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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

#281

Post by blaser-waffle »

pkdpic_y9k wrote: post #236
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…

Totally valid but just feel like I have to throw in that I went to a bootcamp, was very suspicious from the earliest stages of consideration but found on the other side that all the friends I made there who attended-even the one that failed out and went to another bootcamp-went from part time jobs making less than 30k a year to legit software engineering positions making 60~120k in less than a year. Im still surprise…

Name and Shame -- who was this shady org?

Re: Lambda School agrees to end deceptive educational financing practices

#282

Post by bdcravens »

gen220 wrote: post #280
boldslogan wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the only way that would continue to work is they got more new students (at the bottom) to pay for the old students (at the top) jobs and it (the pyramid) would fall apart. In other words it looks like a pyramid scheme if the grads only get jobs as teachers.

FWIW, many teachers are only at bootcamps for a year or two before moving on to work for normal companies. I didn’t go through a boot camp, but I do work with people who did and were teachers at those boot camps before working here. From what I understand, teaching is generally seen as a positive signal (if the boot camp is a good one), because it means they know the material well enough to teach it. I can totally im…

This all may be true, but hand waves away the point: students don't know this going in; they assume the high cost will get them a developer salary much sooner than is true. The marketing should be more transparent about this, and if it were, how many students would rethink the costs with a longer ROI?

Re: Lambda School agrees to end deceptive educational financing practices

#283

Post by blaser-waffle »

tootahe45 wrote: post #277
boldslogan wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the only way that would continue to work is they got more new students (at the bottom) to pay for the old students (at the top) jobs and it (the pyramid) would fall apart. In other words it looks like a pyramid scheme if the grads only get jobs as teachers.

You just described 80% of the tertiary education courses unis offer.

Lol yeah sounds like grad school.

"Congrats on getting into the program, you're now adjunct faculty, the class you're teaching starts at 930am Monday."

5 years later maybe they have a piece of paper and maybe that impacts their job prospects.

Re: Lambda School agrees to end deceptive educational financing practices

#284

Post by cactus2093 »

minimaxir wrote: post #71
cactus2093 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

You are being downvoted because the "it's ok they did bad things for a good cause" argument is not a moral high ground.

They tried to use a solution that was better than traditional loans in some ways (don't have to pay it until/unless you get a job) and just as bad in some ways (not dischargeable in bankruptcy). That's still clearly a better option overall for a lot of people. Now after this settlement, it's an even better option since they have removed the bankruptcy clause. It is bizarre to spin this that "they were doing bad things" beforehand.

Re: Lambda School agrees to end deceptive educational financing practices

#285

Post by 908B64B197 »

40four wrote: post #235
dehrmann wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Well, my intuition tells me that the ‘pool’ will always be there. I’m not sure it’s dried up, I think it will always be there for one reason or an other. And it doesn’t seem like the job pool is drying up either. From what I can’t tell there are just as many job opportunities as when I started, and plenty of companies still complaining about not being able to find qualified candidates. PS: there was a reply I read an…

> and plenty of companies still complaining about not being able to find qualified candidates.

This is completely missing the point: it's free to whine about a "labor shortage" (at the price you are willing to pay). Best case you'll get subsidies (direct or indirect) from the government. Worst case? Nothing happens.

Re: Lambda School agrees to end deceptive educational financing practices

#286

Post by dang »

reducesuffering wrote: post #155
wheelie_boy wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Dang, is this a normal feature? Since when are users able to retroactively change the profile that made the comment? This looks like covering up a YC founder's past comment, but the archive still exists. According to snapshots it was modified over 2 years later.

We take care of privacy requests for HN users every day. 99% (maybe 99.9% – I haven't counted) of those users aren't YC founders. There's no special treatment.

If you look at https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html, there's an explanation there about how we usually don't delete entire account histories, but we do other things to help, and invite people to email us if they have concerns. There are tradeoffs between individual needs for privacy, fairness to the other commenters who participated in a thread, the community's interest in preserving its archive, and so on. We care about all of that and do our best to help whoever asks; as I tell people who write in, we just try to do it with more precise tools than wholesale deletion, and have built up a bag of tricks for that over the years. Obviously that doesn't extend to the Internet Archive or whatever other caches of HN posts are out there; users understand that.

When it comes to this sort of issue on HN, it's important for people to understand that there are no good answers—it's all tradeoffs. Because the pendulum has swung towards privacy concerns in recent years, we regularly get flamed for not deleting entire account histories. But we still get flamed from the classic internet perspective (nothing should be censored, etc.) too.

Re: Lambda School agrees to end deceptive educational financing practices

#287

Post by dang »

wheelie_boy wrote: post #160
reducesuffering wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dang, is this a normal feature? Since when are users able to retroactively change the profile that made the comment? This looks like covering up a YC founder's past comment, but the archive still exists. According to snapshots it was modified over 2 years later.

This is not a feature available to mere mortals. Your assumption seems likely.

The full range of everything we do is available to anyone who asks. You have to email hn@ycombinator.com, as the FAQ explains (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html), but there's no restriction on whom we help, or how. We help people who have abused this site for years and then ask us (sometimes exceedingly impolitely!) to clean up what they did, and we treat them the same way as we treat anyone; I may grit my teeth while doing it, but that's all. Why? Because it's best for the community in the long run if we treat everyone the same way, and because—as I tell users who email—we don't want anyone to get in trouble from anything they posted to HN.

Re: Lambda School agrees to end deceptive educational financing practices

#288

Post by LMYahooTFY »

kelnos wrote: post #263
LMYahooTFY wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

This isn't the ISA; it's a special contract only used for CA-based students that does not allow for a discharge after 5 years.

Interesting, I didn't realize this was the case.

Re: Lambda School agrees to end deceptive educational financing practices

#289

Post by dang »

kevingadd wrote: post #206
wheelie_boy wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not a feature available to mere mortals. Your assumption seems likely.

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.

Either that email was many years ago or something got confused, because we rename accounts for users all the time.

In fact, when we developed that feature, I replied to everyone who had emailed over the years asking for it, asking if they still wanted it. If you weren't on that list, your email must have been many years ago.

Edit: oops - I see I neglected the important thing. If you still want your account to be renamed, please email hn@ycombinator.com and we'll be happy to help!

Re: Lambda School agrees to end deceptive educational financing practices

#290

Post by dang »

rideontime wrote: post #238
dang wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The term has always made me wince but that is not a fair description.

Would love to see this acknowledged. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26949343

This is a bad way to get in touch with us; it's unreliable. If there's something important that needs responding to, you should email hn@ycombinator.com, as the site guidelines ask: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
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