Depending on your opinion, it's either a brilliant investment in students, aligning the interests of the school and the students - or it's a loan by a slightly different name, fooling the naive into overpaying for instruction from teachers who barely make minimum wage.
From what I've read though, they actually bundle the ISAs and sell them off to investors--just like the mortgage-backed securities that led to the 2008 financial crisis. So the bootcamp's real incentive would be to generate as many ISAs to sell as possible, not to make sure the ISAs are any good.
Edit: Found my own. Oof.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.theverge.com/platform/amp/2...
Two AMP redirects in one link? Sheesh.
If the ISAs don't perform, then Lambda will (likely) have no future in selling them. Do you really think they're risking their future cash flow in order to bundle up as much bullshit as they can right now?
Why not? They've already been proven to falsify the employment rates of their students. Their marketing material is significantly off from reality.
Obviously they could be telling the companies buying the ISAs the truth though.
Will it lead to a $150K job, or a $80K job?
Will not doing it lead to a $80K job?
For the company, what risk do they have if most students will earn over 50K regardless of the quality of their product?
I'm not good at economics, but I think one can look at this deal from both the consumer and the provider and see that there are flaws from both sides. Trust is key.
And in this context trust doesn't scale, you need good teachers for every [class size] students. That means profit only scales linearly with good teachers (the scarce resource).
Marketing scales though, and what matters to the consumer is how much they believe the actual value is compared to the competition for what they believe their options are.
There's also a rule that the remaining debt is cancelled 30 years after you graduate. Most people (perhaps not most programmers) won't repay the whole debt within 30 years. So for them, this is essentially a kind of tax, rather than a debt.
https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/students/student-loans-tui...
For some reason this isn't widely known on HN.
Regular degrees are pretty much just like that as well
The problem with regular degrees is not their actual cost. It's that you're sold (and most people want to buy) the experience. That's where they compete (and what "drives costs" up).
Don't play that game. Though of course not studying in an Ivy League univ. means you don't get to be buddy buddy with the next Mark Z which might just offer you a job at a nice place because you were buddies and oh this "entry level job" starts at 200k and there's your student loans sorted. But that's if you're moderately lucky and are competent at either tech and/or some form of people skills.
(before I "something something public education something something it's cheaper to study somewhere else even considering relocation costs")
Maybe it was less before?
After $500 for rent that’s only $750 left. Food: $500? Cell phone/ internet:$70? Clothing: goodwill? Car insurance: $100? Utilities:?
Anyway, here are some numbers that I know or can give pretty accurate details for:
Rent under 4500 SEK/mo
Phone data SEK 400 per 6 mo. -- pay as you go - 20 GB for 6 months and never have had to add more. Wifi at home, on the train, and both in the city center and at the University means I rarely use my own.
Phone calls SEK 100 has lasted me god knows how long for minutes. I don't think I add minutes more frequently than every six months or so.
Car insurance is something like SEK 2500 or 3000 per year for a <10 year old car.
Food ~1500 SEK per week -- we are vegetarian and rarely buy anything fancy; we also grow fruit and veg in the summer; this of course can be quite variable, with some weeks being SEK 1200 and others SEK 2000 or more.
Utilities: we have a geo heat pump; we don't pay very much in utilities; we mostly charge our EV at the train station for free.
Clothes: H&M primarily, Amazon.de occasionally (I guess we have Amazon.se now too) -- my wife and I don't buy new clothes very often, though my children definitely need new stuff regularly. Still, we don't spend very much on clothes, but I will freely admit that this is the one I don't have as much sense of.
So, minus an exact number on utilities and clothes, it looks like a bit more than SEK 10,000 per month. Add some exact amount for utilities and clothing, and I think we are within a $15K-18K range.
350eur for rent. 200eur for food. 25eur for internet, no car needed. Utilities included in student rental, otherwise 30eur. clothing and fun things: everything else.
Current system provides a government backed loan at 0.00% interest of up to 800eur/month, which you then need to pay back depending on income in 35 years. (Much like ISA, but with the government). You get 100eur/month for health insurance (basic health insurance costs the same). and 100 euro/month for renting. These last 2 are based on income and available for everyone under a certain income limit. (Almost all students are below this limit)
We had a system where you received 300/month and could then get a loan on top of it. But that was replaced by the neoliberals.
