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Lambda School agrees to end deceptive educational financing practices

dfpi.ca.gov

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Re: Lambda School agrees to end deceptive educational financing practices

#111

Post by foerbert »

cactus2093 wrote: post #39
pradn wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your bizarre cheeriness in the face of "Agreeing to End Deceptive Educational Financing Practices" is offputting, especially when coupled with the way college financing has led to generational deadweight, anxiety, and hopelessness.

Your bizarre grumpishness is offputting, especially when coupled with the fact that Lambda's model that they're understandably excited about here is aiming to improve on the same broken existing model of college financing that you're complaining about. Edit: come on, at least comment if you're downvoting. What did I say that is inaccurate?

Can't downvote even if I wanted to, but...

> Lambda's model that they're understandably excited about here

You seemingly imply their bizarre positivity to being forced to stop their deceptive practices is a merely a result of them being excited about their model.

How does that track at all? What does one have to do with the other?

And on top of all that, you started by calling a critical response to their extreme positivity in the face of regulation for deceptive business practices "bizarre grumpishness."

Re: Lambda School agrees to end deceptive educational financing practices

#112

Post by treesrule »

maximilianroos wrote: post #101
sicromoft wrote: post #40

See also Lambda School’s Misleading Promises: https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/02/lambda-schools-job-p...

TBH this article makes me more confident that Lambda is overall Good. They found a single program that was substantially deficient, some disorganized operations, and some exaggerated marketing claims. It's starting a new form of education! There are going to be operational headaches and a few misses! While the referenced cases aren't good, we can assess Lambda on their overall contribution, not their mistakes alone.

> While the referenced cases aren't good, not their mistakes alone

Check notes: "notify students that the bankruptcy dischargeability provision language is not accurate"

Just to be clear this isn't a "mistake" this is fraud.

Re: Lambda School agrees to end deceptive educational financing practices

#113

Post by vmception »

maximilianroos wrote: post #89
austenallred wrote: post #29

Hey everyone, Pretty excited to reach settlement on this one. The DFPI is a new regulatory agency in California that was tasked with reviewing Lambda School’s new incentive-aligned tuition ( https://lambdaschool.com/tuition/tuition-options ) in California. They came back requesting that we update a bankruptcy provision in the agreement to clarify that these agreements are dischargeable in bankruptcy, and to do a revi…

I'm inclined to be on your side — the sum total of Lambda's impact on the world is likely highly positive, whatever happens in the details. But that makes this response confusing — I was hoping to see a refutation of the regulator's claims or, failing that, a thoughtful discussion on what went wrong. Is the regulator accurate? If so, were the statements significant? If so, what happened?

The response isn't confusing when the first duty of the settlement is to notify existing students and everyone else that the bankruptcy dischargeability provision language is not accurate, and thats what they said in the response

gigglesnort

Re: Lambda School agrees to end deceptive educational financing practices

#114

Post by jamiequint »

threatofrain wrote: post #107
jamiequint wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Generally people who build interesting things don't enjoy shitting on other people's attempts to change the world for the better. I give less than zero shits if people who adopt this type of attitude don't want to work with me. They're not worth working with to begin with. Go look at the HN launch posts for Dropbox or Coinbase, or the struggles of other companies trying to do something new and make a difference and l…

I didn't realize that lying to customers was so important to ethical building. https://web.archive.org/web/20190703224616/https://news.ycom... https://soundcloud.com/vwoo/interview-with-austen-allred

I didn't realize strawmanning was so important to maintaining your moral superiority complex.

Re: Lambda School agrees to end deceptive educational financing practices

#115

Post by [deleted] »

lacker wrote: post #99
jfim wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Lambda claimed this thing wasn't dischargeable in bankruptcy, the state of California says actually it is. Okay, fine. It doesn't mean Lambda was doing something malicious. Maybe I'm missing something, but if someone were in the unfortunate position to be considering bankruptcy, wouldn't knowing whether this loan is actually dischargeable or not be a big deal to them? It seems like it would be.

It's important, I just mean that the law isn't obvious here, so we shouldn't jump from "Lambda made a false statement about the California law" to "Lambda is maliciously trying to mislead students".

