8 ms·

I dropped out of MIT and started a new college in San Francisco, AMA

68 points by DesaiAshu 7y ago

spodek 7y ago
The description confuses innovation with effectiveness: > The tech industry was rapidly evolving and yet college curriculum was frozen in time. My high school CS teacher had been more innovative in offering a project-based education than my MIT professors were. Project-based learning isn't new. What makes it valuable is that it works -- in particular, at developing skills useful for work and life more than lecture-based and other mainstream university pedagogy for most fields.
- DesaiAshu 7y ago
  "Project-based learning isn't new." This! Research has shown it's more effective for 50 years or so, but few educational environments have adopted it (except for Montessori schools, some charter schools, and new age private schools like the one we went to). It's ironic that most of this research originates in universities, and then somehow it doesn't make it across campus... Our high school teachers (Jeremy and I went to school together) were pretty progressive and innovative in the ways they taught, and the types of projects they had us undertake - but yes, project-based on it's own isn't a new innovation.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
Lukesys 7y ago
Reminds me of my alma matter, South Harmon Institute of Technology.
- ThrowItAway2Day 7y ago
  Watching Accepted all those years ago, would anyone have guessed that within the next decade Jonah Hill would be twice Academy nominated for dramatic work? That's motivational, anything is possible.
ArtWomb 7y ago
Congrats! Wondering if you are considering an online component? Model I am thinking of is something like Qwiklabs which provides hands on cloud training, on real world data and infra. It appears they are generating serious revenue at the scale of 10,000s trainees ;) https://www.qwiklabs.com/ https://www.qwiklabs.com/
- DesaiAshu 7y ago
  We're not considering an online only program, though we are making more and more of our resources available online for free. For a full degree program - given that it takes 2-2.5 years of full time work to complete - it's not super feasible to expect people to get through it without a strong social learning environment.
eaenki 7y ago
I don't know, feels like an airline trying to differentiate itself. It feels just like any other random university, maybe worse because the name sounds like a bootcamp. and it kinda feels like it is anyway. I would take the founder's former university (MIT) any day over "Make School" lol.
- rahimnathwani 7y ago
  IIRC the degrees are awarded by the Dominican University of California, not by Make School. Your comment about 'any other random university' just highlights the time and effort required to build up name recognition and a reputation. Any new institution, regardless of merit, would face the same challenge, unless it had a famous name attached (e.g. Gates, Musk, Grove).
  - DesaiAshu 7y ago
    "Any new institution, regardless of merit, would face the same challenge" This! It's proving to be a LOT harder to build reputation in this world than it is for most startups. Higher Ed brands are societally entrenched in a way that some people define their entire social hierarchy around it (which we don't feel is particularly progressive of a worldview). This is partly why there's been limited pressure to innovate in higher ed, in order to build a new school you first need a lot of capital, then work to get accredited, then build a strong reputation. Some of the strongest barriers to entry of any industry.
    - dbcurtis 7y ago
      I think if you ask: “How much money does it take to go from zero to high repute in 5 years?”. There is one data point: Olin College of Engineering, half a billion dollars. I’d be interested in hearing if you looked at the Olin model and what you learned from that.
      - DesaiAshu 7y ago
        We definitely look to them as inspiration! We've read a decent amount of how they were started. It's more or less the only new prestigious institution founded in the last 50 years. A lot of their classroom pedagogy also aligns with the direction we've been going, more project based and applied. And they've done a great job of sharing learnings back out to other institutions. They sit more squarely in the research university category, whereas we're closer to a teaching college (where faculty are dedicated to students rather than publishing research). And it's been a capital intensive way to build a college, since they build out a big campus, research facilities, etc. We've been meaning to build a closer relationship with them to share learnings on the education side, good reminder to reconnect with the folks we know there :)
_delirium 7y ago
Some bits of this are interesting. The numbers on the accelerated program seem unrealistically ambitious though. In the Q&A, they say they teach a fully accredited 124-credit-hour degree in 2-2.5 yrs. That seems pretty difficult, at least under the official accreditation standards! A standardized definition most accreditation agencies have settled on for a "credit-hour" is approximately 45 hours of work total (so e.g. a 3-credit course requires 135 hours over the semester). Originally that came from an assumption that an N-credit class met for N hours a week, plus 2N hours of homework per week, for a 14-week semester plus a 15th exam or final-project week. But any split is ok under current standards as long as it adds up to about the same (different semester lengths, no-lecture classes purely based on videos, fully in-person lab-style classes, etc.). Either way though, a 124-credit-hour degree would end up at around 5580 hours of work. To do it in 2 calendar years, you'd need to average 54 hours/wk, with no vacations. Not physically impossible, but...
