Well, they aren't an accredited program, so they're pretty much eliding the regulatory aspects. The flip side is, its students are paying private-college prices

Well, they aren't an accredited program, so they're pretty much eliding the regulatory aspects. The flip side is, its students are paying private-college prices (and over three times average resident tuition for state schools) for an unaccredited program. So, is the program significantly better than an AS, BS, or MS when factoring in time and price? Not sure about that. (It appears to be an accelerated and relatively superficial tour of CS, plus a lot of hanging out with startup types. Compare with an undergrad at Stanford or Berkeley plus regular Caltrain or BART trips for coffee in SoMa.) Having said that, MakeSchool isn't trying to be a replacement for a traditional uni education -- hence the "gap year" terminology -- but for the price, I'd hope they're working with ABET to get some kind of seal of approval of their curriculum. Alternatively, they can do what some colleagues of mine did back in the late '90s, with a similar concept (a "web talent incubator" named Populi) -- they worked with accredited institutions like Pratt to build and monitor their curricula, giving them the imprimatur of a prestigious institution without the regulatory handcuffs.