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Comment by intherdfield | Hacker News Reader

I don't think you mentioned that the student doesn't have to pay back Lambda after 60 months of deferred payments. That seems important. From the Lambda site:

"The income share agreement has no interest. It's a flat percentage that goes away once you've reached the $30k payment cap, you've made 24 payments, or after 60 months of deferred payments (even if you haven't paid us anything)."

But you wrote in the article:

"Students with no safety nets experience real financial pain from the nine-month hiatus from work, in addition to the looming dread of possibly having to pay Lambda $30K one day."

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Still seems like a way better deal than student loans, which can follow you until you die.

Yeah, got cut for brevity, but students definitely experience serious anxiety about even the five year horizon.

It's a pretty important point though. Compare with a student loan, which never goes away. Failing to mention that seems in pretty clear bad faith.

That seems really disingenuous. Can't you update the article with this important detail?

It's not disingenuous; I think an earlier draft had it. This came down from 4000 words. I'll try to ask my editor to add this as a correction but things are pretty hectic. It's a fairly minor omission in my opinion, but I understand disagreeing.

It's hardly a "fairly minor omission" in a country where the conventional tertiary education saddles the average student with a debt that is often far bigger than $30k, doesn't expire, and cannot be escaped even through bankruptcy, meaning that even retirement benefits can be garnished above a meagre $750/month.

Agree it’s a minor point, can’t expect OP to fit every contractual detail in a short article.

Well, it is to me.

Writes a 2000+ word article, cuts 14 "for brevity".

Overall, I think this was an insightful article, but cutting that out seems misleading, even underhanded.

And let's be honest here, I am no fan of Lambda school and I think it's way too expensive for an online school.

But if the editor cut those 14 words out, it wasn't to make the article more concise, it was to make the audience more outraged and more likely to share that article with others -- thereby increase the number of page views.

Not that I would expect the author to admit that. The author can't speak to the intent of his editor, obviously. And even if he could, I don't think his editor would be too pleased with him if he did that.

That seems like a giant omission. 5 years is nothing compared to student loans. There are people in their 40s still paying back loans they took when they were 18

Got cut? Meaning you knew about this crucial detail and consciously decided to not include it?

"Yeah, got cut for brevity, but students definitely experience serious anxiety about even the five year horizon."

Lambda School is <5 years old. Pretty disingenuous man.

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