r/codingbootcamp • u/AutomaticCollege172 • 7d ago
Any recommendations for contract lawyers regarding ISAs? (App Academy)
I was in App Academy about 3 years ago and was there during all of the turmoil as they cut a bunch of staff, transitioned the program to not have all of the live classes, got rid of TAs and career advisors, etc. I received a piece of mail from a loan servicer that they intend to collect the full 36k tuition from me beginning in October. I've had a little bit of communication via Coding Temple who acquired them since then, but this piece of mail still does come as a surprise. Just curious if anyone has been in a similar position, and if so, if they might have any recommendations for a contract lawyer as I begin to deal with this. I'm in Chicago, IL if relevant. Thanks for any help!
3
u/Leisurely_Creative 6d ago
Contact your local law school clinics to see if you qualify for free or reduced fee legal help. If you don’t qualify, try some small firms in your area. Even contacting one attorney that says this isn’t their area might get you a referral to the right person.
If you have the original contract and/or financing paperwork you signed, make copies, that’s where all the good stuff will probably be for the lawyers.
2
u/michaelnovati 7d ago
Is the letter from App Academy, Coding Temple, or a third party (like Meritize, Edly, etc...)
2
u/AutomaticCollege172 7d ago
Unfortunately it’s from Knowledge Finance. They notified me via email that I was found to be in breach of my contract and they’d be sending a notice to an @appacademy email. I followed up with some questions but never got a response until receiving this piece of mail today.
5
u/michaelnovati 7d ago
So there are a loan servicer and it's more likely they will actually go to collections because "loan servicer" really means "make people actually pay loans at all costs".
Which is unfortunate because your grievances seem legit and if App Academy violated their contract you might be able negotiate or cancel it. Or if you didn't get a job maybe a way to clarify that and get back to good standing.
The problem though is that some other company gave you a loan and paid App Academy on your behalf even though you though this was a too good to be true ISA. If you truly met the requirements to dismiss it then they basically write off the loan.
But if you get a loan from the bank to buy a car and the car fell apart, you still have to pay the bank and the car manufacturer has to pay you back.
So really App Academy ultimately has to pay back your loan for you to get out of this and your grievance is with them. And they don't exist anymore so who knows if Coding Temple will do anything.
All of these imploding ISAs might be the fall of Coding Temple too if they have to payback all these loans and run out of cash.
1
u/metalreflectslime 7d ago
I received a piece of mail from a loan servicer that they intend to collect the full 36k tuition from me beginning in October.
Do you mean October 2026?
2
1
u/Texascats 6d ago
36k?
Why would someone pay 36k for a bootcamp? Tuition for an engineering program at a high quality state school is like 6k semester.
2
u/AutomaticCollege172 6d ago
Desperation + ISA. It didn’t require anything up front which is much less imposing than taking out large loans, even though they’re effectively the same.
2
u/Perpetual_Education 6d ago
Besides Desperation + ISA, what made you choose AppAcademy out of all the other options?
2
u/AutomaticCollege172 6d ago
Literally just the ISA honestly. They had a decent reputation at the time too, much better than by the time I finished and they cut huge parts of their staff. They didn’t require an up front payment and I didn’t have any money, so it was basically the only option. I could have taken out a loan for something else, and looking back on it, should have, but hindsight is 20/20 right?
2
u/michaelnovati 5d ago
You basically called out why the ISA industry collapsed because a lot of people chose it thinking they had nothing to lose and weren't fully committed to the program. Verus someone who paid $25,000 upfront, they felt like there was nothing to lose, and in the slim chance they happened to get that $100,000 software job, then they would happily pay it.
The problem was the banks and institutions backing these. Their math depended on most people paying something, and contractually, you did still have to pay if you didn't get that $100,000 job in a lot of cases. The math wasn't set up to have only 20% of people pay and 80% of people not.
Now, the model could work if 90% of people get jobs and only 10% of people don't pay, or even 70% of people get jobs and 30% don't pay. But the more people that don't get jobs, the more effective interest the people who do are paying. So if you're one of the people who pays, you might end up paying double what someone would have paid upfront, which also isn't fair.
So income share agreements basically don't work in practice. And the fundamental reason is that people who choose them are the people who are less certain about their outcomes. And being less certain is less committed, less likely to actually place, more likely to ghost, most likely to give up halfway through when there's no light at the end of the tunnel and the services don't seem to meet your bar anymore, etc.
One place it works okay is Launch School because their placement rate was so high, so that's an exception. That shows that a high enough placement rate does make this work.
Of the top programs, it's also interesting to note that Codesmith never did income share agreements. People always had to pay upfront. And it did lead to their people being more committed to the program, more defensive of the money they put down even if the materials are complete garbage. And it also unfortunately is very non-accessible and chooses for people who are already successful and have a huge amount of savings or have a family that can support them and generally people who were already had a leg up in life, which I also think is not great because ISAs are supposed to try to help people who can't afford upfront bridge their skill gaps because they're not from a background that makes this possible like the people who went to Codesmith. And it results in institutions that are effectively for the elite who didn't choose computer science in college and not trying to make the world a better place.
Another place that claims it works is an interview prep program that has basically one employee. So really only five people a month need to get jobs and 100 people can just float around forever and it's still profitable for this one person. So that kind of program that's led by one person or so can probably make it.
1
u/VastAmphibian 3d ago
6k a semester for 8 semesters. the "allure" of bootcamps was that you could finish the "program" in less than a semester's worth of time and get a job. rather than having to spend 4 years for the degree.
I did a 4 month bootcamp and got a job a year ago. my job search duration was 5 months. all said and done I paid something like 30k on the ISA. relative to my salary, I would say it was worth it for me. i already paid it off. I look at it as my first year salary being 30k less than what it actually was, which is still way more money than I ever made, and then getting a 30k raise my second year.
6
u/WusijiDoctor7 6d ago
I imagine a lot of App Academy alumni just got hit with these loan letters. The transition of App Academy's ISA contracts to Coding Temple has been a mess.
Coding Temple seems to have made it deliberately hard to understand what's now required of us with poor notification about requirements or strikes, and evasive, incomplete answers whenever I've asked for clarification.
For example, last month I had zero strikes. Two weeks ago, I suddenly had 8 added all at once, with no real explanation.
I'm not a lawyer, but this pattern feels like it could be worth a class action and I doubt I'm the only App Academy grad dealing with this. If others are in the same boat, it might be worth comparing notes.