- Retric 7y ago
  First many students start collage with a significant number of AP credits. So, I think it’s more 124/8 in 2.5 years. Second, I pulled 23 credit hours at a regular collage in a normal semester. Keeping that pace for 2 years without break would have caused burnout, but 20 credit semesters * 5 + 12 over summer break * 2 = 124 in 2.5 years. Thus, doing this at a normal collage is viable assuming schedules work out. PS: I kind of felt like a slacker at the time because a friend was pulling 18, while keeping a full time job.
  - berkeleyjunk 7y ago
    I think he answered with his take on the reddit thread. He thinks that current universities don't push the students far enough and this workload is similar to what they will experience in their first job. Seemed convincing to me.
  - GavinMcG 7y ago
    > I pulled 23 credit hours at a regular collage in a normal semester. Good for you. But that's not "viable" for most students in the first place – 18 is probably pushing it.
hackermailman 7y ago
What's interesting about this school: Entire curriculum is open not hidden, ability to get a real regionally accredited degree in just 2 years, no up front tuition What's bad about this school: Almost entirely web frameworks, the algorithms slides are way too brief, heavily relies on Hackerank type resources, not to mention possible mistakes in the slides, like describing 'THE upper bound' when you can find another upper bound. No math so gradschool is going to be difficult. Entirely imperative/OOP. Edit: You will owe them $100k https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18548001 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18548001 and it's not clear on their site if there's a maximum level of gross income deduction Still can't beat that 2 years to official Bachelor's piece of paper for no up front costs
- DesaiAshu 7y ago
  We're starting to build out more math and deeper on algorithms, particularly for people who want to go the AI/ML route or grad school. Currently if you're keen on grad school it's probably better to go to a well ranked research university. On average you'll pay $100k, but it's a sliding scale based on your income so we ensure it's affordable / there is downside protection. Given that you have 2 more years of earning than a traditional university you'll usually come out well ahead.
apta 7y ago
It seems it's another "bootcamp" like initiative trying to make a quick buck by treating computer science education as a trade. Naturally, people who end up going to these programs end up working on web stuff or mobile apps. Maybe there's demand for this kind of work, but what people may not realize is that it's also diluting the value of people with a proper engineering education.
- TallGuyShort 7y ago
  If a proper engineering education can't compete or find a niche against people with a tradesman-style education, what's the value that a proper engineer education (or people who have one) brings to the table? What's the benefit in holding people back because they didn't go to school as long as you if they can do the job sufficiently well?
  - pingyong 7y ago
    You have a point tbh. There are simply way more jobs for people to do simple web programming and making UIs that are essentially just DB interfaces for people who can't write SQL statements. It's boring, but it can still be hugely profitable for small/medium sized business who do everything with Excel or by hand currently. These businesses often have a huge need for relatively simple automation tasks. And they simply don't need someone who can write that in C++21 with intrinsics for absolute maximum performance - because even a badly written php script on a normal desktop PC chews through the few thousand database entries they have in 150 ms. But of course a human would need days for that, if not weeks. Do you get payed significantly more if you're in some sort of super high performance or embedded field and you constantly need to re-invent the wheel to squeeze out every bit of latency you can, plus you can spend an hour on every line of code to make sure it absolutely never fails, ever? Or if you're working as what is almost more of a mathematician on ground breaking ML algorithms? Sure. But there are also way less jobs like that. Also if everyone had the education for those jobs, it'd probably not be a healthy industry anymore.
    - TallGuyShort 7y ago
      I think we also need to get away from the idea that the only reason there are people excelling at squeezing every bit of latency out of an embedded system is because they went to a 4-year school. There are so many people who go get an associates because their career isn't going anywhere. So they go get a bachelor's because their career isn't going anywhere. Then they go get an MBA because their career isn't going anywhere. And then they're posting on LinkedIn looking for better offers, covered in debt, and think we should make degrees appear to be a costless decision. A degree doesn't change your personality, and sometimes that's the problem. We think too highly of degrees in too broad a context and think degrees === qualifications.
