This is actually the crux of the problem here. We focused the curriculum on UX research-y fundamentals, and the students who wanted to come out as UI designers were disappointed.

We tried to build in design-heavy curriculum partway through when we realized how misaligned those expectations were, but couldn’t do an effective job in such a short time frame, so those students just got more frustrated.

It’s totally fair, we should have done a better job communicating and shouldn’t have tried to call an audible at the last minute to fix everything.

Why are you telling your students that they shouldn’t discuss problems with the school outside of channels monitored by Lambda?

https://twitter.com/Austen/status/1213711252175740928

You say that no “professional environment” would encourage this, but it’s actually a legally protected right in every workplace:

https://www.dol.gov/olms/regs/compliance/EO_Posters/Employee...

They pull this BS all the time to students - it's terrible: https://twitter.com/nwilliams030/status/1219687148972056578

I cannot believe how often Austen flat out lies on things so easily disproven.

That addition to the student guide was to clarify that students can’t harass other students and have it be Ok even off of Lambda School’s platform. Has nothing whatsoever to do with stopping students from complaining.

Somehow it neglects to mention that, but instead uses a vague term of "Impacts the mission", which very much sounds like corporation-speak for "negative public attention" and similar things.

Luckily, that's easy to fix by adding a sentence or two to this section.

Which I believe we did. I’d have to look back and see but students asked for that clarification and it’s either done or someone is working on that.

What I said is we’re not going to create a Slack channel specifically for everyone to vent. There are a huge number of ways students can send feedback or complain.

That’s not what you said.

Student:

“I wish there was a safe place for upset students to chat to each other outside of Lambda’s slack. A worry-free environment, unmonitored by Austen & whoever has viewing permissions on our messages. Fear and uncertainty would be eliminated, and the real issues would be uncovered”

You:

“ That would not only be unwise for everyone involved but an enormous legal liability for the school. No professional environment you’ll ever be in will encourage something like that.

There are a huge number of ways to submit feedback or complaints and we read all of them.”

Which again, discussing your workplace conditions is protected, by law, under the NLRA. Why are you telling your students that “no professional environment you’ll ever be in will encourage something like that,” counter to what’s guaranteed them by US labor law?

> Why are you telling your students that “no professional environment you’ll ever be in will encourage something like that,” counter to what’s guaranteed them by US labor law?

Encouragement and acceptance are two completely different things.

Oh you’re right I actually read his original tweet wrong. They do have a space outside of Lambda School but it’s not sanctioned by Lambda School.

Would you address the classes being taught by students instead of experienced professionals.

Also, did you release the cohort from their contractual obligations after failing them?

Every cohort has an instructor who is a professional (usually multiple); we have 85 full-time teaching staff.

We also put every student in a group of 8 students with one TA, where a TA is a student a few months ahead of them (on payroll). But that is only in addition to the full-time instructors.