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What really bothers me about coding schools is that their application process pretty much sets them up for success. They aggressively filter applicants (on pri
by GuiA 13y ago
What really bothers me about coding schools is that their application process pretty much sets them up for success.
They aggressively filter applicants (on prior work experience, passion, etc.) to only keep the ones most likely succeed and make their program look good (not unlike most private high schools, and a lot of private universities). And a lot of them charge crazy tuition (not far from the most expensive US universities if you bring it to a cost per week of instruction), further narrowing the funnel.
There's not a lot of merit in having a very high success rate if your students were going to succeed anyway. That's where the real educational challenges lie, and why public universities or non-profits who aim to reach precisely the people who couldn't get in those bootcamps have much lower success rates.
At my current workplace, we just hired a developer who came from a dev bootcamp. She's fantastic- but she also has an undergraduate degree in math, she wrote some C++ out of college, and has an MBA as well as pretty impressive work experience. Of course she was very likely to do well in a cookie-cutter Ruby course!
Try teaching former convicts, unemployed people, veterans, teenagers from poor neighborhoods, etc. But, it's much harder work, less glamorous, and surely less profitable (I've taught CS/programming in public universities and to disadvantaged teenagers).
- mikeyanderson 13y agoGuiA, needing to have much wider software engineering education is absolutely needed. It's definitely one that we've tried hard to address. We're offering lower cost getting started courses so a wider group can get started and get the tools they need. Also we have had summer camps to help get at risk kids started: http://www.geekwire.com/2013/code-fellows-offer-code-camp-atrisk-youth-underprivileged-women/ http://www.geekwire.com/2013/code-fellows-offer-code-camp-at... Our goal is to give people the tools and passion they need to develop. If you'd like to volunteer we'd love to help do more programs to help more of these groups.
- dmunoz 13y agoIt's not only the application process. Some of these programs kick out some successful applicants in the first few weeks, further reducing the field from which they pluck these success figures. To be fair, Code Fellow seems to be upfront about this, since only 88% of successful applicants actually graduate. Edit: More related to your point above, they are also up front about previous degrees held. 82% of their students had degrees before entering their program.
- salemh 13y agoAny stories on this / links? Some of these programs kick out some successful applicants in the first few weeks, further reducing the field from which they pluck these success figures.
- lispylol 13y agoOr really any school for that matter. In the valley you have schools like Stanford and Berkeley that serve as the initial filters in the talent funnel. Getting into either school is a feat unto its own, so I don't think these school take credit for all of a students success.