ThrowItAway2Day 7y ago
There's a reason that the majority of student loan debt in the US is from for profit colleges [1]. They are predatory, ill-regulated, and unstable. ITT Tech, WGU, and those all algorithmicly target audiences that are likely to get approved for Federal student loans: veterans, single-mothers, first-in-family to go to college. They get them approved for these loans and the funds go directly to the school whether they graduate or not. There's a very interesting chapter on this in the book "Weapons of Math Destruction." Don't believe their non-sense ads about being the future of education, the incentives just don't align. Go to local community or state public schools if private is not affordable. Either way, both public and private are not-for-profit. [1] https://phys.org/news/2019-06-for-profit-america-student-debt-crisis.html https://phys.org/news/2019-06-for-profit-america-student-deb...
- DesaiAshu 7y ago
  A few things to clarify here: 1. The degree is granted by a non-profit institution, Dominican University. The for-profit Public Benefit Corporation Make School, is currently providing services to the non-profit institution to run the program. It's also regionally accredited by WASC (far stricter guidelines) rather than nationally accredited like typical for-profits. 2. In contrast to typical for-profits, our students are predominantly 18-25 years old. They are choosing between Make School and traditional universities. 3. In contrast to typical for-profits, our incentives are directly aligned with students. As you state, existing for-profits targeted students to get approved for federal student loans. Our students don't take federal student loans, and they don't pay tuition unless they make >$60k per year. Their tuition is also scaled with their salary. It's reasonable to discuss the merits of this vs state schools vs non-profit private colleges. It's hard to claim it's a scam when you're completely protected on the downside.
  - hackermailman 7y ago
    What's the maximum tuition? Your website claims 20% gross income for 5 years, so if a new grad is making $195k/yr like you claim on the site, the full amount owed will be almost $200k or does this income garnishment end after a certain amount.
Aaronstotle 7y ago
I attend the summer academy (bootcamp) for iOS Development a few years ago. I was thinking about going to the full program but I don't care for web development nor iOS development. I hope they add a DevOps track because I think there's a lot of people like myself who enjoy building systems/standing up servers but not strictly programming per se.
- DesaiAshu 7y ago
  Nice to hear from you and thanks for the feedback. I'll share this with our Dean and instructional team as they consider more specializations to add!
TheAdamAndChe 7y ago
I notice some comments about likely astroturfing on the post. I'm curious, what are Hacker News's opinions on it? Is it just a necessary evil of using the platform, or a plague that should be fought against?
- DesaiAshu 7y ago
  I've been helping PM the AMA on our side. We've had multiple team members support answering the questions but I explicitly asked people not to ask questions. We have a lot of students and alumni who see these posts and want to be supportive, so usually there end up being comments or questions that feel canned or overly enthusiastic. Not much we can do here :)
  - TheAdamAndChe 7y ago
    I understand. I'm not bashing you or saying it is definitely astroturfing, I was just curious on how other people here view it. Many users on this site are very pragmatic, others are idealistic. That dichotomy leads to interesting conversations sometimes.
educater 7y ago
For anyone considering this, please know that it would be cheaper in the end to go to an excellent California community college and transfer and pay two years tuition vs. giving up 20% of your income for 5 years or paying $70K. Anyone who seriously considers this doesn't know how much cheaper alternatives are. You can graduate with an associates from a community college pretty much anywhere in the country (United States) for $5000. If you're so broke you'd need an income sharing agreement you likely qualify for a Pell Grant so really your associate's would be free. Let's say you do poorly and can only get into the easiest public university in your state. Using California as an example, UC Merced is about $15K a year. So it would cost you $35K to get a legit bachelors in computer science from UC Merced vs. $70K from a no name. The only way Make School would be cheaper is if 20% of the sum if your income for 5 years is less than $35K. Needless to say that's unlikely. EDIT: And this is to say nothing of the fact that you can actually take other classes other than computer science and live a more well rounded life.
- sova 7y ago
  For the same level of quality and hands-on-ness? Even at more expensive places the quality and one-to-one with professors/teachers is not what it could be. I only assume at places with less at risk the drive to excel (and for teachers to be very one-on-one) is rare
