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Show HN: Make School – College replacement for founders and developers

116 points by DesaiAshu 12y ago

codingdave 12y ago
Sounds like a good program, at least from your marketing. But I would market is an alternative to college, not a replacement. It is a just a matter of word choice, but the word replacement could take you down a road of comparison that isn't required and may distract your efforts. "Alternative" lets you focus on what you offer, and the value it will bring to a student's life, without getting caught into the mess of arguing about the value of higher education.
- Igglyboo 12y ago
  I thought the same thing. The word "replacement", to me, makes it sounds like they think they are strictly better than college when in fact they are not, there are advantages and disadvantages to both. Also it comes off as somewhat arrogant.
- rpcope1 12y ago
  I agree, but I would take it further. I worry that things that are already somewhat lacking in a lot of CS degrees, like having a reasonable background in mathematics, are only made further problematic. This program sounds excellent if you just wanted to be an app developer, but if you get tasked to do something a little out in the weeds, one has to wonder what other aspects of education got shortchanged.
Jimmy 12y ago
I'm confused. College is amazing. Why would you want a college replacement? >Your education will be focused on building apps and websites that improve the lives of those around you. Getting a wide-ranging liberal education was never really that important, huh?
- vinceguidry 12y ago
  > Getting a wide-ranging liberal education was never really that important, huh? It's important, but it's also expensive. Unbelievably so. What I see happening is ambitious kids going here to gain marketable skills, and figure out what they like doing, and then using those skills to pay their way through college with a much better idea of what they want to do. That way you don't have to be saddled with a crapload of debt.
  - cdr 12y ago
    25% of your salary for 2 years is not a crapload of debt?
    - nmrm2 12y ago
      In fact, if your starting salary is 80k, this is ten thousand dollars MORE THAN the average college debt! And no opportunities to branch out of software engineering. Your starting salary would have to be around 55-60k for you to take on less debt than a typical four year degree, even accounting for subsidized interest rates. edit for downvotes: here's the math: Average college debt is 27ish k. Bump it up to 30k for interest. 80000 * .25 * 2 = 40k. 60000 * .25 * 2 = 30k. Is there something I'm missing? -- You could argue that there's a two year opportunity cost here. I'm not so sure: 1) If your only goal is to become a web dev and you don't want any other background knowledge (that is, knowledge otuside of computer science), then you can do that in two years at most universities. What I mean by this is that the CS major portion of a degree is a little more than half your courseload most places. 2) But IMHO it's silly to major in CS without picking up a secondary major/minor in an interesting application area. So I it's at least debatable that there's a real opportunity cost benefit here. Finally, to be fair, they seem well-connected. The YC etc. connections might help offset the comparatively high price.
      - idyllicshine 12y ago
        I think there is an assumption that this enables such a job that otherwise would be unattainable. As an individual, of course you want the $80k job, despite the $60k job "requiring less debt", plus you then get to keep the $80k job after the 2 years.
- cylinder 12y ago
  No, a wide-ranging formal liberal education is not that important. We're in an era of specialization and autodidactism. I've learned far, far more myself with the internet than I ever did in my useless, overpriced English and History classes in university.
- Dewie 12y ago
  > Getting a wide-ranging liberal education was never really that important, huh? I haven't heard of many people who have gotten that where I live. So maybe it isn't.
- johnmarinelli 12y ago
  College student here, and college has not been so amazing. I wish that the whole e-learning/computer science oriented college alternatives thing took off when I was still in high school. My tuition amounts to ~$30k a year (without grants), which is pretty ridiculous - especially considering the "quality" of the classes. Granted, the social life is nice, but it's hard to maintain that social life when I'm busy making up what school should be teaching me (namely undertaking a bunch of side projects). Maybe I'm just an angsty young adult, but I am really unhappy with the higher education model in the modern world.
