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@austenallred What's the catch? Lambda School has always struck me as scam like with a very vocal CEO and over promises. What happens when regulators start cra

by pl0x 8y ago

@austenallred What's the catch? Lambda School has always struck me as scam like with a very vocal CEO and over promises. What happens when regulators start cracking down on these practices and what makes you think Lambda will be successful when most bootcamps have failed or been acquired.

austenallred 8y ago
The catch is that you have to pay us back if it works. What makes Lambda School different than other code schools is a few things: 1. Our incentives are entirely aligned with the student. We don’t get paid unless they get hired so juicing revenue numbers with weak students just isn’t interesting, in fact it’s fatal. 2. We put an insane amount of time, money, effort and energy into instructional design. Lambda School is nine months long, and includes a computer science curriculum most bootcamp grads need (and lack). Regulators love us - they’re sick of for profit schools promising a lot and delivering little except debt. We’re the antidote to that. That’s why there’s so much hype.
japhyr 8y ago
I agree that Lambda School sounds too good to be true, but once you start looking they've got real answers for just about everything. I'm a high school teacher, and after watching students struggle with decisions about what to do after high school, I love what I'm seeing with Lambda School. What do you think regulators need to address at Lambda School?
- austenallred 8y ago
  I guess “seems too good to be true” is an OK marketing problem for us to have. If you’d like you can attend classes on a trial basis and check it out!
  - bbg215 8y ago
    What exactly is your admissions criteria for someone to get accepted to LS? How big of a problem is that for your student-to-job conversion rate when the criteria has to become less stringent to scale?
    - austenallred 8y ago
      We look mostly at how well they do on our pre course work, how hard they work and how quickly they can climb steep programming learning curves. We’re seeing over 1,000 applications/week. Top of funnel is not our issue.
      - rizwank 8y ago
        What are your issues then?
        austenallred 8y ago
        We don't have any "issues" in the sense of things that will kill us immediately, with the possible exception of an out of the blue regulation, so I try to spend time on Capitol Hill from time to time to make sure they know the good we're doing. But really it's just that things take time. Two years ago we didn't exist. Now we have over 1,000 concurrent students, 60+ full-time employees, and 120+ contract technical mentors. And mostly we think about product and how to make everything better as quickly as we can. We want to continue improving everything as we 10x the number of students and open up opportunities to more people, all while improving our outcomes (https://lambdaschool.com/outcomes https://lambdaschool.com/outcomes). It's just hard to do.
        rficcaglia 8y ago
        My guess is as the number of participants goes up, the quality of the student will decline and many will never get to payback employment levels. But it just has to work enough to make good margin. Right now they can cherry pick the most promising. And learning something is different than doing it as a career. I personally know 2 bootcamp (not Lambda) grads who subsequently left software altogether since it wasn’t as much fun as they thought. Learning new stuff in a fun, hip, environment is great! Debugging some 5 year old production code while the customer is howling on Christmas Eve...not so much. Overall though I’m a fan of non-traditional education so I think there is a place for this. I am also an employer and am in favor of increasing talent supply and reducing wage pressures.
      - 8y ago
wycs 8y ago
If regulators do this it will be to protect a crooked accreditation monopoly from their well-deserved demise.
prawn 8y ago
I know there are sharks in every industry, but is it a bit odd that this is a company offering free tuition unless you succeed, and draws this comment, while a typical college that charges up front and offers little help finding employment has only recently started to get a little pushback? The major universities in my city all advertise in really over-the-top, emotive, glowing language.

by pl0x 8y ago

austenallred 8y ago

The catch is that you have to pay us back if it works. What makes Lambda School different than other code schools is a few things: 1. Our incentives are entirely aligned with the student. We don’t get paid unless they get hired so juicing revenue numbers with weak students just isn’t interesting, in fact it’s fatal. 2. We put an insane amount of time, money, effort and energy into instructional design. Lambda School is nine months long, and includes a computer science curriculum most bootcamp grads need (and lack). Regulators love us - they’re sick of for profit schools promising a lot and delivering little except debt. We’re the antidote to that. That’s why there’s so much hype.

japhyr 8y ago

I agree that Lambda School sounds too good to be true, but once you start looking they've got real answers for just about everything. I'm a high school teacher, and after watching students struggle with decisions about what to do after high school, I love what I'm seeing with Lambda School. What do you think regulators need to address at Lambda School?

austenallred 8y ago
I guess “seems too good to be true” is an OK marketing problem for us to have. If you’d like you can attend classes on a trial basis and check it out!
- bbg215 8y ago
  What exactly is your admissions criteria for someone to get accepted to LS? How big of a problem is that for your student-to-job conversion rate when the criteria has to become less stringent to scale?
  - austenallred 8y ago
    We look mostly at how well they do on our pre course work, how hard they work and how quickly they can climb steep programming learning curves. We’re seeing over 1,000 applications/week. Top of funnel is not our issue.
    - rizwank 8y ago
      What are your issues then?
      - austenallred 8y ago
        We don't have any "issues" in the sense of things that will kill us immediately, with the possible exception of an out of the blue regulation, so I try to spend time on Capitol Hill from time to time to make sure they know the good we're doing. But really it's just that things take time. Two years ago we didn't exist. Now we have over 1,000 concurrent students, 60+ full-time employees, and 120+ contract technical mentors. And mostly we think about product and how to make everything better as quickly as we can. We want to continue improving everything as we 10x the number of students and open up opportunities to more people, all while improving our outcomes (https://lambdaschool.com/outcomes https://lambdaschool.com/outcomes). It's just hard to do.
      - rficcaglia 8y ago
        My guess is as the number of participants goes up, the quality of the student will decline and many will never get to payback employment levels. But it just has to work enough to make good margin. Right now they can cherry pick the most promising. And learning something is different than doing it as a career. I personally know 2 bootcamp (not Lambda) grads who subsequently left software altogether since it wasn’t as much fun as they thought. Learning new stuff in a fun, hip, environment is great! Debugging some 5 year old production code while the customer is howling on Christmas Eve...not so much. Overall though I’m a fan of non-traditional education so I think there is a place for this. I am also an employer and am in favor of increasing talent supply and reducing wage pressures.
    - 8y ago

wycs 8y ago

If regulators do this it will be to protect a crooked accreditation monopoly from their well-deserved demise.

prawn 8y ago

I know there are sharks in every industry, but is it a bit odd that this is a company offering free tuition unless you succeed, and draws this comment, while a typical college that charges up front and offers little help finding employment has only recently started to get a little pushback? The major universities in my city all advertise in really over-the-top, emotive, glowing language.