  - educater 7y ago
    I would argue that someone who would sufficiently take advantage of the "hands-on-ness" of Make School would do well enough in community college to transfer into a much better school, e.g. Berkeley or UCLA. Though, I would argue that education is more about what you take out of it than what is given, but that's another discussion.
    - sova 7y ago
      The whole point of Make School is to skip the absurdity of a 4-year institution, rerouting that 4 years might be more affordable, but that's like getting a Toyota instead of a Tesla, no? Even a Berkeley PhD doesn't guarantee you a good paying job, whereas Make School only takes a cut when you get decently paid.
agigao 7y ago
$70K for 2 years? No, thanks. Community college for 2 years ~ 20-25K tuition, then "learning your heart out" for those 2 years and transfer to a proper university with scholarship seems far more plausible to me. Classical CS education with high standards is a proper way to go, otherwise you'll spend first 10 years your programming career "wishing you had known that before", and you might never step into the depth of career, especially into ML/AI field, without that prior knowledge of the theory. Actually, such "new kind of school" done better is https://www.42.fr https://www.42.fr Talking with my 7+ years of software/data engineering experience, last couple of years spent in DS{ML/DL}.
- DesaiAshu 7y ago
  Scholarships for traditional universities are pretty hard to get unless you have really strong academics. And generally the odds are stacked against you to go to a top tier university if you're coming from a low income background. Keep in mind that if you graduate from Make School in 2-2.5 years, you'll start earning earlier. So the ROI on the $70k is really strong! Research Universities are definitely the way to go if you want to go into the research focused ML/AI side of things. We're being explicit that this is an Applied CS degree for that reason. But for most tech careers the traditional CS degrees aren't as relevant, including for Data Science jobs (we have a few recent alums making north of $150k as Data Scientists). And you can always go back for a masters if you feel you need it. Have you visited 42 or been through their curriculum? What parts do you feel are better?
guuz 7y ago
I think I have a somewhat unpopular and romantic opinion: a tertiary education is important not only for what you can learn in regular classes (or the prospects this learning may give you), but the knowledge you can gain outside of them if you are interested in doing so. I studied at a fairly big public university in the third world, not very special by any standards, but the experience of being inside an academic center, with access to people from a myriad of backgrounds studying very different disciplines opened my mind irrevocably. And, I believe, made me a much better engineer. I recognise that very few people have an opportunity like the one I had and a two year degree with an extreme focus is more suitable for some folks, mainly because of the absurd tuition costs in the US (I studied for free). But it seems the concept of the university serving as a knowledge hub is fading away and giving way to a hyper capitalistic vision where only your future paychecks matter thanks to a kind of social anxiety.
dbcurtis 7y ago
On hands-on versus math, how do you approach finding the magic balance? For context: Let's agree that MIT and Olin are both great engineering schools. One former coworker of mine is a senior Mech E who graduated from MIT, who once said something along the lines: "I've never hired an MIT grad who could not do the math, but sometimes they needed to learn good bench skills on the job. I've never hired an Olin grad who didn't hit the ground running in the lab on day 1, but sometimes they hit resistance with the math." So even with four years and a demanding pace, it is still hard to do both well. What grounds your thinking on this topic?
- DesaiAshu 7y ago
  Good question! We're definitely leaning stronger on the hands on right now, but are looking to build out more on the math side. Our Dean actually has a PhD in Applied Math rather than CS, so it's in our wheelhouse. It's probably still going to feel closer to Olin than MIT. You're right that it's impossible to do both at sufficient depth. Ideally we offer students flexibility to push in the direction they want to go. Eventually we'll be working with students who want to go deeper in AI/ML, or potentially other computational STEM fields - they may need stronger math. While others may want to stay closer to product development. Either way, it's most important to equip students with the mindset and resources to keep learning. Learning should not stop in college, there's no concrete reason why either the math or bench skills can't be picked up later in life - apart from societal bias that tells us to stop learning.
dirtybird04 7y ago
Kinda off-topic, but an interesting comment in response to a particularly engaging thread: "Usually AMA subjects ignore questions that aren't softballs. Props to you for actually going through and answering. Thanks!" Yeah, that's a really low bar. And sums up why I stopped paying attention to AMAs a while back. It's mostly just fluff and PR with an occassional Snoop Dogg gem.
ykevinator 7y ago
Ask a teen

