ISAs as indentured servitude? The shadowy negotiating a company's validation "behind closed doors?" (Where else are you supposed to do it.)
The criticism of Lambda School can stand on its own without wading into the extreme hyperbole.
We uncritically accept the status quo, and at the same time compare all upstarts against some platonic ideal of what we imagine could exist.
> Not really necessary.
Define "necessary." Is it necessary to write articles at all?
Of course it's all fine and it's all understandable because he's from Utah and Mormon and Utah has a lot of MLMs. And it's relevant later anyway, it illustrates that it's a Potemkin village company / depths of humiliation that Austin moved back to Utah. Blah blah blah.
But a really good example younger me, and even today me, would learn from. Stay focused. Delete the punches that feel good, and you excuse by saying they drive the point home / are explicit. People understood what you're saying without it, so it reads as gratituous.
My favorite example is when he's talking about Lambda not registering with the state:
> Austen claimed the school had made an honest mistake, and the company lawyer, who he claimed told them that since all the classes were online, it didn't need approval. Sure.
And that's it. "Sure". He just smugly dismisses the claim without presenting any actual evidence to establish that that's what happened. This approach only works as journalism if the reader doesn't need to be convinced, but if they don't need to be convinced, why read the story in the first place?
Equity in what property?
honk honk honk
But trying to claw earnings from jobs that didn't relate to the school violates the letter and spirit of the agreement and shows the disproportionate power of the parties.
With a fixed-cost tuition program, students who can't afford to pay don't go. This prices out students who would benefit from the program. There is also no recourse if you can't get a job from uni. How do u know if the teachers instructed you properly? Imagine paying $20k for the wrong instruction. Yikes.
The only time an ISA works against the student's favor is when the schools go after students who got a job working in something unrelated (which Lambda appears to have done a lot of) or students who were super successful, because they overpay for the instruction. The latter isn't that bad given the risk-free nature of the ISA, and the former can be resolved with legal action and regulation (which is what's happening).
That's just my $0.02, although I was a Lambda Grad who did the ISA and didn't have any issues.
Another piece of anec-data: I had a non-CS degree coming into Lambda, which definitely helped me during recruitment time. I think that had I gone into a CS program, I would have done fine and possibly even landed a better gig than I got after Lambda, but I didn't want to shell out $50k over 2 years on the chance of that happening, so I was happy to take the ISA. 5 years post-grad, I'm making 4x what I was making pre-Lambda, and my ISA was paid off after 2 years, but as is true with most things: your mileage may vary.
Someone making a deal to give up their future earnings for several years in exchange for a trip to the American colonies and a better life isn't fundamentally different than giving up your future earnings to a coding bootcamp in exchange for a trip to FAANG.
The difference is in the degree of future earnings ceded.
An indentured servant was generally forced to work a specific job until things were paid back (and often at below market wages). Somebody with an ISA is free to do whatever they wish, they just have to pay
I remember this take. It's the kind of thing that only makes sense in a dorm room full of financially secure people that ignore that this is simply creates a slave class of economically disadvantaged.