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I think that this is a good program with an undoubtedly noble cause. However, I don't really like the idea of calling this need based aid. Need based aid should

by ruswick 15y ago

I think that this is a good program with an undoubtedly noble cause. However, I don't really like the idea of calling this need based aid. Need based aid should be given regardless of gender. If someone wants to do Hacker School and is unable to afford it, they should get aid regardless of what gender they are. So this comes off not as giving aid to those who need it, but as incentivizing women to join Hacker School, which is something entirely different. It's not a bad thing, but it's not need based aid. And, although this program is going to be effective, I'm not sure that it is going to create true equality. It's going to artificially inflate the number of women applying to hacker school, but I'm not sure that that is the right way to go about encouraging women to join Hacker School, and I'm not sure that this is going to result in true equality. The real goal should be to encourage the community of women programmers to apply to Hacker School on their own, and get it to a point where they can organically be half of the enrolled people. All this program does is compensate for the problem, not truly trying to fix it. So, although I like this initiative and think that it definitely will help equalize Hacker School, I think that there are a few issues with it.

thomasballinger 15y ago
I don't think it's a stretch though to call this "need-based aid for women" as Nick does in the post. The term is often used in this way by traditional educational institutions. I felt very fortunate to have the money lying around to take three months off of work to attend Hacker School, and I imagine there is a large pool of entirely qualified candidates who are financially unable to make this work (several of them posted on HN last time around). If we assume happening to have the money socked away and being a passionate hacker are a bit independent, then this need-based aid for women will increase the number of entirely qualified women who are able to attend. This is the right, least-artificial way to "[encourage] the community of women programmers to apply to Hacker School on their own," as is possible for an organization that doesn't happen to run a k-12 educational program or other major institutional social change agent. Although 5k for three months will modify the incentive structure, it's less than the average American income for that period, and your living expenses are going to increase if you're moving to NYC unless you're coming from Paris or similar. The only expected changes in the applicant pool are qualities I don't give a lick about, having to do with educational loans, having a job that can be done remotely for a few days a week, having money saved up, or personal financial conservatism (willingness to spend money on an unknown 3-month commitment). From what I've observed, Nick, Dave and Sonali are 100% about maintaining the excellent quality of people in their program, and I trust they will ensure that financial aid for women in no way undermines that. This hopefully will "artificially inflate" (what wouldn't be artificial? just waiting until the problem is solved by someone else?) the number of women applying, some of whom will be accepted and hopefully become better hackers, contributing in a small way to fixing the problem. Should more drastic steps be taken at a primary / secondary / college education level to attempt to "organically" grow the community of women programmers? Sure, and I'll continue to vote for elected officials who say they'll try to fix this as I always have, but in the meantime the Etsy scholarships are trying to make concrete progress growing that community right now.

by ruswick 15y ago

thomasballinger 15y ago

I don't think it's a stretch though to call this "need-based aid for women" as Nick does in the post. The term is often used in this way by traditional educational institutions. I felt very fortunate to have the money lying around to take three months off of work to attend Hacker School, and I imagine there is a large pool of entirely qualified candidates who are financially unable to make this work (several of them posted on HN last time around). If we assume happening to have the money socked away and being a passionate hacker are a bit independent, then this need-based aid for women will increase the number of entirely qualified women who are able to attend. This is the right, least-artificial way to "[encourage] the community of women programmers to apply to Hacker School on their own," as is possible for an organization that doesn't happen to run a k-12 educational program or other major institutional social change agent. Although 5k for three months will modify the incentive structure, it's less than the average American income for that period, and your living expenses are going to increase if you're moving to NYC unless you're coming from Paris or similar. The only expected changes in the applicant pool are qualities I don't give a lick about, having to do with educational loans, having a job that can be done remotely for a few days a week, having money saved up, or personal financial conservatism (willingness to spend money on an unknown 3-month commitment). From what I've observed, Nick, Dave and Sonali are 100% about maintaining the excellent quality of people in their program, and I trust they will ensure that financial aid for women in no way undermines that. This hopefully will "artificially inflate" (what wouldn't be artificial? just waiting until the problem is solved by someone else?) the number of women applying, some of whom will be accepted and hopefully become better hackers, contributing in a small way to fixing the problem. Should more drastic steps be taken at a primary / secondary / college education level to attempt to "organically" grow the community of women programmers? Sure, and I'll continue to vote for elected officials who say they'll try to fix this as I always have, but in the meantime the Etsy scholarships are trying to make concrete progress growing that community right now.