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This is pretty messed up - I liked the idea of incentive aligned ISAs (and actually teaching a skill that universities mostly don't), but it still requires some

This is pretty messed up - I liked the idea of incentive aligned ISAs (and actually teaching a skill that universities mostly don't), but it still requires someone of good character making decisions ultimately.

noufalibrahim 2y ago
Yes. The ISA was a good idea. It aligned the incentives of the company with the vocational success of the students. There are several clones of this in India. I assumed that the rest of the details (like curriculum etc.) would fall into place and the thing would be atleast a moderate sustainable success. I think that's it's the pressure to grow and become a "unicorn" that seems to encourage these kinds of ugly compromises and behaviour. That kind of thing can be just annoying if the company was some kind of social media thing but when you get involved in something as important as education which can have a huge impact on a persons life, you have to be responsible about it. But that doesn't really help the valuations.
bachmeier 2y ago
> I liked the idea of incentive aligned ISAs The problem is that incentives are definitely not aligned. Once the student signs the ISA, they can put significant resources into helping the student get the best possible job, or they can put nothing into it and take a big share of the income the student would have otherwise earned. Incentives are only aligned if the ISA is based on the additional income from going through the program, and there's no way to measure that. I think what we've learned is that this can only work if there's an outside regulator, such as an accreditation body, preventing bootcamps from taking the parasitic approach.
imzadi 2y ago
That's how it was sold to us. Literally, the recruiter's exact words were "we don't succeed unless you succeed." In reality, they just kept taking in more and more students. When you have your students doing peer reviews and self-reviews, there not a lot of added cost for having more students. So cohorts went from 8 - 10 students to 30+ students. They also bundled ISAs and sold them off without telling the students they were doing it. So "we don't succeed unless you succeed" was patently false. They were getting their money up front regardless.

noufalibrahim 2y ago

Yes. The ISA was a good idea. It aligned the incentives of the company with the vocational success of the students. There are several clones of this in India. I assumed that the rest of the details (like curriculum etc.) would fall into place and the thing would be atleast a moderate sustainable success. I think that's it's the pressure to grow and become a "unicorn" that seems to encourage these kinds of ugly compromises and behaviour. That kind of thing can be just annoying if the company was some kind of social media thing but when you get involved in something as important as education which can have a huge impact on a persons life, you have to be responsible about it. But that doesn't really help the valuations.

bachmeier 2y ago

> I liked the idea of incentive aligned ISAs The problem is that incentives are definitely not aligned. Once the student signs the ISA, they can put significant resources into helping the student get the best possible job, or they can put nothing into it and take a big share of the income the student would have otherwise earned. Incentives are only aligned if the ISA is based on the additional income from going through the program, and there's no way to measure that. I think what we've learned is that this can only work if there's an outside regulator, such as an accreditation body, preventing bootcamps from taking the parasitic approach.

imzadi 2y ago

That's how it was sold to us. Literally, the recruiter's exact words were "we don't succeed unless you succeed." In reality, they just kept taking in more and more students. When you have your students doing peer reviews and self-reviews, there not a lot of added cost for having more students. So cohorts went from 8 - 10 students to 30+ students. They also bundled ISAs and sold them off without telling the students they were doing it. So "we don't succeed unless you succeed" was patently false. They were getting their money up front regardless.