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> Someone here commenting on this story said that Lambda counted their student TAs in their employment stats, for example, but to the best of my knowledge this

> Someone here commenting on this story said that Lambda counted their student TAs in their employment stats, for example, but to the best of my knowledge this never happened. There were a handful (like three or four that I know of) that we did hire as full-time staff doing real jobs, and I'm pretty sure we counted them as employed, but not the student TAs. That's true. A source of confusion is that the school did hire at least one bootcamp graduate as an instructor, though he graduated from a different bootcamp. And it's worth pointing out that the marketing material promised world class instruction, and a fresh bootcamp grad with zero industry experience is the very opposite of that. For that matter, the head of the data science program was the CEO's brother, whose only industry experience was from a no-name company in Utah. > With respect to this ruling... It's a waste of time to argue the semantics of income share agreements at this point. They always operated in a gray area, which is why Lambda School hired lobbiests to try to make them officially legal. That effort failed, and the law has decided they're just another form of loans with convoluted hoops to jump through. I imagine that they got that $4,000 number from all the people who attended the program, received zero practical skills to get jobs, went on to further training (another bootcamp or even an associates degree) and still had to pay back the company because the terms of the ISAs lasted anywhere from five to eight years. > Still others complain about the selling of the ISAs to investors, and say that that means that Lambda would still make money no matter how well their students performed. However, this would be a very short-sighted strategy as no investors would buy the ISAs if the students weren't performing. Given the ISAs disappeared from the marketplaces that resold them to hedge funds, that sounds like exactly what happened. The issue is that it fooled prospective students into thinking, "Hey, if this company is able to run off ISAs, the program must work!" In fact the company made money by leaving hedge funds as bag holders. > My point is, there's a lot of information out there by a lot of people who aren't sure about what they're talking about. And it can be tough to know what's real and what's not. The same is probably true of Bernie Madoff, Charles Ponzi, and Sam Bankman-Fried. When someone acts like a sociopath for long enough, people start to assume that everything they do is unethical. There is a long list of crimes that the company committed which have been verified from multiple sources. A few people on the internet getting the details wrong doesn't invalidate that. > As part of my layoff agreement, I had to sign a non-disparagement clause to get my severance. They did the same thing to students who scrounge together the money to hire a lawyer to get out of their ISAs. These students had to any reference to Lambda School from their LinkedIn profile and tell nobody about what happened. While you did it to make money, imagine how it would feel sign away your right to free speech for fear of a $30,000 debt.

beej71 2y ago
> I imagine that they got that $4,000 number from all the people who attended the program, received zero practical skills to get jobs, went on to further training But to be clear, that's not where they said they got the $4000 number. It would be one of those things that'd be nice to correctly know. Do ISAs come with a hidden $4000 fee? The answer: no. Did they have to pay $4000 more because of additional training? No. Did the ISAs last 8 years? No. (At least not for any of the years I was there.) > Given the ISAs disappeared from the marketplaces that resold them to hedge funds, that sounds like exactly what happened. I have no knowledge of their final disposition, whether or not the purchasers realized gains on the ISAs. I know other companies like App Academy and Launch School have had successes with ISAs. For me, this is the real pisser of all this. I think done right it's a workable, useful model, but it got dragged through the mud here, and now we're left with the same old bullshit loans that are fucking the country over. I don't care about Lambda, but I really wish ISAs had been worked on to greater effect globally and hadn't gotten this tarnished image. > A few people on the internet getting the details wrong doesn't invalidate that. Of course not. But it also doesn't make the wrong details right, or something you should believe, which is what this subthread is all about. How can we be expected to make any learned decisions about these sorts of financing instruments if we're throwing bad information in with the good?
- cglee 2y ago
  I'm the founder of Launch School and I have been thinking about ISAs, coding bootcamps, and software ed for over a decade. I've tried to insert my thoughts here and there, for example: - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30782967 - https://x.com/cglee/status/1232512904953335808 Always happy to chat about ISAs and how to best deploy them. Or, find better alternatives.
  - beej71 2y ago
    Thanks for replying! The reviews of Launch School are impressive. I think you're dead on with that first link. I've heard of some schools that did not apply an effective filter up front, despite instructor pleas, and suffered for it greatly with lowered job placement, ultimately failing with the ISA model. I feel there's a class of students for whom ISAs are perfect, and, just like you said, a class of students for whom they are ineffective. The ones where the ISA works and standard school is out of reach have incredible success stories. I found something similar when I taught a nearly free C++ class. I put a really simple test on the front with a refundable $20 fee (if you took the course). Everyone who ultimately took the class was really motivated. $20 was all it took to filter. $5 might have even worked since I speculate the effect is psychological, not economical. The second link is good food for thought, some stuff I hadn't considered. If the ISAs are sold cheaply enough, you really don't need much student success to get a return. IIRC, in Lambda's case, the ISA sales were stopped while the company was still young (having gotten another round) [caveat: I didn't have much visibility into this side of things], and anecdotally I think they had some of their biggest successes early on, but I agree with your points on this. One thing that really impressed me about Lambda was how diverse in every respect the student body was, people from just every walk of life. Waaay more so than I'd seen at any university. I credit the ISA for making this possible. One of my missions in life is to enable people to get the training they want to get. ISAs were wonderful in that regard.

