We started Lambda School over three years ago to give people a lower-risk path to rewarding, well-paying careers. Since the beginning, the foundation of Lambda School’s educational model is the alignment of incentives – if our students aren’t successful, neither are we. 

As much as we talk about it, and as synonymous as Lambda School has become with Income Share Agreements (one form of incentive-aligned tuition), the student impact of incentive-aligned education remains insufficiently understood and dramatically under-appreciated.

The common narrative is that “if you go to college, you’ll get a good job.” And yet, when you look at the numbers, the odds of success for the typical freshman entering college are frighteningly low. To take one example, according to the National Center for Education Statistics, the graduation rate of students who entered four-year US colleges as of 2012 was 43.7%. Think about that – almost half of all the students entering college each year will not earn a bachelor’s degree in four years despite all the tuition they owe  – and therefore can’t leverage a diploma to get a good job.

We designed Lambda School to share that risk with our students because we believe that if an institution fails to properly prepare its graduates for employment, those graduates shouldn’t be obligated to pay tuition.

Today, we’re excited to release our H2 2019 Student Outcomes Report. As part of our commitment to data transparency, we are proud to be working with The MFA Companies, an accounting, audit, and advisory firm, who performed an examination of our H2 2019 outcomes data. 

Part of being an incentive-aligned institution means having transparency, consistency, and accountability around student outcomes. Our goal is that after examining this Outcomes report, potential students should be able to answer the following question: If I put in the work and effort, how likely is it that I’ll be successful in getting a job?

We can imagine that the pandemic impacted the outcomes outlined in this report. Many students had just begun or were in the midst of job searching when the pandemic initially hit; many students lost their jobs, had to take work outside of their fields, or took pay-cuts. We, as a company and educational institution, are doing everything in our power to help get our students and graduates back to where they should be – prospering in a new career.

Here are a few of the most exciting pieces of data included in our H2 2019 Outcomes Report:

• The graduation rate for all programs was 69% (Unit 2 starting students).
• The H2 2019 job placement rate was 74% (all salaries among job-seeking graduates).
• 81% of placed students in the reporting period were placed within 180 days.
• The median annualized salary for graduates of all programs was $65,000. 
• Our graduates were hired at 187 innovative companies, including Wayfair, Northwestern Mutual, Accenture, Nexient, and more.
  

We believe that incentive-aligned education is the future of education and hope this report demonstrates the progress we’re making, even in these extraordinarily difficult times. Thanks for your continued support of our mission to make education more accessible.

You can explore the full H2 2019 Outcomes Report here.

– Austen Allred, CEO and Co-founder of Lambda School