Hope that enlightens it a bit.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Student_financial_aid_(Sweden)
You also get, I think, about $150 a month housing allowance.
So on top of your $150 + 4×$84 = ca. $500 monthly income, you only need to take about $800 a month as a loan to survive. (Remember, no tuition fees.)
But otherwise yes. And I didn't live a very frugal life and I didn't have a lot of funds when I started out, just enough for furniture and similar.
Don't overestimate living expenses in a 500 year old walkable town with a small university in a --socialist democracy-- country that cares about its citizens.
Democratic socialism is not averse to capitalism and understands that the private sector has a role to play.
But it also assumes that government has responsibilities to its citizens that amount to more than a minimal set of rights.
Up until Reagan, the US had similar policies, with the one exception of health care.
In Nordic countries, we don't really like it when Americans call us socialist democracies. We are market economies like everyone else. Here's a take from the Danish prime minister: https://www.vox.com/2015/10/31/9650030/denmark-prime-ministe...
Minor rant, but the greatest tragedy of recent American politics (1980+) has been convincing people they're dumb and will never be as smart as others. It's set up a terrible cycle of (1) listen to "experts," (2) forget that one can do one's own thinking, (3) parrot expert views back to your peers, (4) feel secretly ashamed of your own ignorance, (5) become more strident in "your" views, GOTO (1).
Is it really that difficult to discuss something without having to choose what fucking side you're on, or having it chosen for you based on a series of shallow value judgments?
[0] I think Finland is now charging a small tuition fee, at least for non-EU students.
Communism says that there isn't any individual property.
Scandinavian countries have never been socialist.
Maybe they're not "really socialist", but then by that standard, is there a "really capitalist" country? Even the US, which is probably the most capitalist "developed" country, has some state ownership of production.
Otherwise Bismarck's 19th century Prussia would be socialist
All of this is valid IF the bootcamp works. In this case, that may not be the case.
But doing lambda school is going into debt, isn't it? A different kind of debt but a debt nonetheless.
Can you imagine going to Lambda school, not getting a good education, not getting a much higher paying job, then being stuck unable to get incremental raises past $50,000 so you don’t end up down $8,500 for 2 years?
https://lambdaschool.com/isa is there data, and I am sure there is more. Can you reference your post to what they state they charge for?
So if you go from $49,999 to $50,000 you now owe them $50,000 * 0.17, or $8,500.
"Now wait just a minute, FemmeAndroid. If you're just getting a raise at your current job, that won't be covered unless you're a web dev."
Now I don't know about you, but I like doing good work, and I'm a developer at heart, even if I don't have a fancy CS degree or even a Bootcamp diploma. But every desk job I've had has ended up involving development, since I can usually help automate parts of my job. It's worked out well for me, and I'd imagine anyone who comes out of a bootcamp like this without a new job will at least try and leverage their coding experience to improve their current job, get a raise, or get a promotion. Your job might not be 'web developer' but your job will start to involve the skills you learned at Lambda school.
'You will owe payments toward your ISA if your job requires skills you learned at Lambda School, even if your title isn't "Web Developer" or "Data Scientist."'
Heck, even if you start a business, and grow it from the ground up, as soon as you make $50,000 a year, you immediately drop back down $8,500. (They explicitly call out 'Self-employed' as an eligible job on the page linked.) Even if you just get a second job that reasonably only makes a bit of money, you fall into this trap. (They explicitly call out 'Second Job' on the page linked.)
You will be stuck in this catch-22 of not having an incentive to make over $50,000 unless you can make the jump to a little over $60,000 or so for 60 months. That's point 3 on the linked website. "[You are bound by the terms of the ISA until you pay 17% for 24 months, you pay out $30k, or...] You did not make over $4,167/month or did not have a qualifying job, and therefore "deferred" your monthly payments for a total of 60 months."
All the above quotes come from your linked page. I was just simplifying the facts of that very page into a fairly big problem with how it's structured.
Heck, you can even see what I'm talking about by using their own calculator. Go to https://lambdaschool.com/isa-calculator and jump between making $49,500 and $50,000 a year, and you'll see you go from owing nothing to owing nothing a month to $715 a month while only making $4,208. That's a huge leap.
