Perpetual Education's "Income Share Agreement" is now officially in place!

What the heck is that?

It’s 2021

Let’s do this. Here’s the short of it. If you feel like it - you can read the whole backstory down below. First off…

What is an ISA?

ISA stands for “Income Sharing Agreement.”

“Income sharing” - is exactly what it says. Instead of a loan, the student “shares” their income with the school for a while as payment.

If you make 40k now, and after the class you make 60 or 70k, then you pay a percentage of that to the school in lieu of a ‘loan.’

It’s basically a legal “promise” to pay for the school - IF - the school does what it promises.

Why?

This will lower the financial barrier of entry. You’ll still have some financial skin in the game via minimum upfront payment - but we will meet you more than halfway. You’ll pay the rest once you’re making good money and benefiting from the education.

We know you can do it. We know we can get you there.

Our primary goal is to train designers/developers. We want educated and responsible people out there making good decisions. This helps us get that done faster.

2021: payment options

This includes the initial 6-month mentorship program and all future advanced ‘elective’ courses on the DFTW track.

a) $10,000 upfront (no ISA)

b) $5,000 upfront + 5% of your salary for 24 months (8k ISA cap)

c) $2,500 upfront + 9% of your salary for 24 months (15k ISA cap)

2021: 3 sessions

Only 16 students per session

March 1st

May 4th

July 5th

Once they are full - they are full. Those of you who showed early interest know who you are and have priority.

We are BEYOND excited to start the March session

In case this delivery and these numbers are a bit dry - we can’t explain how exciting this is. We’re very thankful for our ISA partner and how transparent and helpful they have been. We’re proud to be able to offer these payment options that we never had.

We hope to see you there.

Other updates:

New application process:

1. There’s a new “student screener”

If you have already taken the older ‘application’ - then you don’t have to take the screener, but you can if you want! https://perpetual.education/apply-now

2. There’s a Discord server for prospective students to meet other students

The CK ‘squad’ was a little useless (if you know what that is) - and so, we created a chat server for people to ask questions about the industry and get info to choose boot camps. Students and prospective students have been gathering there to ask questions and share their enthusiasm.

3. We now have weekly ‘open-house’ meetings on Mondays

Rosemary suggested we do a weekly group call. We tried it - and it worked great. It’s been helpful for people to hear other people’s questions and it helps keep things tidy.

This doesn’t mean we won’t be talking one-on-one, but the group calls are great for people who want to check it out and meet us and ask questions. Feel free to join in.

And if you’re interested in the WHOLE story/thought-process behind our pricing and the choice to add an ISA:  

College usually works like this:

There is a flat tuition per year. You might get a discount if it’s in-state. You may get some sort of grant, a scholarship for academics or other reasons, financial aid based on your situation or family situation.

In the end, even if you get a nice combo of all of those things - there’s a big chunk of money that still needs to be paid. You can usually get a loan for the remainder and the interest (supposedly) isn’t too high.

Some people go to school later in life, but an awful lot of people head to college straight out of high school. It’s a long process and you have plenty of time to change majors and figure things out.

So, you go to college for 4 years. You can probably pay as you go, but most people don’t pay until they finish.

There is no guarantee that the school is good, the major is a good fit, the teachers are good, and there’s certainly no job guarantee.

On average, students (undergrad) will expect to spend a national estimate of approximately $22,000 per year. For four years to complete a degree, the total cost will be around $88,000. If the entire amount is financed in loans at a fixed interest rate of 5.75 percent, the total cost of the loan would average out to approximately $147,000. So, to borrow the 88k for school (and likely more for living expenses) It would basically cost 60k to get 90k. YIKES! You can use this stupid Sallie Mae student loan calculator and see for yourself.

The average student loan repayment schedule is between 180 and 218 months or 15-18 years. And with all the grants and subsidies it’s said that the average student has about $30,000 in student loan debt.

