[notbob]

I am skeptical that these income sharing agreements are so great. Especially in software.

Lambda School has a 9 month program that takes a 17% cut of your salary for the first 24 months of employment with a cap at $30,000. Which many students in software will hit, especially in high COL areas.

It's worth noting that this is more expensive than many/most universities, which charge less than $30,000 per year (9 months of instruction) even at the sticker price (which no one actually pays).

In fact, I wonder whether bootcamps are even cheaper than the full cost of university. The average student loan debt upon graduation for all US university students is $29,400 (again, for four years of college education with access to both applied and fundamental courses across many different majors vs. a 9 month boot camp focused on a particular skill set).

To be concrete: by taking out a loan for what lambda school costs, you could double major in both nursing and CS at a state U for about the same amount of post-graduation debt as you would have at bootcamps. Or CS and Econ. Or CS and Accounting. Or CS and Mechanical Engineering. In states that still invest in higher ed, you'll end up paying less (even with interest) than you'd pay lambda school.

There's a natural experiment on this question at Purdue, where there's an apples-for-apples comparison and loans are almost always cheaper than the income sharing agreement.

To me, these income sharing agreements and bootcamps seem like not great deals when you look at instruction time per dollar. And also when you look at the longitudinal durability of the skill-set that's being taught. They have a place in the market for sure, but they aren't the panacea to expensive education. They're not even cost-competitive.

They're just a different point in the design space of educational programs that extract as much of the added value of their product as possible.

[soneca]

I am a self-taught junior web developer after a career change at 37yo.

I always have the impression that this perception that Lambda's model is not good always come from people in more comfortable positions that are not even close to the reality of who actually applies for Lambda.

I am from Brazil and did the career change two years ago, so there wasn't actually the option to do Lambda School for me. But it would be a no-brainer for me at the time and I am pretty sure I would be much better in my career now if I had done it (in knowledge and earnings).

4 years of college? Not an option for me. USD15k upfront for a regular bootcamp? Not an option for me. Take a loan with the risk of having to pay with a big chance of not getting a good job soon enough? Too risky for me (and in Brazil the high interest rates make it a ridiculous thought, but even with US rates it is too risky).

My path was self-taught through freeCodeCamp.org (awesome project!!!) and reading tutorials and documentation. I was able to get a frontend jr position, but I can tell that I was lacking a lot of knowledge/skills when I started (git, tests, agile process, design patterns, clean code, to name a few).

Now I am moving to LA and I am failing every remote technical interview because I lack the specific skills needed for being hired in the US.

Lambda School 9 no-upfront full-time months with close mentorship and teamwork, plus the alignment to help get me a job seems like a "too good to be true" option for me; not a "tricking naive laypeople who don't know better into paying their high price" that all "skeptical" commenters I have ever read in HN seems to think

[alexpetralia]

This is a very good point.

It is not simply about sticker price.

It is about _risk_. You as the individual burden all the risk if you take a loan (or not) and pay upfront.

Here, even if your analysis is correct that you pay more, you must adjust it for risk. In finance this is your risk-adjusted return, but the same concept applies here.

[austenallred]

Beautifully put, thank you.

[bitwize]

> Lambda School 9 no-upfront full-time months with close mentorship and teamwork, plus the alignment to help get me a job seems like a "too good to be true" option for me;

Well, you know what they say about if something sounds too good to be true.

[geofft]

That's a heuristic, not an argument. The fact that you can get an entire Windows-competitive OS for free, and its source code, is too good to be true, too.

[soneca]

Exactly.

[austenallred]

That’s not an apples to apples comparison, as Lambda School’s schedule doesn’t align with a university schedule. You’re also using the highest possible amount to pay Lambda School back, and not factoring in downside risk, would-be interest, etc.

A student will have spent about 2,000 hours in Lambda School by graduation - the equivalent of ~4 university semesters, because we go all day every day and don’t take breaks.

And comparing the amount of debt vs the total possible cost doesn’t make for an accurate comparison either.

Also note that by the time a Lambda School student is at year four, if we want to factor in the opportunity cost of time, a Lambda School student has paid Lambda School back and has three years of earnings/work experience.

If you’re using time as the comparison: Would you rather have a degree and $24k in debt or three years of Lambda School, have paid the school off, and have earned an additional $250k?

[azhenley]

> because we go all day every day and don’t take breaks.

If you enroll in 15 credit hours at a university, that means 15 hours in a classroom plus 15-30 hours of assignments and labs. (1 credit hour = 1 hour class + 1-2 hours outside class, on average, per week).

That is full-time.

[jseliger]

That is an interesting theory but it does not seem supported by data: https://www.aacu.org/publications-research/periodicals/its-a... or https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/is-college-to....

CS may be somewhat different.

Many schools are also only in session between half and three-quarters of the year.

[azhenley]

Like you said, they didn't look at CS or engineering so your theory isn't supported by data either.

My universty/department's policy is to provide 2 hours of work per credit hour, and the students certainly claim to be spending even more than that! (The truth is likely somewhere in the middle.)

