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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

#221

Post by tptacek »

musicale wrote: post #197
jfrunyon wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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? Is the point here that there was a population of Lambda students who weren't aware they could discharge their loan, and this contract prevision was preventing them from doing so? Or was the school deliberately m…

Although it is harder to discharge student loans in bankruptcy, as I understand it they can be discharged in bankruptcy if the borrower can prove undue hardship (probably hard to do, especially with income-based repayment) or if 7 years have elapsed since the start of repayment. This does seem to violate the spirit of bankruptcy law as well as basic economics (presumably student loans consist of and are repaid with t…

The reasons you make allusions to education debt in a contract like this is that students have priors about whether student loans are dischargeable, and the company wants to capitalize on those priors. That's the deception.

Re: Lambda School agrees to end deceptive educational financing practices

#222

Post by dragonwriter »

imgabe wrote: post #218
dragonwriter wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How is that different from what I said? Its different from what you said (or alternatively, what tou said is a nonsequitur to the discussion of the article, hard to tell which) because it applies only to their ISA, which for legal reasons isn’t used in California and is not what they are in trouble for lying about. They are in trouble for misrepresenting the Retail Installment Contract, which is used exclusively in…

So basically, California specifically forced them to create a special contract, different from the one they use everywhere else, that couldn't be discharged and then censured them for not clearly enough stating that the special California contract couldn't be discharged? Sounds very California.

> So basically, California specifically forced them to create a special contract, different from the one they use everywhere else, that couldn't be discharged and then censured them for not clearly enough stating that the special California contract couldn't be discharged?

No, not at all.

They choose not to automatically discharge the California contracts after 60 months of deferment for low income (I believe as a backhanded protest against the fact that they got in trouble with ISAs in California, IIRC because there was no up-front pricing; the up-front statement that $30,000 is the price is specific to California.) They got in trouble for lying and saying the California contracts were “qualified education loans” under federal law, with the associated restrictive terms for discharge in bankruptcy.

Re: Lambda School agrees to end deceptive educational financing practices

#223

Post by LMYahooTFY »

sandofsky wrote: post #192
LMYahooTFY wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>According to the linked document, this was not a typo. This line contradicts reality: "this extension of credit is a qualified educational loan and is subject to the limitations on dischargeability in bankruptcy contained in Section 523(a)(8) of the United States Bankruptcy Code." This in no way answered my question. >In addition, the document points out, "Certain Lambda School marketing has included representations…

> This in no way answered my question. I can't believe I have to make this explicit, but ok. > I'm curious if there's a way you can mess up language in a contract that isn't deceptive/misleading? Reading the contract, a student will think that they can't discharge the debt through bankruptcy. In reality, yes, they can discharge the debt through bankruptcy. It's right there in the order: "The Bankruptcy Non-Dischargea…

> Since we can't reach common ground on basic facts, I see no reason to engage with you any further.

I'm sorry, do you feel I'm not being generous in my interpretation? I certainly feel you're not, is that not a guideline here?

>I can't believe I have to make this explicit, but ok.

You don't have to, you misunderstood me. If a contract is flawed, is there a result other than 'misleading'?

Do we expect all contracts to be flawless 100% of the time? Are all of the flaws deliberate?

> You were caught putting deceptive language in your contracts.

So I'll try to be generous, I read this as you accusing him of deliberately misleading people. You assert that this cannot be a 'mess up'. Am I wrong?

> I copied and pasted directly from the order.

I'm asking if there's marketing material you'd like to point out and discuss. I quoted some, do you not want to engage on that?

>I copied and pasted from his own post.

Which I explained, he explicitly stated approval, and then at worst, embellished upon it.

Is there no overlap between "approval" and "endorsement" that ever warrants the statement he made?

> Since we can't reach common ground on basic facts, I see no reason to engage with you any further.

You're extremely adversarial, yet I'm unsurprised you want to withdraw.

Re: Lambda School agrees to end deceptive educational financing practices

#224

Post by istjohn »

koolba wrote: post #211
ClumsyPilot wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

The argument for it is that without it a graduate with a large balance could default on their loan immediately after graduation. The classic example being a surgeon getting hundreds of thousands in loans for medical school, and then skipping out on paying them back when they begin making bank as a doctor.

