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Lambda School wants to teach nursing

economist.com

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Re: Lambda School wants to teach nursing

#91

Post by learc83 »

lr4444lr wrote: post #40
notbob wrote: post #16

I am skeptical that these income sharing agreements are so great. Especially in software. Lambda School has a 9 month program that takes a 17% cut of your salary for the first 24 months of employment with a cap at $30,000. Which many students in software will hit, especially in high COL areas. It's worth noting that this is more expensive than many/most universities, which charge less than $30,000 per year (9 months…

I don't think it's fair to compare an arrangement at zero up front cost risk to the student to a full up-front cost risk to the student (where the loan also hurts his credit rating) dollar for dollar. Are you also factoring in the NPV? Inflation?

It's not a full up-front cost risk to students. Federal loans (90% of disbursements) qualify for income based repayment where the maximum you will pay is 10% of income above 1.5x the Federal poverty limit. If you end up stuck as a barista making $25k a year, you'll pay back very little of the overall cost over the 20 year repayment.

Also if you get through a few semesters at an accredited university and decide you hate it those credits will generally transfer somewhere else. The same is not true of unaccredited programs.

Re: Lambda School wants to teach nursing

#92

Post by austenallred »

RoboTeddy wrote: post #90
austenallred wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The end goal of Lambda School is to be somewhat of an economic clearing house. Move people from where they are to where they want to be quickly, cheaply, and taking care of the entire stack at no risk to the student. So this is actually in line with where we want to be in the future.

What if someone wants to go somewhere where they most likely won't be paid much? (e.g. art, music) Can Lambda School extend there?

Yes, but would be more expensive (a higher percentage of income), although loans are a higher percentage as well.

Re: Lambda School wants to teach nursing

#93

Post by austenallred »

neilv wrote: post #86

(I don't know about Lambda School specifically; just speaking of fields here.) Any talk of transferring anything cultural from current software development practice to somewhere else important... makes me nervous, by default. Right now, we have huge problems in software development practice, with both design&implementation quality, and ethics. You don't want your medical device or bridge developed in any way like the…

Lambda School isn’t really software; we spent the first 18 months writing little to no code while we focused on building a world class school.

Now, of course, we’re using software to scale everything and data science to measure and optimize everything, but the core engine is a really great school and instructional design we created from the ground up, not code.

Re: Lambda School wants to teach nursing

#94

Post by learc83 »

notbob wrote: post #16

I am skeptical that these income sharing agreements are so great. Especially in software. Lambda School has a 9 month program that takes a 17% cut of your salary for the first 24 months of employment with a cap at $30,000. Which many students in software will hit, especially in high COL areas. It's worth noting that this is more expensive than many/most universities, which charge less than $30,000 per year (9 months…

> I am skeptical that these income sharing agreements are so great. Especially in software.

Exactly. We also have no idea how these kind of income sharing agreements will work out long term at scale for the company. No idea what the cost of long term recovery will be. Personally I doubt these kind of income sharing agreements will be enforceable long term.

Re: Lambda School wants to teach nursing

#96

Post by WC3w6pXxgGd »

neilv wrote: post #86

(I don't know about Lambda School specifically; just speaking of fields here.) Any talk of transferring anything cultural from current software development practice to somewhere else important... makes me nervous, by default. Right now, we have huge problems in software development practice, with both design&implementation quality, and ethics. You don't want your medical device or bridge developed in any way like the…

Nothing to be nervous about. Let healthy competition occur.

Re: Lambda School wants to teach nursing

#97

Post by austenallred »

username223 wrote: post #79
austenallred wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right now our marketing budget rounds to zero. We have a growth team that is mostly focused on making sure the admissions funnel runs smoothly, and get about 1,000 organic applications/week. We have ~80 full-time employees and about 200 part-time. 40 of the full-time and all 200 part-time are dedicated to teaching/career coaching.

> We have ~80 full-time employees and about 200 part-time. 40 of the full-time and all 200 part-time are dedicated to teaching/career coaching. What does this mean? I was interested in a breakdown between "people who teach students" and "people who sell stuff," and I don't see how "marketing" and "growth team" differ. As far as I can tell, you're saying that you hired 40 coders, 200 temps as teachers, and 40 salespeo…

There are a lot of people required to run a company/school that don’t fall into those categories. Outside of teachers and career coaches we have:

growth (what you call marketing)

student success (student support)

* engineering

* analytics

* finance

* operations/HR

The marketing team to instructor ratio is about 1:50

Re: Lambda School wants to teach nursing

#98

Post by booleandilemma »

neilv wrote: post #86

(I don't know about Lambda School specifically; just speaking of fields here.) Any talk of transferring anything cultural from current software development practice to somewhere else important... makes me nervous, by default. Right now, we have huge problems in software development practice, with both design&implementation quality, and ethics. You don't want your medical device or bridge developed in any way like the…

Completely agree. I don’t want medical practitioners who finished a medical bootcamp last week googling best practices on their phones and pretending to know what they’re talking about while I’m sedated in the OR.

Re: Lambda School wants to teach nursing

#99

Post by neilv »

austenallred wrote: post #93
neilv wrote: post #86

(I don't know about Lambda School specifically; just speaking of fields here.) Any talk of transferring anything cultural from current software development practice to somewhere else important... makes me nervous, by default. Right now, we have huge problems in software development practice, with both design&implementation quality, and ethics. You don't want your medical device or bridge developed in any way like the…

Lambda School isn’t really software; we spent the first 18 months writing little to no code while we focused on building a world class school. Now, of course, we’re using software to scale everything and data science to measure and optimize everything, but the core engine is a really great school and instructional design we created from the ground up, not code.

I wish you the best of luck in doing this well. The profession of nursing is live-critical important, and incredibly demanding.

Re: Lambda School wants to teach nursing

#100

Post by mbesto »

austenallred wrote: post #44
awwstn wrote: post #43

I love Lambda's concept. I think aligning the interests of the school with the interests of the student are a fantastic evolution, and committing to only charge students for payback in the case that they have a positive outcome is great too. That said, the "only pay us back if you get a good job" commitment seems like lip service as long as the cutoff is $50K (for software dev at least). Lambda school's team is super…

Most of our students are in rural areas where $50k is actually really good money (though this is changing). There’s not really an existing legal framework to say “if you make x in this kind of city or y in this kind of city.” Certainly, in San Francisco, $50k isn’t a win. Luckily our median salary there is well into the six figures. Lambda School’s income share agreement is also (to my knowledge) the only in the indu…

> that is industry-specific

Don't you mean role/responsibilities specific? What happens if one of your students takes a web app developer role at, let's say, an auto parts manufacturer?

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