Average public in-state tuition $10,000. Colleges like Yale or The California College of the Arts (the School that Ivy and Derek went to) are now up to $56,000 per year. However, stats show that after need-based grants and other subsidies that the average students might only pay around $18,000 a year in tuition costs. (but housing there is also $$$)

There are a great many more costs than just tuition. So, yeah. College is EXPENSIVE! and there’s really no guarantee that you’ll even get anything out of it.

MOST of college is the people / and being there - in person and ‘growing up’ and learning to live a life away from home - and with COVID, you are not really getting that in 2021.

Picking a “boot camp”

With a ‘trade-school’ type thing (such as learning to ‘code’) - you don’t have 4 years to “figure it out.” You apply, you get in, you pay, you do the course - and you’re done. So, it better be a good one! It’s too short to change majors in the middle. It’s different than college.

Our original pricing strategy

When we originally decided on a price for the program - we thought about the “value.” That’s how we price ‘work’ in real life and how we teach students to do it in the course.

If the student makes 50k now… and we think that they can make 70k after the course… x3 years… then that’s 60k+ value to the student. If it wasn’t a student - and it was a “client” - then instead of fooling around with “billable hours” and all that nonsense, we’d take the value and divide it by 10. So, 60k/10 = 6k. There’s the price of the class.

We really think it’s worth much more than that. At that point: it’s a marketing situation - and it’s also about getting more money to help people who can’t afford it.

If state school is 10k and name-brand schools are 50k, you can find the mean. which is 30k. That’s what the “boot camp” schools were charging pre-pandemic. That’s basically half a year of school for 30k. That’s as expensive as half a year of Yale. So, it better be the “Yale” of boot camps.

Now, if people are willing to pay that! For crappy schools… well, certainly they can pay $10,000 for our super great school. And so there you have it. That’s how we came up with the number. 10k sounds stern. It’s a serious amount of money. But - it’s also drastically less than a ‘boot camp. (2/3rd less!)

Not everyone has 10k, but we had to start somewhere - and we needed to get some momentum before we could devote time to developing those types of relationships and scholarship options.

If some people could pay the 10k without much hassle - then great! We have 2-4k to maybe scoot around and help some less fortunate people. Remember, the student is going to probably make AT LEAST 60k because of this course - and more likely millions over their career as they continue to evolve. So - as long as we get that $6,000 they’ll take it seriously - and we’ll be able to run the company - and put money toward the advanced classes right away!

This all assumes our original ‘grass-roots’ marketing plan.

There’s a reason that the other schools charge 30k. They spend most of it to pay their ‘student acquisition teams’ and their lawyers and put millions into digital advertising. In many cases, they are ramping up based on VC funding - and the school isn’t turning a profit at all. They are focused on the profits that the larger business system will turn 6 years from now. They are focused on everything but the actual education.

If Perpetual Education has to spend a bunch of advertising money - then, naturally - that has to come from somewhere - and we’ll have to raise tuition. We had hoped that our word-of-mouth and community outreach would be enough, but - it didn’t yield much. None of our friends really lifted a finger. It might be because they don’t understand what the school really does yet. It might be that people are just lazy and uninspired. But either way - it’s time to move on!

Pandemic landscape shifts

The plan was always to get things moving - and then to work with communities to get this education to MORE PEOPLE of all backgrounds and partner with people to get students funded. We just had to get things moving first - so we can show the student outcomes.

…the boot camps quickly adjusted. They “Streamlined” and basically gutted their programs

When the pandemic started - colleges had to shut down, elementary schools shut down, and the in-person boot camps shut down too. Classic colleges and the companies that benefit from them panicked! Rightly so. How is Chegg (the people that rent college textbooks) going to make money if there’s no one at school?

So - the boot camps quickly adjusted. They “Streamlined” and basically gutted their programs and were now able to offer their programs for 1/3rd of the price. The proof is all there in the testimonials from the mentors who were asked to drastically reduce their time with students. The curriculums became just a set of video lessons (old ones) … but how would anyone new know anyway.

