[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.