
Thread about Holberton School and the bootcamp warning signs - seapunk
https://twitter.com/KeziyahL/status/1170896866805977088
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austenallred
This isn't a comment about Holberton (which I can't speak for), and sure an
$85k cap for a school with no instructors is high, but I'd just like to point
out that the methodology of "I'm going to find 3-4 students who want to
complain about their school off the record" is not a good way to consider the
quality of schools.

Imagine what would happen if someone went after... any school you've ever
attended with such an approach. Think they could find a half dozen students to
rant and rave about how the school was awful? Certainly.

Of course, I'm biased - she has another thread about Lambda School (where I'm
CEO), and reading the criticisms I know exactly who the students are. It says
something that of the 6,000+ Lambda School students of all-time I can pick out
the 3 or 4 complaining from the complaints, and if you dug into those
students' complaints you would find there's much more at play than what is
mentioned.

~~~
hysan
Agreed. I still think it is valuable information based on the discussions it
can drive.

I appreciate your willingness to participate in these threads, be transparent,
and show how hands-on you are with your school/students. However, I’m going to
put you on the spotlight for a bit if that is ok.

Right now, Lambda School is young enough that the amount of collected outlier
feedback can be easily remembered. Doubly so since you can still interact with
this outlier population at the scale you operate at. However...

1\. Instead of the bottom 0.1%, what about the bottom 1% or 10%? Will you be
able to remember/account for all of these students as you grow in scale over a
long period of time? What’s your strategy for this?

2\. There will come a point where one person cannot handle all of the
outliers. There will also come a point where your priorities are pushed
elsewhere. Do you feel that it’s more important for you to be central in
handling these issues or will this responsibility be handed off? How will
quality be ensured?

I agree that you should not extrapolate from such a small sample size.
However, I believe that to take ownership after a spotlight has been shone
upon the worst instances would be to not discredit the feedback. Instead,
offer up the insights on what actual patterns emerged from larger population
findings, own any that correlated, and show how these were/are planned to be
addressed.

Individual teachers have to deal with this all the time. Sometimes with
additional metrics evaluating their every move. It would be nice to see
someone at a higher institutional level be an example of how negative outliers
are handled, not only from the bottom up, but from the top down.

Lastly, while Lambda School might be an exception, that doesn’t mean all
bootcamps operate the same.

~~~
austenallred
We have an entire team called the "student success" team, and it's certainly
not one person. We collect feedback at the end of every lesson, every day,
every unit, every build week, etc. and we can see and resolve any issues (be
they across the school or with an individual) virtually immediately. The
student success team monitors feedback and looks into how students are doing
every day, and that team grows as the school scales. Our full staff is 130+
people full-time, and and every single student is in a group of 8 students
with one Team Lead who spends on on one time with them and reports on it every
single day.

That's why it's odd to me that I know who all of those students are. I
shouldn't. There's no way I should be able to identify them that easily, and
if it were the 1% of 10% of students complaining there's no way I'd be able to
map back from the complaints to individual students.

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quinovafire
I used to be a student at Holberton School, and I'm continually surprised by
the support from alumni on this thread, both from those who succeeded and were
able to find a job and those who are still struggling to find a job.

The criticism students have is not that we want the school to be ruined or
shut down. The reason why a lot of students don't want to speak up is because
they're still looking for jobs in the industry and are afraid of backlash or
just "tainting" themselves before getting their foot in the door. Maybe it's
irrational, but it's a real fear coming from someone just starting out in the
industry.

The purpose is that we want them to be better, to be held accountable for the
experiences that they're offering to students who pay that $85k. Everyone
coming in to the program is aware of the peer-learning, ISA, etc. However,
it's gotten this far because there were promises made that weren't fulfilled,
and despite all effort to speak to staff and even the co-founders about the
problems, none of them ever listen or do anything about it. One of the former
students suggested a "Suggestion Box" and was told she didn't belong in the
school. It's extremely frustrating.

They've held Town Halls where students have suggested very real, actionable
criticisms but it gets waved off. What's the point of having a Town Hall?
Sure, there are students who are successful, but there are a ton of other
students who come out struggling to find a job with little to no support from
the school. They accept anyone and forget those that graduated and need help.
They spend money on PR and ads and parties instead of hiring real staff with
legitimate education experience. Instead, they hire former students to build
out the curriculum. The second year curriculum's all made by former students
and is buggy and not particularly great so no one's interested in taking the
second year.