  - glesica 12y ago
    If you're not happy with the education then do something about it. One great option that isn't presented often enough is to transfer to a different institution. Don't think that just because the school you're at sucks for you that all of them will. In some cases you can actually get into a better school than you got into out of high school as a transfer student (although some schools are weird about accepting transfers, Google can help). Also, note that I said "for you", very few, if any, colleges or universities in the US suck in general. Some are stronger or weaker in certain areas, some emphasize certain aspects of education over others, and some will better prepare you for various jobs than others, but it is an individual evaluation. Another thing to keep in mind is whether what you're hoping to get out of school is really what colleges and universities offer. Maybe college isn't right for you. Colleges and universities do not prepare you for a job (with a few notable exceptions like professional programs such as law and medical school, and certain business programs). Instead, they prepare you to prepare yourself for a job. A lot of people like to trash the emphasis on theory in academic CS programs, but if you pay attention, and work hard (which it sounds like you are, with your side projects) the theory becomes pretty damn useful later when you get a job and you're shown a couple hundred (or thousand if you're really "lucky") lines of spaghetti code and asked to figure out why it is "slow", etc. A lot of people don't take the time to digest the theory they learn and therefore they aren't able to apply it to real problems when they go out into the world. Don't make that mistake. However, does everyone need those exact skills? Nope, we need tons of people who can pump out relatively simple, relatively repetitive (though not enough to automate) code for relatively standard applications. We also need people who can maintain that (and other) code, write tests, automate processes, and a hundred other things each requiring a slightly different mixture of skills, not all of which are (or should be) taught in college. Additionally, and this is important for startups, we need people who have strong social and organizational skills, who don't necessarily spend all day writing code (not to mention the hardware people, everyone always forgets about them :) So instead of plowing $30k/year into an education you aren't sure you want, you might want to think about a different path. Do some research. If other schools are stronger in what you want to learn, maybe you should transfer. It could also be that college just isn't what you should be doing right now, perhaps a program as described in TFA, or one of the other "code schools" would be more your style and better fits your interests. You can usually go back to college and pick up where you left off if you change your mind (although depending on the school your tuition might go up in that case).
- clay_to_n 12y ago
  It's important to some people. But others don't really care, and would prefer a cheaper and better way to do what they want to do (in this case, become a founder or developer). I think this is more aimed at the college-dropout techie / entrepreneur type than your typical CS student.
CzechsMix 12y ago
So what you're saying is we've found a way to fund education without debt to students or taxes, and the school has an incentive to get you internships so that you graduate with work experience AND incentive to place you at the highest paying job after college? Consider my interest piqued.
- nmrm2 12y ago
  Read the admissions page. It's a well-connected trade school for gifted students entering the tech industry as defined by SV, not a scalable alternative and repeatable model for general-purpose higher ed. edit: This isn't judgemental. Nothing wrong with trade school But that's what this is.
  - CzechsMix 12y ago
    Yes, now it's a very specific, tough to get in trade school. You might recall it was quite a luxury to have a mobile phone not too long ago. Demand for this kind of education might persuade others to implement a similar model, and I don't see any major roadblocks for other areas. Employers will finally get graduates with work experience, as well as access to cheap intern labor. Looks worth exploring if nothing else.
ripb 12y ago
I really like the innovative funding model, although intuitively it seems pretty high risk?
- pitt1980 12y ago
  "intuitively it seems pretty high risk" for who?
  - ripb 12y ago
    For the company. Depending on how it is implemented, taking a cut of the first 2 years' salary could be very high risk. Intuitively there seems to be little to stop someone taking the education and then absconding abroad.
    - jacobsenscott 12y ago
      There is a lot to stop most people from "absconding abroad". Family, friends, culture, language, visa requirements, ...