68 points by DesaiAshu 7y ago

The description confuses innovation with effectiveness: > The tech industry was rapidly evolving and yet college curriculum was frozen in time. My high school CS teacher had been more innovative in offering a project-based education than my MIT professors were. Project-based learning isn't new. What makes it valuable is that it works -- in particular, at developing skills useful for work and life more than lecture-based and other mainstream university pedagogy for most fields.

DesaiAshu 7y ago
"Project-based learning isn't new." This! Research has shown it's more effective for 50 years or so, but few educational environments have adopted it (except for Montessori schools, some charter schools, and new age private schools like the one we went to). It's ironic that most of this research originates in universities, and then somehow it doesn't make it across campus... Our high school teachers (Jeremy and I went to school together) were pretty progressive and innovative in the ways they taught, and the types of projects they had us undertake - but yes, project-based on it's own isn't a new innovation.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

Lukesys 7y ago

Reminds me of my alma matter, South Harmon Institute of Technology.

ThrowItAway2Day 7y ago
Watching Accepted all those years ago, would anyone have guessed that within the next decade Jonah Hill would be twice Academy nominated for dramatic work? That's motivational, anything is possible.

ArtWomb 7y ago

Congrats! Wondering if you are considering an online component? Model I am thinking of is something like Qwiklabs which provides hands on cloud training, on real world data and infra. It appears they are generating serious revenue at the scale of 10,000s trainees ;) https://www.qwiklabs.com/ https://www.qwiklabs.com/

DesaiAshu 7y ago
We're not considering an online only program, though we are making more and more of our resources available online for free. For a full degree program - given that it takes 2-2.5 years of full time work to complete - it's not super feasible to expect people to get through it without a strong social learning environment.

eaenki 7y ago

I don't know, feels like an airline trying to differentiate itself. It feels just like any other random university, maybe worse because the name sounds like a bootcamp. and it kinda feels like it is anyway. I would take the founder's former university (MIT) any day over "Make School" lol.

rahimnathwani 7y ago
IIRC the degrees are awarded by the Dominican University of California, not by Make School. Your comment about 'any other random university' just highlights the time and effort required to build up name recognition and a reputation. Any new institution, regardless of merit, would face the same challenge, unless it had a famous name attached (e.g. Gates, Musk, Grove).
- DesaiAshu 7y ago
  "Any new institution, regardless of merit, would face the same challenge" This! It's proving to be a LOT harder to build reputation in this world than it is for most startups. Higher Ed brands are societally entrenched in a way that some people define their entire social hierarchy around it (which we don't feel is particularly progressive of a worldview). This is partly why there's been limited pressure to innovate in higher ed, in order to build a new school you first need a lot of capital, then work to get accredited, then build a strong reputation. Some of the strongest barriers to entry of any industry.
  - dbcurtis 7y ago
    I think if you ask: “How much money does it take to go from zero to high repute in 5 years?”. There is one data point: Olin College of Engineering, half a billion dollars. I’d be interested in hearing if you looked at the Olin model and what you learned from that.
    - DesaiAshu 7y ago
      We definitely look to them as inspiration! We've read a decent amount of how they were started. It's more or less the only new prestigious institution founded in the last 50 years. A lot of their classroom pedagogy also aligns with the direction we've been going, more project based and applied. And they've done a great job of sharing learnings back out to other institutions. They sit more squarely in the research university category, whereas we're closer to a teaching college (where faculty are dedicated to students rather than publishing research). And it's been a capital intensive way to build a college, since they build out a big campus, research facilities, etc. We've been meaning to build a closer relationship with them to share learnings on the education side, good reminder to reconnect with the folks we know there :)

_delirium 7y ago

Some bits of this are interesting. The numbers on the accelerated program seem unrealistically ambitious though. In the Q&A, they say they teach a fully accredited 124-credit-hour degree in 2-2.5 yrs. That seems pretty difficult, at least under the official accreditation standards! A standardized definition most accreditation agencies have settled on for a "credit-hour" is approximately 45 hours of work total (so e.g. a 3-credit course requires 135 hours over the semester). Originally that came from an assumption that an N-credit class met for N hours a week, plus 2N hours of homework per week, for a 14-week semester plus a 15th exam or final-project week. But any split is ok under current standards as long as it adds up to about the same (different semester lengths, no-lecture classes purely based on videos, fully in-person lab-style classes, etc.). Either way though, a 124-credit-hour degree would end up at around 5580 hours of work. To do it in 2 calendar years, you'd need to average 54 hours/wk, with no vacations. Not physically impossible, but...

