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Comment by thinkingemote | Hacker News Reader

"I signed up for 18 months of programming... They suddenly reduced it to 12 months. As of yesterday, I've withdrawn after 4 months as this is not the program that was sold to me. I completed 22% of the program...but under their new reduction, they said I owe 37%"

Seems like they would have a good case for getting their money back, but might need to consult a lawyer.

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Well, it's even better for the student because the tuition is paid via an income-sharing agreement. That means you don't have to try to "get your money back" — you just have to defend yourself if they actually sue you for a share of your earnings.

This means that Lambda would have to deal with the bad optics of "suing their students" (which sounds worse than simply refusing to give refunds).

If Lambda did actually sue, students would have to defend themselves. But it's always better to be the party that starts out having the thing at issue (i.e., the money).

This means that Lambda would have to deal with the bad optics of "suing their students"

There are other things that can happen. It looks like Lamba has been selling ISAs [0], [1]. These lawsuits would possibly not be coming from Lambda.

0 - https://www.theverge.com/2020/2/12/21135134/lambda-school-st...

1 - https://www.wired.com/story/how-we-learn-lambda-income-shari...

That's a good point. I would think that even if the owner of the loans is a third party, the income documentation would probably still flow through Lambda. So if a student refused to provide income information to Lambda based on the claim that the program fundamentally changed mid-stream, then presumably Lambda would have to be the one to sue them (not the owner of the loan).

I imagine they have the elusive and ever present "arbitration clause" where they don't actually have to actually sue their students.

But good luck getting money out of a student without actually getting a judgement. They'd basically be limited to reporting it to credit agencies and just asking them to pay.

A arbitration agreement isn't enough to get a bank or an employer to hand over any money from the student.

I'm not particularly familiar with arbitration and the resulting paperwork, nor with financial claims against another party.

However, I do know that minutes of mutual settlement can be filled with a court, and the court will, based on the affidavit of filing, enforce it as if that court had ruled.

And for instance, this is in a Arbitration submission agreement I found: "The parties agree to abide by and perform any award(s) rendered pursuant to this Submission Agreement. The parties further agree that a judgment and any interest due thereon, may be entered upon such award(s) and, for these purposes, the parties hereby voluntarily consent to submit to the jurisdiction of any court of competent jurisdiction which may properly enter such judgment."

i.e. "act as if a court ordered it, 'cause they have in effect"

So you are right that a binding arbitration agreement probably isn't enough, but filed with a court, and filed with either bank or employer, it should be enough.

It's not just filing with a court. You have to appear before a judge to ask for a default judgement, and the defendant can offer a defense (the options are narrow in scope, but not nonexistent).

This was in the context of the optics of 'suing their students'. So you serve the student, pay a lawyer to appear in court to ask for a default judgement, then student offers a defense, and a judge potentially grants the judgement. There's functionally no difference with respect to optics.

Also ISAs have not been heavily litigated, so no one really knows what would happen if a company tries to enforce them.

You're probably right, though I think the press would still present this as "coding bootcamp sues its students". The fact that the process is unfolding in front of an arbitrator doesn't change the fundamental story.

"Possession is nine-tenths of the law."

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