They all started making grabs to acquire more surface area. Galvanize bought Hack-reactor, Thinkful bought Bloc, Chegg bought Thinkful, and they all transformed. Any brand history or trust is gone. Hack-reactor had a great reputation for its early in-person boot-camps in San Francisco. It delivered. Now? It’s just a name stamped on top of a half-assed $20 video series.

What they don’t tell you…

Everyone wants to get into the game of turning some dude rambling for 60 hours–as he unpoetically narrates “how he codes”–into a 20k “boot camp.”

Nothing has changed about Perpetual Education. Our school was ALWAYS going to be online - and so, the pandemic didn’t affect the actual curriculum or the way we’re teaching it. BUT what changed is that, to the average person, our $10,000 now seems in the “expensive” tier.

Schools like Thinkful have the incredible $ power of Chegg. They are not only offering a 100% pay after school option - but also an additional $1,500 monthly stipend for you to live off of while in school. What they don’t tell you… is that you can only get that deal if you already have a degree in graphic design or a related field - and good credit and a bunch of things they calculate to ensure you’ll be successful either way. They also bury the fact that they just took that shitty set of video lessons and turned it back into a 30-50k price WHILE removing the mentors and all of the good parts. Tricky!

And 90% of the people aren’t even going to be offered that… but - just the idea that “School is free.” “School should be free.” and “I should be paid to live while going to school.” now exist in the marketing - makes things a bit different.

They can also offer marketing ideas like “guaranteed jobs” and “full money back” because you didn’t pay them to start with. They can AFFORD to just let 50% of the students off the hook. It’s a numbers game - and they are manipulating the hell out of those numbers.

School costs money

We can talk about how “__________ should be free” later. That’s very interesting. The fact is that someone is paying for it. So, we’d prefer to just keep everything clear and on the table.

We’re not complaining. This is just an interesting shift - and now it’s time to iterate. That’s Design!

Income Share Agreement

We always intended on stashing the tuition and building out a system to finance people - but this whole pandemic-marketing shift forced us to speed it up!

You can’t give away the class for free. We tried that, remember? Students have to put some skin in the game. This is a team effort. We can’t stress enough how personal and tailored this experience is. We’re thinking about the students all day - every day - for 6-month. You have to be 100% committed to yourself, the school, the education, and to us as people.

“Income sharing” - is exactly what it says. Instead of a loan, the student “shares” their income with the school afterward.

If you make 40k now, and after the class - you make 60 or 70k, then you pay a percentage of that to the school in lieu of a ‘loan.’ It’s basically a “promise” to pay for the school - IF - the school does what it promises.

2021: payment options

This includes the initial 6-month mentorship program and all future advanced courses on the DFTW track.

a) $10,000 upfront

b) $5,000 upfront + 5% of your salary for 24 months

c) $2,500 upfront + 9% of your salary for 24 months

This is by far - the lowest ISA percentage of any school. Most schools are 15% and 36 months. It is most certainly subject to change.

Any scholarships will come from the ISA portion. $2,500 upfront is the absolute minimum that we can accept to run the school properly. Quality education costs money. That’s just the facts.

With schools (if you can really call them “school”) like NuCamp charging $1,700 and even marketing as $8 a month… it’s clearly not going to plateau.

We’re not going to compete with prices. This is the lowest price we’ll ever offer.

Another way to think about it: If the buy-in to take DFTW is $2,500 and it’s 6 months then: 2500/6 = ~$400 a month. Now, Derek (and people like him) usually charge $60-100 per hour just for tutoring. If you think about it that way… you are getting the whole 6-month experience for the same price as 5 hours of tutoring a month. And that doesn’t even include all of the free future courses alumni get!

2021: 3 sessions

16 students per session

March 1st

May 4th

July 5th

Once they are full - they are full.

Did you read that WHOLE thing?

We don’t believe you. Leave a comment to prove it. What do you think about all that stuff?