This, 100%. I'm a student and, while ISAs make Lambda interesting, am mostly disappointed due to the terrible educational quality (and staff's refusal to admit that the quality is pretty low across the board).

Still, though, I've noticed the ISAs create some nuanced perverse things happening that are specific to Lambda - students attracted to the value prop are often much lower income (Lambda cited $22K average starting salary amongst their students) than the average bootcamp student. If Lambda fails them, these students may leave in worse financial prospects than they started with no safety net.

The ISA also kicks in at 40% when you're only 4 weeks into a 40 week curriculum. After that point, it's very hard to leave due to sunk cost fallacy, and you are roped along wasting time, hoping for them to get their stuff together. I wish I and others left well before.

The last part seems like it could easily be improved by simply tying it to the portion of the curriculum covered.

I doubt they'd do that because it'd be bad for Lambda's financials.

That is exactly how it happens. It’s 10% per week for the first 10 weeks, except you don’t owe anything at all until week 4. So it’s fully locked in at 10 weeks but is gradual until then.

That is definitely not proportional. For 40 weeks, proportional would not be 10% per week, but 2.5% per week.

0 0 0 40 50 60 70 80 90 100

I think the assumption I can't do math is insulting. But let's run with it. Here, in the same form, is your theory of value delivery.

  2.5 5.0 7.5 10.0 12.5 15.0 17.5 20.0 22.5 25.0 27.5 30.0 32.5 35.0 37.5 40.0 42.5 45.0 47.5 50.0 52.5 55.0 57.5 60.0 62.5 65.0 67.5 70.0 72.5 75.0 77.5 80.0 82.5 85.0 87.5 90.0 92.5 95.0 97.5 100.0

That's your theory, of course. You can see how cost is not proportional to value delivery. But from what people have been saying about your program, it sounds like actual value delivery is more like

  0.5 1.0 1.5 2.0 2.5 3.0 3.5 4.0 4.5 5.0 5.5 6.0 6.5 7.0 7.5 8.0 8.5 9.0 9.5 10.0 10.5 11.0 11.5 12.0 12.5 13.0 13.5 14.0 14.5 15.0 15.5 16.0 16.5 17.0 17.5 18.0 18.5 19.0 19.5 20.0

So in that case, charging 100% when they're only 25% of the way through a program that's delivering 20% of what it should is even more obviously bad.

The pushback here is that this isn't proportional to the duration of the program. While you're right that this is proportional for 10 weeks, it's not proportional to program duration. If your position is that it's fair to charge 100% tuition for a 40 week program after 10 weeks, make that argument. Don't try to argue that 10% per week for 10 weeks is somehow proportional to 40 weeks.

I'm a big fan of Lambda and am a pretty vocal defender, but this is simply misleading.

We're clearly talking past each other.

Yes, I think it's fair to owe full tuition once you're past 10 weeks in Lambda School, especially given a generous 4-week dropout period during which you owe nothing.

I think that's a perfectly reasonable position to take and is more generous than the alternative (as someone who dropped out of a degree program, I can attest that I wasn't able to return any of my student loans 6 weeks into the semester. I checked).

I wasn't trying to talk past you. My original comment was that a specific complaint about the amount owed being 40% after 4 weeks, despite 4 weeks not representing 40% of the program, could be addressed by tying payment directly to portion of curriculum covered. You responded that this is how it works, but you redefined the denominator in the proportion from the original complaint.

I don't think you're doing this in bad faith, I'm legitimately just trying to point out a response something that is clearly a frustration isn't translating how you intended.

The other point being glossed over here is that higher education tuition is typically applied per term, not for an entire program. You don't get billed for four years tuition when you leave after one year - you have drop-out windows every term, and only pay for terms in which you attended.

So if LS has organized their cirriculum into "sprints", and wants to follow the standard in higher education, there would be a brief dropout window at the start of each sprint, with no ISA applied for sprints that were never started.

Exactly. If you quit a CS program 50% of the way through, you only pay 50% of the cost. And just as important, you get credit for that 50%, and can go somewhere else. At Lambda School, quitting at 50% because of a bad education means you pay 100% of the cost and get 0 in credits.

I’m really sorry to hear you feel stuck. I hope you come out the other end of this with good prospects in spite of the inadequate training Lambda is providing.

Thanks for adding your insight and experience to this thread.

You realize that there are colleges offering degrees in philosophy, right? And they don't even give you a refund when you find out the 4 years of education was useless.

Hi Sam,

HN asks that as discussions intensify, we get more thoughtful and substantive.

I'll do my best to follow that norm as well as to converse with you, with Paul Graham's "How to Disagree" in mind [0].

I'm not quite sure how your response fits into Paul's disagreement hierarchy with my original post in mind, but it doesn't seem to get at the meat of what I said.

I do realize universities offer philosophy degrees. They certainly aren't STEM degrees that have set career paths outside of academia, however I would say that "useless" is too strong a descriptor.

For one, I bet we could both look and find a number of successful people in the startup world that HN encompasses who have philosophy degrees and are doing interesting things within companies (eg they have successful financial careers).

Second, there could be a solid argument that philosophy teaches a useful way of thinking.

Third, if we want to move the goal posts of this discussion to universities, I could go on for quite awhile about ineffective practices and ways they set students up to fail as well. My main concern is the students. Seeing students at any level from early childhood to university and beyond taken advantage/set up to fail/screwed over/bamboozled gets me fired up.

BTW, I checked out your webpage and enjoy the Spartan nature of it. The "end of page" is a nice touch I haven't seen before.

[0] http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html

This is rather obnoxious.

First off, philosophy is an interesting subject in its own right. You're probably not going to get a good job in it. However nobody goes into philosphy thinking they're going to become a millionaire.

The issue in this thread is that lambda school isn't as described. Tricking people is very different than teaching people some esoteric stuff they know upfront is kind of useless pragmatically