Good point about not being in session year round. It is fairly common to either take summer courses or to do an internship though, which I strongly encourage my students to do! Personally, I took summer courses every year of undergrad and did 5 internships in grad school.

[austenallred]

It also doesn’t include the full schedule. Break weeks, summers off, semester breaks, etc. - months of the year, all of which Lambda School doesn’t have.

[threatofrain]

I have thought that it might be helpful to have a lightweight calculator to help prospective customers juggle the math.

[notbob]

> That’s not an apples to apples comparison, as Lambda School’s schedule doesn’t align with a university schedule.

It's apples to apples wrt income sharing agreements as an alternative to loans. You're of course right that there are significant curricular differences.

> A student will have spent about 2,000 hours in Lambda School by graduation - the equivalent of ~4 university semesters, because we go all day every day and don’t take breaks.

University students should be going every day and not taking breaks.

> And comparing the amount of debt vs the total possible cost doesn’t make for an accurate comparison either.

I agree that this isn't the best possible comparison, but I couldn't even find the data to make a better one. Does Lambda School publish average paybacks?

> Also note that by the time a Lambda School student is at year four, if we want to factor in the opportunity cost of time, a Lambda School student has paid Lambda School back and has three years of earnings/work experience.

On the other hand, a 4 year degree with 2+ majors is much more robust to shifts in labor market demand. Which does shift from under you feet.

In fact, that very dynamism is regularly referenced in Lambda School's marketing...

> ...and have earned an additional $250k?

So, do lambda grads not on average max out the payout, or do they on average make way less than $250k over 2 years? You can't have it both ways ;-)

To answer your question: I lived through dotcom, '08, and lots of shifts in tech stacks that corresponded with layoffs of folks who didn't have foundation skills to keep up (Java/C/mainframe programming grads from community colleges who never could "grok" the web). So I have one answer about this versatility/robustness vs. maximizing short term returns question.

But I'm sure people who have never seen a down cycle or major shift in tech have a different one.

[saagarjha]

> University students should be going every day and not taking breaks.

As a university student, I respectfully disagree.

[lr4444lr]

I don't think it's fair to compare an arrangement at zero up front cost risk to the student to a full up-front cost risk to the student (where the loan also hurts his credit rating) dollar for dollar. Are you also factoring in the NPV? Inflation?

[learc83]

It's not a full up-front cost risk to students. Federal loans (90% of disbursements) qualify for income based repayment where the maximum you will pay is 10% of income above 1.5x the Federal poverty limit. If you end up stuck as a barista making $25k a year, you'll pay back very little of the overall cost over the 20 year repayment.

Also if you get through a few semesters at an accredited university and decide you hate it those credits will generally transfer somewhere else. The same is not true of unaccredited programs.

[azhenley]

Student loans dramatically improved my credit rating.

[austenallred]

Or... interest?

[apsec112]

"It's worth noting that this is more expensive than many/most universities, which charge less than $30,000 per year (9 months of instruction) even at the sticker price (which no one actually pays)."

Unless, of course, you date someone of the "wrong" race or gender, convert to the "wrong" religion, join the "wrong" political group, or do anything else that your parents don't like. Then you'll have to pay sticker price, because your parents didn't submit all the forms the college required them to.

[TheSpiciestDev]

While I can't disagree about other programs being less expensive, how much is it worth to students knowing that the program is incentivized to get them hired because _the program won't get paid unless the student get well hired after_?

It's a priceless feature that every student would value differently... maybe that's worth a few thousand more?

[d4mi3n]

I have a friend going through a boot camp, and the financing was eye opening. They are indeed expensive, but consider: what if an applicant does not have the credit history or collateral to get a student loan?

This is a pretty common situation for people looking to pick up a trade skill to get out of the unskilled labor market, or for people looking to transition into a more desirable field of work.

[austenallred]

Lambda School doesn’t currently look at credit history or require collateral.

[learc83]

Neither do traditional Federal student loans.

[austenallred]

Yup! The point is most private loans do

[learc83]

90% of student loan disbursements are Federal, so for the vast majority of people that's not really a relevant concern.

[azhenley]

Last time I checked federal student loans do not require a credit check, collateral, or co-signer.

[sigstoat]

> To me, these income sharing agreements and bootcamps seem like not great deals when you look at instruction time per dollar.

if that's your metric, universities lose out wildly to all of the free education available online.

> It's worth noting that this is more expensive than many/most universities, which charge less than $30,000 per year

also a meaningless comparison; a freshman year of school alone doesn't get you anything.

[learc83]

> I am skeptical that these income sharing agreements are so great. Especially in software.

Exactly. We also have no idea how these kind of income sharing agreements will work out long term at scale for the company. No idea what the cost of long term recovery will be. Personally I doubt these kind of income sharing agreements will be enforceable long term.

[azhenley]

The comments in this thread also don’t account for internships. In CS you can make 20-30k in a summer and it is common to do multiple over your college career.