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Comment by arenaninja | Hacker News Reader

I've never looked into Lambda School but some bits from this stand out to me.

> We have just north of 2,000 students and ~180 full-time staff members, the majority of which are student-facing.

2000/180 = 12 students per staff member. This seems high and "student-facing" is padding the numbers. "Customer Success" people are technically student-facing but not instructors, and number of instructors per student is the most important number that matters for quality

> This student’s frustration comes from a series of changes we made simultaneously

Do not make changes to ongoing cohorts

> Some students see it as one more thing distracting them from writing more code, and believe the only thing that will determine their career success is ability to write code

Isn't this something a school would be able to educate on? Why not introduce group projects (maybe you already have them)?

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> 2000/180 = 12 students per staff member. This seems high and "student-facing" is padding the numbers.

It is very, very high.

I’d have to dig to find the exact numbers but about 90 are directly involved in instruction, project management, etc. Not including student support.

> Do not make changes to ongoing cohorts

We really try to avoid doing so, but in some instances it is impossible.

> Isn't this something a school would be able to educate on? Why not introduce group projects (maybe you already have them)?

We do have group projects and do try to educate here. Students will come back a year after being hired and say, “Wow, I thought x was a waste of time but it was extraordinarily useful” all the time.

> > Do not make changes to ongoing cohorts > We really try to avoid doing so, but in some instances it is impossible.

You sold students something you can't implement. Apologize and offer a full refund.

I suppose it depends on what “changes” means. We specifically tell students (and they even sign a document that says) that we will make changes to aspects of the the experience during their time as a student (e.g. schedule, specifics of curriculum).

Students can be with Lambda for as long as 2+ years. Everything being frozen in time would be to their great detriment.

Why not let them opt in to new things if they really are benefits?

Generally speaking we do, and almost every change we made had an opt in/out option.

The only times we can’t do that (and that’s happened maybe 1-2 times in the history of Lambda School) is when it’s a change to teams of students that run across multiple cohorts.

So in those rare circumstances, why not offer refunds to those who don't want to stay with Lambda School after the change?

I can imagine scenarios where a full refund would be make sense, but refund isn’t really appropriate when we’re talking about small changes in schedule, especially when everyone agreed such changes were possible.

Yeah, that's your prerogative. Personally, I'd eat some bad press by just making it a policy to always have opt-in changes across the board, or offer dissatisfied students refunds. And saying "everyone agreed such changes were possible" when you're essentially talking about the fine text of a contract only one side has the opportunity to define the terms of seems questionable. We aren't talking about two sides in a negotiation coming to a meeting of the minds. You created a contract with those terms, on top of an already questionably structured ISA. You can change the contract to make it more explicitly favorable to your students.

How is the ISA questionably structured?

See my other thread here about how by not being a progressively structured ISA, you can cause the most harm to students who get the least out of your 'school.' Not to mention your securitizing of ISAs removes the argument for your model that you align your business with the success of your students.

But frankly, if the only thing you took out of this post is that the ISA structure is poor, without considering how you have all the power to set and enforce terms in your contract, I don't think I have much else I can say to try and help you. I think there are a lot of ways you can improve Lambda School to make it better for the people attending. And they don't involve deleting Reddit threads of criticism.

Edit: s/selling/securitizing

"Small" is really exaggerating the changes. Schedule is just a small part of it. But while we're talking about schedule, many parents that are students at Lambda School struggled hard with the increase of meetings after the changes were implemented.

"especially when everyone agreed such changes were possible" Looking at this thread, it doesn't seem like everyone agreed.

Do universities offer full refunds for the whole 4 years of a course if they had to change the curriculum while a student was studying there? If not, why such elevated expectations for a school that’s trying to align their interests with that of their students (school only gets paid if the student is financially successful), but not for other institutions that leave their students with massive debt that is not contingent on their student’s success?

University credits are transferable in a way a partial education from Lambda School is not, and you can pause at any time. Universities do let you stop part way through your education. Most universities do have options to get partial refunds that are more reasonable than the ones Lambda school seems to offer. Instate tuition across the US is also a fraction of Lambda School, with multiple options if you want to transfer credits.

For what it’s worth, major changes in curriculum do lead to refunds at schools. There have been two examples in my education where mid-year I had a graduate level class need to be rescheduled from a night class due to a professor’s illness. Both were fully refunded when I couldn’t fit the class into my work schedule. That seems to be pretty analogous here, and I wasn’t charged a percent based on how many weeks I attended the class before the change. I was just refunded the total amount of the course because I wouldn’t be able to gain its value. It wasn’t even a difficult process to get the refund, unlike the weeks of trying to get support it seems like the person in this situation attempted.

I think I would place ‘elevated’ expectations for refunds on a founder due to the elevated risk of trying a Startup’s unproven, expensive, and risky education model. I don’t think the expectations are ‘elevated’ but I also think your baseline for doing good for students shouldn’t be ‘it’s only as bad as I perceive the alternatives.’ I think we should strive to do better.

> I suppose it depends on what “changes” means.

Don't pull Bill Clinton [1].

When enough people complain you made changes that are material and detrimental.

[1] https://slate.com/news-and-politics/1998/09/bill-clinton-and...

> schedule, specifics of curriculum

These are not the changes OP is complaining about. Your responses kind of strike me as misdirection.

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