Thread by @patio11

One of rare @matt_levine quotes I will disagree with, regarding ISAs (a la Lambda School) to find education.

I think the target audience / greatest beneficiaries are students who, for rational reasons, severely underpredict their career trajectory or overpredict risk.

“Your education is free if you don’t get employed in your field of study” is a really, really powerful sales message to someone who might on day one have very literally never met anyone in their field of study.

There is a huge, huge gradient in how SFBA insiders perceive talent market (approximately: “Not our firm, we have standards, but market will find a job for any warm body even minimally capable of programming right now”) and how outsiders perceive their own likelihood of success.

I remember materially underpredicting my level of ability and future career progression on entry into undergrad, and would have picked equity over debt in a heartbeat if it had been an option.

(Counterintuitively to me, no ISA I’ve ever seen would have resulted in the note holder having a positive experience from funding my education, because I had a really weird trajectory in early years of career as a consequence of Japanese salaryman and then entrepreneurship.)