I'm honestly curious why this isn't a problem in the UK. What are we missing?

Re: Lambda School agrees to end deceptive educational financing practices

#225

Post by inopinatus »

stevesearer wrote: post #217
kevingadd wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even more than that, one of the administrators previously told me via email that HN is not able to rename accounts (presumably they use account names instead of numeric IDs as a key somewhere). So the only explanation for the displayed author on that post having changed is that they switched the author of the post, the original author's account could not have been renamed.

The account creation date for user _pecl is also the same date the comment was made so maybe it is possible to make a new user, change their creation date, and also change the attribution of specific comments to that user?

It's also the same month that Lambda School was launched⁽¹⁾, and there's no doubt re. Allred's prior interest in gaming Twitter⁽²⁾.

[1] https://twitter.com/calebhicks/status/1093885962059272193

[2] https://medium.com/user-acquisition-for-hackers/exploiting-t...

Re: Lambda School agrees to end deceptive educational financing practices

#226

Post by dragonwriter »

istjohn wrote: post #224
koolba wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The argument for it is that without it a graduate with a large balance could default on their loan immediately after graduation. The classic example being a surgeon getting hundreds of thousands in loans for medical school, and then skipping out on paying them back when they begin making bank as a doctor.

I'm honestly curious why this isn't a problem in the UK. What are we missing?

It’s not a problem anywhere, it was just an excuse for a handout to the financial industry in 2005.

Re: Lambda School agrees to end deceptive educational financing practices

#228

Post by dehrmann »

40four wrote: post #215

It makes me sad that many of the prominent boot-camps now have such a bad reputation, and seem to be run so poorly, or recklessly. I feel lucky to have enrolled at, now defunct, The Iron Yard at it’s peak in the end of 2016. I owe them everything for teaching me and coaching me into how to break into my new career as a web developer. It was life changing. I can only speak for my particular campus, but I imagine it wa…

I wonder if there was a gold rush when bootcamps started because there was a pool of motivated people with potential who needed training and help getting into the industry. Once that pool was gone, the only new people entering it are basically high school graduates, so in order to keep operating, bootcamps had to get scammier and lower their standards.

I have no evidence of this, but it seems plausible.

Re: Lambda School agrees to end deceptive educational financing practices

#229

Post by dang »

youre_a_scammer wrote: post #189
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…

Oh will you just shut up and go away forever. Scamming people with your predatory startup and trying to brush it all off with this faux cheeriness really is disgusting. What is even the point of your existence? You're just a parasite. Get out of here.

Breaking the site guidelines this egregiously will get your main account banned as well, so please don't do any more of this.

Re: Lambda School agrees to end deceptive educational financing practices

#230

Post by tedivm »

judge2020 wrote: post #106
tedivm wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bankruptcies have to get approved by a judge, and often debt is restructured instead of being discharged. The scenario where someone takes on a bunch of debt then declares bankruptcy on graduation is a joke because judges wouldn't allow it. They may get their loan deferred or restructured to help buy time to get a job, but they wouldn't just discharge it like that. These kind of made up "what if" scenarios to justify…

Neither of us are lawyers (based on your profile), but there are two modern forms of bankruptcy in the U.S: Chapter 7, liquidation which does discharge your debts, or Chapter 13, which is restructuring. In a chapter 7 bankruptcy, you have to pass the means test, which checks if your household income is below the median income of your state: > The means test looks at the gross income of everyone in your household duri…

Chapter 7 has an abuse provision which people also have to pass or the bankruptcy can be turned into a Chapter 11 or Chapter 13 (or gets dismissed outright).

To quote the law directly-

> After notice and a hearing, the court, on its own motion or on a motion by the United States trustee, trustee (or bankruptcy administrator, if any), or any party in interest, may dismiss a case filed by an individual debtor under this chapter whose debts are primarily consumer debts, or, with the debtor’s consent, convert such a case to a case under chapter 11 or 13 of this title, if it finds that the granting of relief would be an abuse of the provisions of this chapter.

11 U.S.C. § 707(b)(1)

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