It doesn't have to be perfect, but for $85k, it needs to be better. Much
better.

~~~
xianshou
I'm actually researching the efficacy of coding bootcamps and was wondering if
you'd be open to a quick call. Doesn't have to be a long convo but I think
your experience could be very helpful. Would love to chat about what you
encountered and potential solutions - my email is lucas at timesuji dot com.
Thanks in advance if you'd be open to sharing!

~~~
quinovafire
Sure!

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dannykwells
I'm no fan of for profit boot camps, but also, we need to compare them to the
alternative of 1/2 year CS or "data science" masters degrees from accredited
universities:

\- Cost: $$$ (50-100K or more) \- No job guarantee or _any_ incentive for the
school to help \- Lots of out of date material \- Faculty could care less
(there to do research, teaching is a secondary job) \- Little career support
(over worked job offices with 1-2 staff for 100s) \- Few connections in major
tech hubs (typically)

I would claim these programs are _more_ predatory than these accelerators. And
that's saying something!

The fact is, if you want to transition to tech after doing a non-technical
undergraduate degree, it is going to be hard and there's really no shortcuts.
But who has money to do a second undergraduate degree?

~~~
austenallred
Completely shameless plug:

Lambda School (YC S17) is a 9 month full-time (or 18 month part-time) school
that packs in the equivalent of two academic years, including Computer Science
core and costs nothing until you're hired and making $50k+ in the field you
studied (US only -international terms are different).

Once you're hired you pay 17% of salary for two years, capped at a maximum of
$30k.

If you don't get a job in the field after five years the agreement disappears
and you don't owe anything.

We not only have a team of a dozen full-time career coaches, but another team
of 12+ people whose only job it is to reach out to companies and actually line
up interviews for you. A real enterprise sales team working in your behalf.

[https://lambdaschool.com](https://lambdaschool.com)

~~~
GaryNumanVevo
Would you care to respond about paying students to post reviews?

~~~
austenallred
We’ve never paid students to post reviews.

We (along with the review sites) will hold a raffle or offer swag to anyone
who leaves a review (positive or negative).

One of our students last year won a gift card _from the review site_ for
leaving a review and tweeted “I just got a $50 Amazon gift card for leaving a
review for Lambda School” and it turned into a whole thing. We literally
weren’t involved in that in any way.

Trying to twist that into “Lambda School pays students to leave reviews” is
100% incorrect.

~~~
owenversteeg
I understand your position, but giving someone a reward to post a review will
strongly bias them in your favor. This has been very well known, for a long
time (there are many examples going back decades, Amazon Vine for one.)

The thing is, reviews (in general) are usually biased towards the positive.
Even more strongly so when you consider that (in the case of a coding
bootcamp) you've just spent an enormous amount of time, money and energy there
- nobody's going to want to trash it.

I think we'd agree that in the case where someone had a great experience with
your school, they'd post a great review, and when someone had a truly terrible
experience, they'd probably post a terrible review. But what about when
someone has a merely "meh" experience? In that case, someone will likely (with
a bit of a push towards the positive) write a simple, positive review. Maybe
they thought they'd have learned faster by themselves... but there's a gift
card? And my friends will see the review? Hmm... I'll just write something
short and positive.

In general, I think there are a lot of things that are a careful balance, easy
to tip in one way or another - politics, public opinion, social issues - and
reviews are certainly one of these things.

~~~
austenallred
Again, it wasn't us offering the reward in this instance, it was the review
site.

But generally I think it's fair that you should not take code school reviews
very seriously.

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hprotagonist
[https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1170896866805977088.html](https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1170896866805977088.html)

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ngngngng
Is anyone else shocked at people's willingness to take on nearly six figures
of debt with so little research? Accredited or not, there are a significant
amount of educational institutions churning out unemployed and underemployed
graduates like it's their job.

~~~
kevinml
In almost all cases I recommend various free to inexpensive online options for
people interested in learning to code. I taught myself web dev a few years ago
and spent in total less than $200 on books, udemy/online courses and am now 5
years into my career.

