It's funny, until recently I thought boot camps were for people who already were working in a field who wanted to sharpen a particular skill in that field. Rig

It's funny, until recently I thought boot camps were for people who already were working in a field who wanted to sharpen a particular skill in that field. Right, same with MOOCs. I am a pretty experienced engineer already, I recently took a course on EdX[1]. I wanted to round out my R (mainly a Python guy but there is some cool stuff in the R ecosystem), revise some of the maths from undergrad 20+ years ago, try out a MOOC, and take a peek into an area of computing I'd had no exposure to. I enjoyed it and I got a lot out of it and would recommend it to others. But could I have been a non-programmer, completed that course, and been adequately prepared to begin a career in industry? Absolutely not. And to be fair that is not how that course is pitched, but there are some that are, that have even less content in them. $200 is a bargain for a working engineer who wants a new skill, or is even just curious. $20000 is a massive scam for a beginner who thinks they can kickstart a career that way. [1] https://www.edx.org/xseries/data-analysis-life-sciences https://www.edx.org/xseries/data-analysis-life-sciences