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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

#171

Post by dragonwriter »

wheelie_boy wrote: post #133
sugarwater wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

a user, it might be noted, for whom that is the only comment.

Re: Lambda School agrees to end deceptive educational financing practices

#172

Post by LMYahooTFY »

treesrule wrote: post #112
maximilianroos wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This is not fraud, and it's barely even relevant. The ISA dissolves after 5 years even if you've paid nothing.

The fact that it is dischargeable is itself interesting.

Edit: said the opposite of what I meant

Re: Lambda School agrees to end deceptive educational financing practices

#173

Post by pseudalopex »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #169
pseudalopex wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would make it sound like Lambda School did it proactively. It would obscure the claims were deceptive irrespective of California law. And it would obscure Lambda School acknowledged the claims were misleading.

Maybe: Lambda School agrees to update deceptive language Titles are hard, especially with a character limit.

That would just obscure what the language was about.

The original title is "Lambda School Reaches Settlement with DFPI, Agreeing to End Deceptive Educational Financing Practices". The current HN title is "Lambda School agrees to end deceptive educational financing practices". It's the closest 80 characters can get. And Lambda School agreed in the settlement order it's what happened.

Re: Lambda School agrees to end deceptive educational financing practices

#174

Post by dragonwriter »

lacker wrote: post #80
sandofsky wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You were caught putting deceptive language in your contracts. Honestly, the California website claims this was "deceptive" but to me that seems like an exaggeration. 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. It's not like California makes it extremely transparent and clear what the rules…

> It's not like California makes it extremely transparent and clear what the rules are for starting a new sort of educational financing.

The rules are federal, and its very clear that the requirements for a loan to be qualified education loan (which gets tax deductible interest and protection from easy discharge) include that it must be used solely for costs of education at an institution eligible for Title IV financial aid under federal law.

This is not something it is plausible someone running a business in the space would make an honest mistake about, it is a targeted deception to discourage debtors from seeking available bankruptcy relief, leveraging the fact that lying to discourage people from such relief for existing debt, unlike lying to induce purchases, is not usually prosecutable as fraud.

Re: Lambda School agrees to end deceptive educational financing practices

#175

Post by DangitBobby »

Isn't lying to trick people for financial gain to their detriment fraud?

> Fraud is an intentionally deceptive action designed to provide the perpetrator with an unlawful gain or to deny a right to a victim. Types of fraud include tax fraud, credit card fraud, wire fraud, securities fraud, and bankruptcy fraud. Fraudulent activity can be carried out by one individual, multiple individuals or a business firm as a whole.

Seems to me like lying on this contract should constitute fraud.

Re: Lambda School agrees to end deceptive educational financing practices

#176

Post by LMYahooTFY »

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…

This is a more bizarre response. You literally take the worst interpretation out of everything, and calling it accurate would be very generous.

>You were caught putting deceptive language in your contracts.

I'm curious if there's a way you can mess up language in a contract that isn't deceptive/misleading?

>You're on probation. This is nothing to be excited about

This is standard procedure, but you're clearly painting it as if they've been knocked down another peg.

>The BPPE does not endorse schools. They simply said you were no longer operating illegally.

And this is blatantly false and makes me further question everything else you've stated.

https://www.bppe.ca.gov/schools/approved_schools.shtml

Try the search function.

Re: Lambda School agrees to end deceptive educational financing practices

#177

Post by bpodgursky »

skellera wrote: post #149
bpodgursky wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, student loans _are_ one of those things. ISAs seem a lot closer to "student loans" than, like, a new boat. I don't think this is totally unreasonable.

That’s giving way too much credit. I’m sure if you asked 100 people if ISAs from a bootcamp were the same as government backed student loans, you’d get pretty close to 100 “no.”

Private student loans are exempt too...

Re: Lambda School agrees to end deceptive educational financing practices

#178

Post by ClumsyPilot »

srndsnd wrote: post #6

I'm confused as to why this headline has to be so close to clickbait. I'm not even one to stand up for people like Lambda, I think a lot of bootcamps are shady at best, and actively deceptive at worst (Trilogy). It is definitely important to note that that these loans can be discharged in bankruptcy. But as far as I know, isn't this less stringent than typical student loans, which can't be discharged in bankruptcy? I…

"loans can be discharged in bankruptcy."

To me the idea that in a 'free country' today you cannot clear your debts through bancrupcy sounds crazy, it's a practice that belongs in history books along with debtor prisons, bondage, endentured servitude, feudalism, having public holiday 'execution day' and slavery.

In the UK we used execute people for vagrancy.

Re: Lambda School agrees to end deceptive educational financing practices

#179

Post by LMYahooTFY »

dragonwriter wrote: post #103
sandofsky wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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.

>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.

This is ridiculous oversimplification. Can you elaborate at all on how the company has "no interest in making things better"? It's an interesting attack on the 'character' of a corporate entity, that's almost impossible to disprove.

Re: Lambda School agrees to end deceptive educational financing practices

#180

Post by LMYahooTFY »

pradn wrote: post #30
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…

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.

You seem to not be aware of how Lambda School operates at all.

It in no way resembles the college financing model, and in fact the purpose was to succeed in precisely the way it does not.

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