For the consumer therefore it matters what the actual value of the thing they bought for $30k is.
Will it lead to a $150K job, or a $80K job?
Will not doing it lead to a $80K job?
For the company, what risk do they have if most students will earn over 50K regardless of the quality of their product?
I'm not good at economics, but I think one can look at this deal from both the consumer and the provider and see that there are flaws from both sides. Trust is key.
And in this context trust doesn't scale, you need good teachers for every [class size] students. That means profit only scales linearly with good teachers (the scarce resource).
Marketing scales though, and what matters to the consumer is how much they believe the actual value is compared to the competition for what they believe their options are.
How many people do you hire from other places? I'm never hiring anyone again if I can help it, so I'm not the target either, and this sort of post seems to imply this is a huge loss for Lambda but I'm not sure it is.
The bootcamp I went to had someone with a perfect SAT and an engineering degree from Princeton. She is wicked smart and works for google. You would be crazy not to hire her just because she went to a bootcamp.
Will it lead to a $150K job, or a $80K job?
Will not doing it lead to a $80K job?
For the company, what risk do they have if most students will earn over 50K regardless of the quality of their product?
I'm not good at economics, but I think one can look at this deal from both the consumer and the provider and see that there are flaws from both sides. Trust is key.