[cglee]

I'm the founder of Launch School and I have been thinking about ISAs, coding bootcamps, and software ed for over a decade. I've tried to insert my thoughts here and there, for example:

     - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30782967
     - https://x.com/cglee/status/1232512904953335808

Always happy to chat about ISAs and how to best deploy them. Or, find better alternatives.

[beej71]

Thanks for replying! The reviews of Launch School are impressive.

I think you're dead on with that first link. I've heard of some schools that did not apply an effective filter up front, despite instructor pleas, and suffered for it greatly with lowered job placement, ultimately failing with the ISA model.

I feel there's a class of students for whom ISAs are perfect, and, just like you said, a class of students for whom they are ineffective. The ones where the ISA works and standard school is out of reach have incredible success stories.

I found something similar when I taught a nearly free C++ class. I put a really simple test on the front with a refundable $20 fee (if you took the course). Everyone who ultimately took the class was really motivated. $20 was all it took to filter. $5 might have even worked since I speculate the effect is psychological, not economical.

The second link is good food for thought, some stuff I hadn't considered. If the ISAs are sold cheaply enough, you really don't need much student success to get a return.

IIRC, in Lambda's case, the ISA sales were stopped while the company was still young (having gotten another round) [caveat: I didn't have much visibility into this side of things], and anecdotally I think they had some of their biggest successes early on, but I agree with your points on this.

One thing that really impressed me about Lambda was how diverse in every respect the student body was, people from just every walk of life. Waaay more so than I'd seen at any university. I credit the ISA for making this possible.

One of my missions in life is to enable people to get the training they want to get. ISAs were wonderful in that regard.

[cglee]

I think you have to be careful about looking at the diverse student body as "giving them an opportunity". For example, predatory for-profit universities specifically target low-income minority populations not to serve them but because they make for easy prey[1]. I'm not saying Lambda or any particular bootcamp is in this category, just that having a diverse student body isn't a feature unless you know for a fact that you're helping 100% of the students.[2]

Education has a couple of unique attributes that makes it difficult to assess:

     1. the value cannot be perceived until much later after the service is rendered
     2. alternatives are mutually exclusive; eg, people usually just attend one university or coding bootcamp, not all of them (or even two of them)

This is in contrast to, say, a restaurant where diners can immediately determine if they like the food and can compare it with competitors (because they dine at all the restaurants).

Those two attributes make it very easy to lead with hype and marketing and vulnerable people are particularly susceptible to it. imo it's not appropriate to deploy the standard startup playbook in edu, especially if you find yourself attracting vulnerable students.

Ok, now combine that with ISAs, which has some positive qualities but are not as incentive aligning as marketed. And then if you sell the ISA in bundles, then it becomes even less incentive aligning. Well, I guess it's now aligning with investors and loan brokers. But it's certainly not aligning more with student outcomes.

It all makes for a very delicate situation where you have vulnerable students biting on the ISA bait.

I know it seems like I'm just complaining but I've been thinking about these problems for a long time and I come with solutions. Or, particularly, a solution: imo the best thing an edu institution can do is allow students to leave easily.

Why do we never think of restaurants as predatory? The idea is ludicrous to even consider. There are of course terrible restaurants but we can just not dine there again and eat elsewhere. There are lots of restaurants around.

And here's the issue: there are also lots of edu institutions around but every single one of them deploy the marketing->entrapment playbook.[3]

How does marketing work when you have a bad school? Because of the time-lapse between value received and service rendered. The ISA is easily abused in this environment because it's both the marketing and the trap.

Anyway, I'm just riffing here... btw, huge fan of your books and work! Despite what I wrote above, I knew Lambda was making an honest attempt at their curriculum when they hired you.

  [1] https://failstatemovie.com/
  [2] imo, edu institutions need to be judged on how they treat their most vulnerable students, unlike startups who are judged on their best wins (https://twitter.com/cglee/status/1781129096250179640)
  [3] https://medium.com/launch-school/educational-entrapment-f5cc0472051e

[beej71]

I agree with you on the dangers of targeting minorities. My thinking is still, though, that there is a category of people well-served by ISAs, and those people are underrepresented in schools with traditional payment models.

I've often thought that anyone can be a dev--if they want it. Meaning, it has to be someone who likes the material enough to put in the effort. It doesn't matter if you're smart enough; it only matters if you're going to put in the time. There's a reason I'm not a CPA. I'm absolutely smart enough, but eff that!

And lots of times schools do advertise "we guarantee you a position in a high paying job if you just put your ass in that seat for 6 months". Who wouldn't want that? But they leave off the "you gotta want it" part. And then people get trapped.

Related to "easy to leave", we fought to filter the front-end heavily for people who "wanted it". And we fought to allow students to attend for as long as possible with no obligation. The goal was to allow them to discover if they wanted it. However, this was not realized while I was there. So much more I could say here about how that didn't happen, but I'd wager you have a pretty good guess.

Hand-in-hand with wanting it (IMHO) is having a comprehensive, heavy-hitting curriculum. The guy who hired me left Lambda ages ago, but he and I came up with a list of things people should learn to be decent devs... and that was one helluva list. Needless to say, not all of it got covered, and as time went on, less and less of it did.

I love that California community colleges are now free. Easy to leave!

I really appreciate the conversation, btw. I also like geeking out about this topic, and it sounds like I could learn a lot from the ground you've already covered. I'll check out the reading after I finish prepping for class next week. (0-1 Knapsack and dynamic programming. Phew.)

[cglee]

We have a saying at Launch School: habits over enthusiasm. I've noticed that wanting it isn't enough. Desire is fine but what the real key is a commitment to studying. I think we're saying the same thing with different phrases.

Agree that ISAs can be useful. But it's a tool that can be used to harm or help. Elevating it beyond a financial tool to some sort of educational breakthrough was a disservice, imo.

We agree on the value of community colleges. I wish they were better funded and more people worked to drive CC graduates to six-figure jobs.

[gorkemcetin]

I am the founder of BlueWave Labs - we accept junior developers and UI/UX designers to give them Canadian experience by building open source products, to help them land their full time IT jobs and would love to talk to anyone who has put some thought on bootcamps. BWL is a bit different from bootcamps but the main idea is the same: to help people land full time jobs.

[cglee]

How far along are you? I like what Recurse Center is doing, for example.