I can see that a mentored, fine tuned curriculum would be beneficial to
someone not sure where to start but it feels crazy to charge someone more than
a couple grand for what is essentially freely available information. I think
this type of school is preying on people's conditioning to think a traditional
college-like environment is more serious or worth it somehow.

~~~
Ancalagon
Surprised you're being downvoted. This is a good response to OP, and I
completely agree with it. I'd also like to add, I don't understand how the
"credentials" earned from these bootcamps are rated so highly in some peoples'
minds.

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michaelbrave
I really think the only real criticism she has here is the price as even those
she interviewed and were complaining had gotten jobs doing the thing the
school trained them to do.

I read through her criticisms of lambda as well, I've been keeping tabs on
them and they seem legit. Again the only real complaint I've seen people have
has been related to price. Not in a "I won't pay it" kind of way but in a
"wish it was less" kind of way. To me that's just grumbling and not a real
critique.

This was interesting to read as I attend a school called 42, which functions
very similarly to Holberton but free. I've not been to Holberton but I'm about
80% sure that their and our initial curriculum was both based off the work
done by Epita and Epitech. I should note that ours has changed as there are
teams working on it and many of our students and former students create some
as well (I myself made a suite of projects for swift that is about to be
rolled out). So it would make sense if they changed theirs too.

The no teacher thing works a lot better than you would think, it teaches you
to figure things out, to ask questions, to collaborate and usually when you
teach others it helps to solidify your understanding. I actually think if
anyone studied this way for a few months it would improve them more than any
degree. I'm not advocating against degrees, but this being able to figure
things out for yourself skillset often feels like a superpower.

None of these schools are without their problems, everything in life is a
tradeoff after all. But I'm insulted that she would imply that everyone who
writes about their school in a positive way would be paid. I genuinely believe
in building up a community and in strengthening my network, so when I write an
optimistic piece on medium or twitter or HN or wherever it's not because I
don't believe in it or am being paid, but an effort to pay it forward.

I'm not willing to shift through her tweets to find out what she said about
Lambda, I have friends doing that program, and have considered it myself, I
follow Austen and some of their staff on twitter, they seem genuine, people
that have graduated from it have only good things to say. The only real
criticism I've heard is that it's fast paced, which isn't even necessarily a
bad thing.

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brundolf
How do you separate out the bad schools (or is there a list of good ones)? I
have exactly one data point: my girlfriend did General Assembly in Austin and
had a good experience. I don't know if that translates to other GA locations,
and I certainly have no idea which other schools are and aren't legitimate. It
seems more and more that she just got incredibly lucky signing up for one that
_wasn 't_ a scam.

~~~
austenallred
The best way is to take a sampling of students who attended that school and
ask them directly.

As someone who runs a school, all the review sites are so easily gamed it's
not even a data point you should consider. I've literally seen schools ask,
"Did you have a good experience?" If yes -> go leave a review, if no -> submit
this feedback form. Like it's the app store.

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TYPE_FASTER
What I found interesting was the fact that the VCs funding the schools are
selling the ISAs. There's even an online ISA marketplace:
[https://edly.info](https://edly.info)

Also, note that it's 17% of gross income, so before taxes and benefits...

~~~
austenallred
VCs fund the schools.

The schools finance the ISAs. The same way a lending startup isn't lending out
its VC dollars, it gets other dollars to finance the COGS.

Pretty basic finance, really, and shouldn't surprise anyone. Also doesn't
change anything - if students don't get hired you go out of business.

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hprotagonist
ABET accreditation is still a very important thing to have. I am not terribly
surprised.

Sounds like you'd learn more in a (non-ABET, even) community college for two
years, at an absolute fraction of the cost, if you wanted to retool after
undergrad.

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_bxg1
At what point does this start to fall under false advertising law? This space
is just wildly unregulated and rife with fraud. Seems like the FTC should get
involved.

~~~
austenallred
They're busy with the accredited institutions backed by government dollars
that are even worse

~~~
_bxg1
At least some of those institutions have widely-known reputations you can go
off of. With these fly-by-night operations you never know what you're going to
get.

~~~
austenallred
There are 5,300 accredited universities and colleges in the United States.

How many do you think have a reputation that is widely known? 10%?

~~~
_bxg1
Probably. Still a better ratio than bootcamps.

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atr_gz
I remember someone posting her thread about Lambda School. I didn't find it
very convincing. Definitely not convincing enough to justify her now calling
it "trash".