Progressive taxes will just punish high middle class people for creating more value than low middle class people, making it harder for them to join the class of actual rich people who can structure their income so as to pay minimal taxes (like big corps do).
The higher rates only apply to money over the threshold.
Lambda school works the way many people think the US tax system works (but doesn’t). When you make over X, all of your money is taxed at Y. So it’s better to make X - 1 than X + 1.
The idea is also that this aligns the school's incentives with the student's: if the student doesn't prosper, the school doesn't get paid.
The max you will have to pay is 10% of your discretionary income (10% of income above 1.5x the poverty level).
It's 17 percent of your salary for 2 years or you hit 30k repayment whichever is first. If you don't make over 50k, or don't get a job in a related field (which includes things like IT support I believe) it disappears.
You can kind of see why a student would think that the bootcamp is aligned with their interests. They want you to get a high paying job so they get paid more, and if you don't succeed you owe nothing.
I went through this, and my salary went up 2.25 times what it was previously. I also enjoy my job significantly more. To me this was worth 30k.
Why didn't I just teach myself? A few reasons, one is motivation/accountability, another is structure, and a third was a hope that career services would help me on the other side. I won't claim it was my smartest move, it got me out of the hole I was in.
Edit: want to be clear I'm not recommending doing this, I'm just saying what my/other students I talked to decision process was
That said, half my 4 year software engineering education was hands-on, figure-it-out-yourself stuff; a year of internships and a ton of group projects.
Depending on your university, focused education vs scattershot education, this actually sounds about right.
I think the fee was 300€/year, most of it was headed toward paying mandatory access to the university library. That would be 300x5=1500€ (~2k$) for a complete engineering degree.
Lets not forget that all this is paid with tax money though. You will sort of pay back these studies when paying your taxes once working :)
In Bordeaux it's ~200€ for licence and ~300€ for master, but yeah, lowballed that a little bit.
But ! Note that in France almost 40% of university students get the state grant (https://www.campusmatin.com/vie-campus/experience-etudiante/...) - and thus don't even have to pay the inscription fee.
> Lets not forget that all this is paid with tax money though. You will sort of pay back these studies when paying your taxes once working :)
People in the US pay income tax, too - https://www.companow.com/us-vs-france-where-do-you-pay-the-m...
Also, forget having a campus, classrooms looks like they haven't been renovated in 200 years, you need your own computers because labs are too outdated, professors salaries are a joke, professors keep mixing their personal interests / companies with university - basically getting free work out of students for their businesses, majority of students move out of Italy after graduating because high taxes and bureaucracy make it impossible for profitable business to start up (estimated 250k€ in taxes invested in education lost per student).
I'd rather live in Italy than other countries but I won't uniquely for tax reasons.
Which leads to fun times where English had to pay max UK rate at Scottish universities but EU citizens paid the same as Scots.
Also, Germany is somewhat difficult to navigate if you don't speak German, since you reach many roadblocks where people don't speak English (this is different in Denmark, but Denmark's nationalist party has abolished bachelor studies in English, so much for that).
Back when I was in school, I looked hard at all the options for studying abroad in France and found none with tuition even close to that cheap for even just a semester or summer.
I suspect the prices you're talking about are heavily subsidized and only if you're French (which the OP probably isn't).
Where do you come from ? If it's from the US, sure, it's quite more expensive. If it's from another european country, or a poor country, it should be cheap.
I'm guessing the OP is in the US if they're talking about Lambda School, but even the full foreigner price for your school looks substantially less expensive than Lambda.
That makes question who is more employable: a student with 48 months of University, or someone with 6 months of Lambda and 2.5 years of real world experience? Note, I assumed the Lambda grad had a year unemployed.
Clearly that is an extreme example, but it illustrates the point - getting a paying job quickly does not mean it is the best answer for long-term salary and career growth. Getting any old coding job just to get one is not the same thing as getting the full education that comes from a degree. That doesn't make it the wrong answer... getting a job matters. But if you are comparing long-term outcomes, you need to look at it with more context.
That is, to be able to think in terms of ROI is a privilege.