[deleted]

Re: Lambda School agrees to end deceptive educational financing practices

#116

Post by tw04 »

lacker wrote: post #99
jfim wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Lambda claimed this thing wasn't dischargeable in bankruptcy, the state of California says actually it is. Okay, fine. It doesn't mean Lambda was doing something malicious. Maybe I'm missing something, but if someone were in the unfortunate position to be considering bankruptcy, wouldn't knowing whether this loan is actually dischargeable or not be a big deal to them? It seems like it would be.

It's important, I just mean that the law isn't obvious here, so we shouldn't jump from "Lambda made a false statement about the California law" to "Lambda is maliciously trying to mislead students".

How is the law not obvious? There are a handful of things that are exempt from bankruptcy, "income sharing" isn't one of those things. Going through the list of exempted items, I can't find a single one where I go "oh, yes that sort of applies".

http://www.californiabankruptcy.info/exemptions.html

Re: Lambda School agrees to end deceptive educational financing practices

#117

Post by mbesto »

jamiequint wrote: post #75
minimaxir wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lambda's customers (students who want to learn how to code and are negatively impacted by this deception) are builders too.

We're talking about a single section in a probably lengthy contract in an area of law (ISAs) that barely existed until a few years ago. I feel like half of HN is picturing a cigar smoking villain, the reality of it is probably far more boring.

People are critical because "world changer builders" can often be found skirting rules that the rest of us have to play in. You're a self described growth hacker, which likely means you too have probably bent a few rules in your day. That's not a criticism of you - you can do your business how you like - but don't be surprised when a bunch of aspiring hackers/techies get annoyed when they see people who do bend the rules to their gain (financial or otherwise) despite having access to the worlds most prominent investors (read -> resources) and seemingly don't do their homework. It challenges the average joe's assumption about what is right and wrong in the tech startup world.

Like does Lambda not have access to Wilson Sonsini lawyers like the rest of their cohort? Or more plausibly, are they just willfully ignorant towards wanting to make sure they play by every rule (e.g. hire lawyers) that comes into their chosen market? Move fast and break things am I right?

Re: Lambda School agrees to end deceptive educational financing practices

#118

Post by [deleted] »

lacker wrote: post #99
jfim wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Lambda claimed this thing wasn't dischargeable in bankruptcy, the state of California says actually it is. Okay, fine. It doesn't mean Lambda was doing something malicious. Maybe I'm missing something, but if someone were in the unfortunate position to be considering bankruptcy, wouldn't knowing whether this loan is actually dischargeable or not be a big deal to them? It seems like it would be.

It's important, I just mean that the law isn't obvious here, so we shouldn't jump from "Lambda made a false statement about the California law" to "Lambda is maliciously trying to mislead students".

[deleted]

Re: Lambda School agrees to end deceptive educational financing practices

#119

Post by TheRealPomax »

davidw wrote: post #37
pradn wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your bizarre cheeriness in the face of "Agreeing to End Deceptive Educational Financing Practices" is offputting, especially when coupled with the way college financing has led to generational deadweight, anxiety, and hopelessness.

What's he supposed to do? Rant about the government? Making the best of it and moving on is probably the best move, since it doesn't sound like a big hit to their business. Also, it looks like you get out of Lambda School debts via bankruptcy, which you don't with regular college, so that's... an improvement?

In this particular case? It's an HN item, it's going to drop off the front page in <12 hours, so... not commenting would have been far more sensible than to try to PR-convince a cynical tech crowd.

Re: Lambda School agrees to end deceptive educational financing practices

#120

Post by spullara »

nicklecompte wrote: post #98
anchpop wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if the accusation is that they were trying to mislead people into not understanding that bankruptcy is an option, in the hope that they’ll be less likely to default? Still doesn’t really seem that serious to me. Nobody who was under the impression that the loans could not be discharged by bankruptcy will be disappointed to find out that they can.

> they were trying to mislead people into not understanding that bankruptcy is an option It’s exactly this. Lambda School customers tend to be young and financially ignorant, with very few resources. If a graduate is in a position where, say, they can’t find a software job, they could be functionally bankrupt, and their dwindling income/savings will still be going towards outstanding Lambda School payments. From this…

You don't have to pay if you don't have a job so I don't think this comment is correct.
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