I was at Lambda when they announced the switch from 9 to 6 months and the elimination of paid team leaders. The feedback was universally negative. In a channel for open student discussion, Austen Allred deleted a poll from Slack because of how lopsided the reaction was. He explained the deletion by saying the poll was "misleading."
Students then got a survey "explaining" why the change was actually a good thing by asking questions such as "Do you understand why companies value mentoring experience?" Not just failing to reveal the truth (these were cost-cutting measures), but not even taking the effort to come up with a convincing lie.
It was destabilizing: Austen's twitter account would read ambitious, hyperoptimistic; meanwhile, drastic changes would be made within the program with vague rationales ("after speaking with hiring managers, we've made these changes..."), and probing further simply got deflections or gaslighting surveys.
There were a ton of good people in the program, and I learned a lot there. But fundamentally there needs to be trust between institution and student when you're asking people to make this level of time and financial commitment. And at no point did I feel like Lambda at its top level prioritized student wellbeing over PR, costs, or metrics to be sold to investors.
Students then got a survey "explaining" why the change was actually a good thing by asking questions such as "Do you understand why companies value mentoring experience?" Not just failing to reveal the truth (these were cost-cutting measures), but not even taking the effort to come up with a convincing lie.
It was destabilizing: Austen's twitter account would read ambitious, hyperoptimistic; meanwhile, drastic changes would be made within the program with vague rationales ("after speaking with hiring managers, we've made these changes..."), and probing further simply got deflections or gaslighting surveys.
There were a ton of good people in the program, and I learned a lot there. But fundamentally there needs to be trust between institution and student when you're asking people to make this level of time and financial commitment. And at no point did I feel like Lambda at its top level prioritized student wellbeing over PR, costs, or metrics to be sold to investors.