Austen Allred — Reinventing Vocational Education and Building a Vertically Integrated Software-driven School

Schools are driven to give lectures and homework. But the reality is you actually learn by building stuff. The lecture is there but vaguely useful. You learn the exact amount as you spend fingers on the keyboard – writing code. If you’re not fingers on the keyboard writing code whatever you do is going to round to zero.

This week Sachit (@sachitgupta) chats with entrepreneur Austen Allred (@Austen). Austen is the CEO and Co-Founder of Bloom Institute of Technology (previously Lambda School). In this conversation, they discuss how Bloom’s way of approaching education is different than traditional colleges, Income Share Agreements vs Outcome-Based Loans, the thought process behind building Bloom Tech, and where they’re headed.

Find the show notes of the episode here - https://www.creators.show

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Show Notes:

01:02 - Core insights that drive Bloom

03:01 - How Bloom defines student success

05:39 - Students not paying upfront and creating skin in the game

08:11 - Student Loans vs ISA vs Outcome-based Loan models

15:32 - How hiring companies make education free for the students

17:37 - The criteria for finding the right applicants

21:41 - Is there a reverse correlation between imposter syndrome and intelligence?

24:05 - Austen’s early background

27:23 - How Bloom helps students get disproportionate results

31:39 - Instructional design - not one curriculum for every student but one curriculum for each one

33:14 - The experiential learning and platform

40:32 - The seamless integration of admissions, school, and matchmaking

43:54 - The future of Bloom Tech and managing the quality while scaling