Retric 7y ago
First many students start collage with a significant number of AP credits. So, I think it’s more 124/8 in 2.5 years. Second, I pulled 23 credit hours at a regular collage in a normal semester. Keeping that pace for 2 years without break would have caused burnout, but 20 credit semesters * 5 + 12 over summer break * 2 = 124 in 2.5 years. Thus, doing this at a normal collage is viable assuming schedules work out. PS: I kind of felt like a slacker at the time because a friend was pulling 18, while keeping a full time job.
- berkeleyjunk 7y ago
  I think he answered with his take on the reddit thread. He thinks that current universities don't push the students far enough and this workload is similar to what they will experience in their first job. Seemed convincing to me.
- GavinMcG 7y ago
  > I pulled 23 credit hours at a regular collage in a normal semester. Good for you. But that's not "viable" for most students in the first place – 18 is probably pushing it.

hackermailman 7y ago

What's interesting about this school: Entire curriculum is open not hidden, ability to get a real regionally accredited degree in just 2 years, no up front tuition What's bad about this school: Almost entirely web frameworks, the algorithms slides are way too brief, heavily relies on Hackerank type resources, not to mention possible mistakes in the slides, like describing 'THE upper bound' when you can find another upper bound. No math so gradschool is going to be difficult. Entirely imperative/OOP. Edit: You will owe them $100k https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18548001 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18548001 and it's not clear on their site if there's a maximum level of gross income deduction Still can't beat that 2 years to official Bachelor's piece of paper for no up front costs

DesaiAshu 7y ago
We're starting to build out more math and deeper on algorithms, particularly for people who want to go the AI/ML route or grad school. Currently if you're keen on grad school it's probably better to go to a well ranked research university. On average you'll pay $100k, but it's a sliding scale based on your income so we ensure it's affordable / there is downside protection. Given that you have 2 more years of earning than a traditional university you'll usually come out well ahead.

apta 7y ago

It seems it's another "bootcamp" like initiative trying to make a quick buck by treating computer science education as a trade. Naturally, people who end up going to these programs end up working on web stuff or mobile apps. Maybe there's demand for this kind of work, but what people may not realize is that it's also diluting the value of people with a proper engineering education.

TallGuyShort 7y ago
If a proper engineering education can't compete or find a niche against people with a tradesman-style education, what's the value that a proper engineer education (or people who have one) brings to the table? What's the benefit in holding people back because they didn't go to school as long as you if they can do the job sufficiently well?
- pingyong 7y ago
  You have a point tbh. There are simply way more jobs for people to do simple web programming and making UIs that are essentially just DB interfaces for people who can't write SQL statements. It's boring, but it can still be hugely profitable for small/medium sized business who do everything with Excel or by hand currently. These businesses often have a huge need for relatively simple automation tasks. And they simply don't need someone who can write that in C++21 with intrinsics for absolute maximum performance - because even a badly written php script on a normal desktop PC chews through the few thousand database entries they have in 150 ms. But of course a human would need days for that, if not weeks. Do you get payed significantly more if you're in some sort of super high performance or embedded field and you constantly need to re-invent the wheel to squeeze out every bit of latency you can, plus you can spend an hour on every line of code to make sure it absolutely never fails, ever? Or if you're working as what is almost more of a mathematician on ground breaking ML algorithms? Sure. But there are also way less jobs like that. Also if everyone had the education for those jobs, it'd probably not be a healthy industry anymore.
  - TallGuyShort 7y ago
    I think we also need to get away from the idea that the only reason there are people excelling at squeezing every bit of latency out of an embedded system is because they went to a 4-year school. There are so many people who go get an associates because their career isn't going anywhere. So they go get a bachelor's because their career isn't going anywhere. Then they go get an MBA because their career isn't going anywhere. And then they're posting on LinkedIn looking for better offers, covered in debt, and think we should make degrees appear to be a costless decision. A degree doesn't change your personality, and sometimes that's the problem. We think too highly of degrees in too broad a context and think degrees === qualifications.