beej71 2y ago

> I imagine that they got that $4,000 number from all the people who attended the program, received zero practical skills to get jobs, went on to further training But to be clear, that's not where they said they got the $4000 number. It would be one of those things that'd be nice to correctly know. Do ISAs come with a hidden $4000 fee? The answer: no. Did they have to pay $4000 more because of additional training? No. Did the ISAs last 8 years? No. (At least not for any of the years I was there.) > Given the ISAs disappeared from the marketplaces that resold them to hedge funds, that sounds like exactly what happened. I have no knowledge of their final disposition, whether or not the purchasers realized gains on the ISAs. I know other companies like App Academy and Launch School have had successes with ISAs. For me, this is the real pisser of all this. I think done right it's a workable, useful model, but it got dragged through the mud here, and now we're left with the same old bullshit loans that are fucking the country over. I don't care about Lambda, but I really wish ISAs had been worked on to greater effect globally and hadn't gotten this tarnished image. > A few people on the internet getting the details wrong doesn't invalidate that. Of course not. But it also doesn't make the wrong details right, or something you should believe, which is what this subthread is all about. How can we be expected to make any learned decisions about these sorts of financing instruments if we're throwing bad information in with the good?

cglee 2y ago
I'm the founder of Launch School and I have been thinking about ISAs, coding bootcamps, and software ed for over a decade. I've tried to insert my thoughts here and there, for example: - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30782967 - https://x.com/cglee/status/1232512904953335808 Always happy to chat about ISAs and how to best deploy them. Or, find better alternatives.
- beej71 2y ago
  Thanks for replying! The reviews of Launch School are impressive. I think you're dead on with that first link. I've heard of some schools that did not apply an effective filter up front, despite instructor pleas, and suffered for it greatly with lowered job placement, ultimately failing with the ISA model. I feel there's a class of students for whom ISAs are perfect, and, just like you said, a class of students for whom they are ineffective. The ones where the ISA works and standard school is out of reach have incredible success stories. I found something similar when I taught a nearly free C++ class. I put a really simple test on the front with a refundable $20 fee (if you took the course). Everyone who ultimately took the class was really motivated. $20 was all it took to filter. $5 might have even worked since I speculate the effect is psychological, not economical. The second link is good food for thought, some stuff I hadn't considered. If the ISAs are sold cheaply enough, you really don't need much student success to get a return. IIRC, in Lambda's case, the ISA sales were stopped while the company was still young (having gotten another round) [caveat: I didn't have much visibility into this side of things], and anecdotally I think they had some of their biggest successes early on, but I agree with your points on this. One thing that really impressed me about Lambda was how diverse in every respect the student body was, people from just every walk of life. Waaay more so than I'd seen at any university. I credit the ISA for making this possible. One of my missions in life is to enable people to get the training they want to get. ISAs were wonderful in that regard.