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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

#131

Post by inopinatus »

aerosmile wrote: post #77
sicromoft wrote: post #40

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

I would be a lot more inclined to believe anything they said in this article if they didn't show such blatant bias for sensationalist reporting. > His previous work was mostly concerned with “growth hacking,” which is Silicon Valley jargon for finding underappreciated (or, less charitably, underhanded) ways of marketing something. So anyone who put the term "growth hacking" on their resume will now get publicly discr…

If you put that on your CV, I’ll probably put your CV in the garbage. It’s one of the major red flags.

Along with: various flavours of monetization specialist; pimps; politicians; used car sales; basically all the same category of exploitation-oriented narcissists that will poison your brand and your culture, create nothing themselves, and ultimately destroy more intrinsic value than they vampire from others.

I’ve been around this industry for decades. Joe MacMillan is an archetype, not a parody character.

Re: Lambda School agrees to end deceptive educational financing practices

#132

Post by imgabe »

sandofsky wrote: post #53
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…

This is a bizarre response. You were caught putting deceptive language in your contracts. You now have to hire a third-party to ensure all of your contracts comply with the law, and 90 days to review all of your previous marketing material and certify it wasn't dishonest. You're on probation. This is nothing to be excited about. This is similar to when you fought with the BPPE for a year because they insisted you can…

The language was misleading because the law isn't clear. Lambda isn't in charge of which loans are and are not dischargeable in bankruptcy and it seems they thought that the type of loan they offered was not.

You should be asking why every school loan is not dischargeable in bankruptcy.

Re: Lambda School agrees to end deceptive educational financing practices

#133

Post by wheelie_boy »

sugarwater wrote: post #87
aerosmile wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would be a lot more inclined to believe anything they said in this article if they didn't show such blatant bias for sensationalist reporting. > His previous work was mostly concerned with “growth hacking,” which is Silicon Valley jargon for finding underappreciated (or, less charitably, underhanded) ways of marketing something. So anyone who put the term "growth hacking" on their resume will now get publicly discr…

It's worth mentioning the the CEO Austen had a post on here (now deleted) proclaiming to have creating a bot army via stealing people's pictures on Instagram. I would qualify that as "underhanded"

Link to the post: https://web.archive.org/web/20190703224616/https://news.ycom...

It's also weird that the post is still up, but the username was changed from austenallred to another user: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13502774

Re: Lambda School agrees to end deceptive educational financing practices

#134

Post by dang »

nrmitchi wrote: post #20
pseudalopex wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The headline implies the practices were deceptive before they were illegal. It doesn't imply they were breaking the law previously.

I didn't realize the HN headline was different than the linked article, which is "Lambda School Reaches Settlement with DFPI, Agreeing to End Deceptive Educational Financing Practices". "Reaching a settlement" with an enforcement agency implies, at least to me, that you were acused of breaking a law.

HN limits titles to 80 chars, so the submitter had no choice but to use a different title. The edit looks to me like it was done in good faith, i.e. was just trying to neutrally fit the limit. If someone comes up with a better (more accurate and neutral) title, we can change it again.

Re: Lambda School agrees to end deceptive educational financing practices

#135

Post by jamiequint »

dang wrote: post #124
jamiequint wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your inane judginess is offputting, especially when coupled with how Lambda School is providing attractive alternative options the expensive colleges you're whining about.

Having read your comments in the thread I get where you are coming from, but can you please not do it like this? It doesn't help. It just gives people more reason to reject the point of view you're trying to defend. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

If you're going to flag my comments which are formatted in the exact same style and voice as the comment I'm responding to, please at least attempt to be consistent by flagging those comments as well.

Re: Lambda School agrees to end deceptive educational financing practices

#136

Post by rexreed »

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…

The above response is a great example of spin, or if you prefer, this nice euphemism: https://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/polishing+a+turd

Re: Lambda School agrees to end deceptive educational financing practices

#138

Post by DoreenMichele »

The language violates the new California Consumer Financial Protection Law (CCFPL), which took effect this year

At the risk of being misconstrued as defending predatory practices, it sounds like they quickly reached an agreement to comply with legal stuff that probably didn't exist when they wrote the language that's being updated.

Re: Lambda School agrees to end deceptive educational financing practices

#139

Post by amznthrwaway »

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".

[dead]

Re: Lambda School agrees to end deceptive educational financing practices

#140

Post by amznthrwaway »

samatman wrote: post #110
dragonwriter wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is a bizarre response. Really, its standard corporate spin when accepting a settlement, “We’re super happy to work with regulators to make things better.” When, of course, if the company had any interest in making things better the regulator would never have needed to get involved in the first place. Obviously, its deceptive, but its not bizarre, its just making PR lemonade out of PR lemons.

You can't seriously believe that regulators have completely clean motives and actions. I'm still getting up to date on what happened here, but corporate malfeasance isn't incompatible with aggressive and even corrupt regulation. In fact my starting place is that both are likely. What I reject is the claim that the State only steps in and takes action if the party they're investigating has done something wrong. That's…

In this case lambda was flat out lying to their victims.
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