ThrowItAway2Day 7y ago

There's a reason that the majority of student loan debt in the US is from for profit colleges [1]. They are predatory, ill-regulated, and unstable. ITT Tech, WGU, and those all algorithmicly target audiences that are likely to get approved for Federal student loans: veterans, single-mothers, first-in-family to go to college. They get them approved for these loans and the funds go directly to the school whether they graduate or not. There's a very interesting chapter on this in the book "Weapons of Math Destruction." Don't believe their non-sense ads about being the future of education, the incentives just don't align. Go to local community or state public schools if private is not affordable. Either way, both public and private are not-for-profit. [1] https://phys.org/news/2019-06-for-profit-america-student-debt-crisis.html https://phys.org/news/2019-06-for-profit-america-student-deb...

DesaiAshu 7y ago
A few things to clarify here: 1. The degree is granted by a non-profit institution, Dominican University. The for-profit Public Benefit Corporation Make School, is currently providing services to the non-profit institution to run the program. It's also regionally accredited by WASC (far stricter guidelines) rather than nationally accredited like typical for-profits. 2. In contrast to typical for-profits, our students are predominantly 18-25 years old. They are choosing between Make School and traditional universities. 3. In contrast to typical for-profits, our incentives are directly aligned with students. As you state, existing for-profits targeted students to get approved for federal student loans. Our students don't take federal student loans, and they don't pay tuition unless they make >$60k per year. Their tuition is also scaled with their salary. It's reasonable to discuss the merits of this vs state schools vs non-profit private colleges. It's hard to claim it's a scam when you're completely protected on the downside.
- hackermailman 7y ago
  What's the maximum tuition? Your website claims 20% gross income for 5 years, so if a new grad is making $195k/yr like you claim on the site, the full amount owed will be almost $200k or does this income garnishment end after a certain amount.

Aaronstotle 7y ago

I attend the summer academy (bootcamp) for iOS Development a few years ago. I was thinking about going to the full program but I don't care for web development nor iOS development. I hope they add a DevOps track because I think there's a lot of people like myself who enjoy building systems/standing up servers but not strictly programming per se.

DesaiAshu 7y ago
Nice to hear from you and thanks for the feedback. I'll share this with our Dean and instructional team as they consider more specializations to add!

TheAdamAndChe 7y ago

I notice some comments about likely astroturfing on the post. I'm curious, what are Hacker News's opinions on it? Is it just a necessary evil of using the platform, or a plague that should be fought against?

DesaiAshu 7y ago
I've been helping PM the AMA on our side. We've had multiple team members support answering the questions but I explicitly asked people not to ask questions. We have a lot of students and alumni who see these posts and want to be supportive, so usually there end up being comments or questions that feel canned or overly enthusiastic. Not much we can do here :)
- TheAdamAndChe 7y ago
  I understand. I'm not bashing you or saying it is definitely astroturfing, I was just curious on how other people here view it. Many users on this site are very pragmatic, others are idealistic. That dichotomy leads to interesting conversations sometimes.

educater 7y ago

For anyone considering this, please know that it would be cheaper in the end to go to an excellent California community college and transfer and pay two years tuition vs. giving up 20% of your income for 5 years or paying $70K. Anyone who seriously considers this doesn't know how much cheaper alternatives are. You can graduate with an associates from a community college pretty much anywhere in the country (United States) for $5000. If you're so broke you'd need an income sharing agreement you likely qualify for a Pell Grant so really your associate's would be free. Let's say you do poorly and can only get into the easiest public university in your state. Using California as an example, UC Merced is about $15K a year. So it would cost you $35K to get a legit bachelors in computer science from UC Merced vs. $70K from a no name. The only way Make School would be cheaper is if 20% of the sum if your income for 5 years is less than $35K. Needless to say that's unlikely. EDIT: And this is to say nothing of the fact that you can actually take other classes other than computer science and live a more well rounded life.

