California ISA bootcamps?

Some places do offer ISAs. The regulatory landscape is complex but most bootcamps have stopped offering them because it's a really bad financial model FOR THE BOOTCAMP if their outcomes are not strong enough. Rithm for example looks like they might have an ISA option.

Codesmith doesn't have an ISA, but you can get a loan through Ascent that is similar in a sense.

I wouldn't say that's guaranteed but I bet there's a correlation between bootcamps with ISAs in California and good outcomes haha. So the reason they don't work is this. 1. If people don't get good jobs, they won't pay you back for a very very long time if ever, but the company has to pay a lot to train you upfront. Whether you believe they are spending that efficiently or not is a different story, but they are spending a lot of money to train people regardless and if they get paid back years later it doesn't work so well. 2. Borrowing against ISAs. Most bootcamps (or any program offering ISAs) will borrow money "against an ISA". Meaning they might get $5000 upfront from the ISA administrator to cover those costs, and then pay some kind of interest on that, like a loan, when the person eventually gets a job. Again, if the people don't get good jobs, the ISA administrator doesn't want to loan the bootcamp any money at all because IT needs to make money. This is a gross simplification, but basically if the bootcamp has bad outcomes, they can't get any advances on the funds, which goes back to problem 1. The trend is moving more to Ascent-like loans, where students take a loan out from day 1, but they can defer it until after they get a job. The bootcamp gets paid upfront, and the student pays a bunch of interest in 24 to 60 payments for the next few years. I think this is a pretty reasonable alternative to the ISA too for everyone. ISAs have two advantages though: 1. For people who just can't get loans of any kind because of their past or otherwise just can't afford any kind of "regulated" debt, it gives them a genuine chance to get training they otherwise might not. And in theory they only pay you when they get a job paying so much more that it can cover the ISA while they maintain or improve their lifestyle. "in theory", lots of fine print to go through. 2. If the program overdelivers and you beat your compensation expectations, but have to pay more than you thoughts, you still feel great about the outcome and the extra salary pays for the extra cost. The program also makes more money as a business so it's somewhat aligned incentives. Again, "in theory".

So I don't know all of the bootcamps situations but you can ask. Ascent and Earnest are two that support this in theory. So behind the scenes, instead of the bootcamp getting 100% of the upfront cost when you get the loan. The bootcamp gets say 75% of the upfront cost and Ascent can withhold the 25% in case you disappear before triggering repayment as a contingency. If the bootcamp wants to delay the deferral all way until "starts new job" I imagine one of these loan companies would accept that, but want a much higher backup percentage because its higher risk you'll never repay. Which turns into the ISA problem except with a fixed total payment instead of a variable payment total payment based on income. BloomTech's Ascent loan does this: [https://www.bloomtech.com/tuition/deferred-tuition](https://www.bloomtech.com/tuition/deferred-tuition) The downside is unlike an ISA where the differences in payments are based on your income versus someone else's. In this model the longer and longer it takes you to get a job, the more and more interest you accrue, so it kind of penalizes you for not being as strong.