Lambda School agrees to end deceptive educational financing practices • Hacker News Board

Re: Lambda School agrees to end deceptive educational financing practices

#71

Post by minimaxir » Mon, Apr 26, 2021, 9:52 PM UTC

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?

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

Re: Lambda School agrees to end deceptive educational financing practices

#72

Post by nrmitchi » Mon, Apr 26, 2021, 9:54 PM UTC

marcinzm wrote: post #50

michaelbuckbee wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd agree with you except that in this case it seems like the "deception" was actually working against Lambda school. Previously -> if you go bankrupt you still owe us. Now -> if you go bankrupt you don't owe us. On the face of it this seems like it would make Lambda school _more_ attractive than less. Note, the clause in question is "qualified educational loan…subject to the limitations on dischargeability contained…

It's not about being attractive, it's about ex-students not declaring bankruptcy because they think it won't remove their lambda school loans. Thus lambda school keeps getting money from them instead of getting nothing after they decide to declare bankruptcy. That clause was, in my eyes, clearly designed to discourage students from exercising their ability to clear debts via bankruptcy.

I've seen this point made elsewhere too, but I'm not sure I understand it.

The ISAs are, as far as I know, capped at 30k, and only apply if you're making 50k/yr. I can't imagine a situation where someone's decision of whether or not to declare bankrupcy comes down to the 30k-max ISA; either it's the majority of your debt, and you're making >50k/yr, or it's a small amount relative to your other debt, in which case you should proceed anyways.

Re: Lambda School agrees to end deceptive educational financing practices

#73

Post by sugarwater » Mon, Apr 26, 2021, 9:56 PM UTC

rajacombinator wrote: post #38

davidw wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Not to mention that Lambda School is an attempt to actually align the incentives of school and students, which is the main problem with educational financing today. Wrong target to pile on.

As a student that went through the program, I question if their incentives were aligned.

During the middle of my enrollment at the program (Sept 2020), the school suddenly dropped all notion of grading, code review, and attendance, let alone the length of the program. It remained this way for 3 months, 50% of the length of the program.

This is a broad description of the changes, but I want to emphasize that the changes were terrible, _many_ students complained, and the school essentially whistled with fingers in their ears.

Re: Lambda School agrees to end deceptive educational financing practices

#74

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Apr 26, 2021, 9:56 PM UTC

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.

[deleted]

Re: Lambda School agrees to end deceptive educational financing practices

#75

Post by jamiequint » Mon, Apr 26, 2021, 9:56 PM UTC

minimaxir wrote: post #68

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…

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.

Re: Lambda School agrees to end deceptive educational financing practices

#76

Post by minimaxir » Mon, Apr 26, 2021, 9:58 PM UTC

aerosmile wrote: post #69

lupire wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm surprised that non-anonymous people, who rely on their salesmanship for income, are comfortable publicly embarrassing themselves like this.

I am surprised by your comment. Posting a single sentence without any context other than what appears to be nothing more than a personal insult (how do you know about Jamie's sources of income?) is unusually rude for this community.

Their profile says "Now: Investing/Consulting" which implies salesmanship for income.

Re: Lambda School agrees to end deceptive educational financing practices

#77

Post by aerosmile » Mon, Apr 26, 2021, 9:59 PM UTC

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 discredited as being underhanded? If they tried just a little harder to stick to the facts, all of the other research they have done in their reporting would carry a bit more weight.

Re: Lambda School agrees to end deceptive educational financing practices

#78

Post by jfrunyon » Mon, Apr 26, 2021, 9:59 PM UTC

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…

> 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 making that process more difficult? The article makes none of that entirely clear.

It makes it quite clear. The loan has always been dischargeable in bankruptcy. However, they had a provision in their contract stating otherwise, which was deceptive.

Re: Lambda School agrees to end deceptive educational financing practices

#79

Post by jfrunyon » Mon, Apr 26, 2021, 10:01 PM UTC

renewiltord wrote: post #5

yawnxyz wrote: post #2

"contains a provision that falsely asserts that the Contract is a “qualified educational loan” ..." Did University of Phoenix qualify for "educational loans"? I'm constantly surprised why this sector gets a pass like this from bankruptcy.

The reason is that the applicants would not be loaned anything if they could discharge debt in bankruptcy. i.e. student loans would not exist unless collateralized and we don't want people to have to put up collateral equal to the value of the loan. This is because if I were a student, the optimal route would be to take the largest loan possible while on no assets, then go to the most expensive university, then decla…

Except that declaring bankruptcy has actual consequences for people with no assets.

Re: Lambda School agrees to end deceptive educational financing practices

#80

Post by lacker » Mon, Apr 26, 2021, 10:01 PM UTC

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…

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 are for starting a new sort of educational financing. When you do something new that's covered unclearly by California regulations it is no surprise to have this sort of issue.

To me the real injustice is that California does not allow ISAs. Students are not idiots incapable of making deals for themselves, and the big ripoff in education right now isn't ISAs at coding schools, it's taking out a regular student loan to get a worthless degree at a mediocre university. All of this argument about "catching Lambda's deception" is a distraction from the real problems with education.