sova 7y ago
For the same level of quality and hands-on-ness? Even at more expensive places the quality and one-to-one with professors/teachers is not what it could be. I only assume at places with less at risk the drive to excel (and for teachers to be very one-on-one) is rare
- educater 7y ago
  I would argue that someone who would sufficiently take advantage of the "hands-on-ness" of Make School would do well enough in community college to transfer into a much better school, e.g. Berkeley or UCLA. Though, I would argue that education is more about what you take out of it than what is given, but that's another discussion.
  - sova 7y ago
    The whole point of Make School is to skip the absurdity of a 4-year institution, rerouting that 4 years might be more affordable, but that's like getting a Toyota instead of a Tesla, no? Even a Berkeley PhD doesn't guarantee you a good paying job, whereas Make School only takes a cut when you get decently paid.

agigao 7y ago

$70K for 2 years? No, thanks. Community college for 2 years ~ 20-25K tuition, then "learning your heart out" for those 2 years and transfer to a proper university with scholarship seems far more plausible to me. Classical CS education with high standards is a proper way to go, otherwise you'll spend first 10 years your programming career "wishing you had known that before", and you might never step into the depth of career, especially into ML/AI field, without that prior knowledge of the theory. Actually, such "new kind of school" done better is https://www.42.fr https://www.42.fr Talking with my 7+ years of software/data engineering experience, last couple of years spent in DS{ML/DL}.

DesaiAshu 7y ago
Scholarships for traditional universities are pretty hard to get unless you have really strong academics. And generally the odds are stacked against you to go to a top tier university if you're coming from a low income background. Keep in mind that if you graduate from Make School in 2-2.5 years, you'll start earning earlier. So the ROI on the $70k is really strong! Research Universities are definitely the way to go if you want to go into the research focused ML/AI side of things. We're being explicit that this is an Applied CS degree for that reason. But for most tech careers the traditional CS degrees aren't as relevant, including for Data Science jobs (we have a few recent alums making north of $150k as Data Scientists). And you can always go back for a masters if you feel you need it. Have you visited 42 or been through their curriculum? What parts do you feel are better?

guuz 7y ago

I think I have a somewhat unpopular and romantic opinion: a tertiary education is important not only for what you can learn in regular classes (or the prospects this learning may give you), but the knowledge you can gain outside of them if you are interested in doing so. I studied at a fairly big public university in the third world, not very special by any standards, but the experience of being inside an academic center, with access to people from a myriad of backgrounds studying very different disciplines opened my mind irrevocably. And, I believe, made me a much better engineer. I recognise that very few people have an opportunity like the one I had and a two year degree with an extreme focus is more suitable for some folks, mainly because of the absurd tuition costs in the US (I studied for free). But it seems the concept of the university serving as a knowledge hub is fading away and giving way to a hyper capitalistic vision where only your future paychecks matter thanks to a kind of social anxiety.

dbcurtis 7y ago

On hands-on versus math, how do you approach finding the magic balance? For context: Let's agree that MIT and Olin are both great engineering schools. One former coworker of mine is a senior Mech E who graduated from MIT, who once said something along the lines: "I've never hired an MIT grad who could not do the math, but sometimes they needed to learn good bench skills on the job. I've never hired an Olin grad who didn't hit the ground running in the lab on day 1, but sometimes they hit resistance with the math." So even with four years and a demanding pace, it is still hard to do both well. What grounds your thinking on this topic?

DesaiAshu 7y ago
Good question! We're definitely leaning stronger on the hands on right now, but are looking to build out more on the math side. Our Dean actually has a PhD in Applied Math rather than CS, so it's in our wheelhouse. It's probably still going to feel closer to Olin than MIT. You're right that it's impossible to do both at sufficient depth. Ideally we offer students flexibility to push in the direction they want to go. Eventually we'll be working with students who want to go deeper in AI/ML, or potentially other computational STEM fields - they may need stronger math. While others may want to stay closer to product development. Either way, it's most important to equip students with the mindset and resources to keep learning. Learning should not stop in college, there's no concrete reason why either the math or bench skills can't be picked up later in life - apart from societal bias that tells us to stop learning.

dirtybird04 7y ago

Kinda off-topic, but an interesting comment in response to a particularly engaging thread: "Usually AMA subjects ignore questions that aren't softballs. Props to you for actually going through and answering. Thanks!" Yeah, that's a really low bar. And sums up why I stopped paying attention to AMAs a while back. It's mostly just fluff and PR with an occassional Snoop Dogg gem.

ykevinator 7y ago

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