but youll always lose the zeitgeist eventually.

Pinpointing two duds among a sea of hits to smear Paul is... berserk.

Not when he's still doubling down on that support in the wake of everything.

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

#258

Post by inopinatus »

bshanks wrote: post #230

I don't understand why an Income Sharing Agreement would be classified as loans. They seem more like equity than debt; the amount that students would pay depends on their future income, and can be arbitrarily small or large (right? or maybe I am misunderstanding the terms of these agreements). I had thought that debt is when you have to pay back at least the "principal" no matter what, and equity is when the financie…

You can’t hold equity in a person, because that is slavery. All consumer liabilities are thus a form of debt. The characteristics that matter most are whether it is secured, the schedule of repayment, and the schedule of fees (interest being amongst the fees). Everything else is window dressing after those three parameters, and the label you stick on the box matters the least of all. Consequently, undischarged debt is indistinguishable from a loan, which is rather the CFPB’s point.

When push comes to shove, the substance of a thing matters much more than the attempt to relabel the thing.

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

#259

Post by justin66 »

Unrepentant as always.

We decided to settle the matter because it was clear that ongoing litigation would be extremely time consuming, incredibly expensive, and distract us from our core mission.

We do so without agreeing to or denying any of the allegations in the consent order.

https://twitter.com/Austen/status/1780770303406403701

Weird to read further down the thread, where he acknowledges the wording of the press release is legal bullshit, and then employs an entirely different set of weasel words. I can't even sum this up.

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

#260

Post by busterarm »

jimberlage wrote: post #100
majormajor wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I remember the marketing for App Academy was that we all would be self-taught, but then the actual makeup of the cohort were people who had prior programming experience (CS all through high school and as a hobby, but studied linguistics in college and regretted it; a designer who had done some JS and couldn’t pass leetcode interviews despite having current frontend skills, etc.) I think the problem they’ve run into i…

Early a/A cohort attendee here.

They literally ensured their success by filtering for people who would already succeed no matter what. I don't have any misgivings about it because the curriculum did help me focus on some gaps in my understanding and build up a profile/portfolio that could land jobs.

It's still expensive and had that curriculum been open at the time I could have done the whole thing on my own and saved some money.

The social aspects of the program didn't end up really benefiting my career at all. The vast majority of my cohort had STEM degrees from prestigious places or were people who were programming since an early age like me. I had already had a long career in IT before I attended. 100% did get jobs, but 2 of the guys in our cohort struggled for a while -- though I think that was to get out of paying the ISA.

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