    - pitt1980 12y ago
      it's be interesting to know how a situation where student takes school, then starts their own company and pays themselves ramen salary is handled seems like a good portion of their target market might have something like that in mind also (opportunity cost of two years and having to live in one of the more expensive real estate markets in the US isn't exactly risk free for the student either)
pnathan 12y ago
> 2 month capstone project where you can build a startup or dive deep into computer science topics like artificial intelligence and machine learning. There is no deep in two months. There's broad, there's skim, there's sophomoric. But there's no deep. Particularly for people not already seasoned and experienced in ingesting vast quantities of difficult data and drawing out inferences. Edit: Some more notes. There are 6 headliners in https://www.makeschool.com/education https://www.makeschool.com/education. Of those, one (CS) was covered adequately in my college career, one was given lip service (Communication, something I struggle with today), one I learned on my own (Open source), app dev & web dev were largely irrelevant to my education (principles over practice), and networking (people, not wires) was totally neglected. Communication and networking are both subjects that deserve to be a higher priority in collegiate CS environments. My perspective is that this is essentially a trade school, which is a good thing. It's not a replacement for a four year degree, it's a two year degree, which is something basically lacking in the software world. Now, if this general package could be rolled up into a traditional two-year trade school, I'd be all for it.
- nmrm2 12y ago
  But they're looking for top students, so presumably their competitors are MIT, CMU, Stanford, etc. rather than the local Community College. Trade schools are great things, but I'm not sure I could feel comfortable advising a student to turn down MIT for a trade school, even one with really great connections.
  - pitt1980 12y ago
    considering the price tag of those schools, they should be the most vulnerable to competition
    - swatow 12y ago
      But almost all top schools have needs-blind admissions which means that if you get in, they will provide the financial aid that you need if you can't afford it. So it's actually very unlikely someone gets into a top school but then decides it's not worth the money (assuming the school is worth the money, which it is, and the only issue is whether they can afford it right now).
ajaymehta 12y ago
Having met some of the students that went through Make School's summer session, I was very impressed. They seemed to be more widely-experienced and driven than your average student at a top-tier school. Excited to see that Make School is turning this into a full two-year program.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
tomc1985 12y ago
So it's a fancy trade school, without all the general ed that makes for well-rounded adults? ITT Technical Institute
Alex3917 12y ago
Great idea, two years seems like too long though. It shouldn't take more than 6 - 9 months to learn the basics of being a full stack web developer, with another 6 - 9 months to actually become competent enough to work semi-independently. I think it would make more sense to make the program 18 months, and then have things like swift and devops as optional six-month extensions.
rpcope1 12y ago
I think I would far rather see this as a supplement to college than a replacement. I know it's in vogue today to claim that education is about "job training," but I worry that this attitude is short sighted and destructive. Saying that you're a "replacement" to a quality four year degree is also rather arrogant.
dkyc 12y ago
These types of programs represent a funny trend in the SV tech scene: While workers of every other sector are busy increasing the barrier of entry in order to reduce competition for jobs, every other week some new startup / bootcamp / code school wants to tear down the barriers and provide "CS for the masses". Of course a noble goal, but if it actually works, it also means the end of the privileged, six-figure-entry-salary, 20%-of-your-time-free tech jobs.
hackuser 12y ago
It sounds more like a graduate program than a college education, a sort of Masters in IT entrepreneurship? As a college education, it shortchanges the students: * There is so much more to life than a job. You will be a citizen; how do you decide on war and peace, economic issues, social policy, etc. without understanding history, politics, economics, social issues, other cultures, languages, etc.? Without being able to grasp and think critically about sophisticated propaganda, and how to challenge ideas? You will be a social animal: A member of the community, a friend, and maybe a parent. You will be a person, a being with an identity and life outside of your cubical; if all you know are technical skills for a job, what are you? What will you get out of life? Where will you learn about the things that make our lives rich, such as the arts -- you know, much of the content that is the purpose of the wires and systems you hope to build. * There is so much more to a career than one job. If you focus your education on the skills needed for one job at one time, you'll find that soon both you and the world have moved on. The demand for skills change and, more importantly, you will change, and the skills will be obsolete. * There is so much more to a job than technical skills. As simple examples, you need to understand other people, to undertand other cultures in the U.S. and around the world if you will sell to or help (or work with!) people outside of SV. As was discussed yesterday, some in SV still don't even undertand those people called "females" enough to realize they may not enjoy playing male characters. You need ideas, and most great ideas are outside tech and outside SV and older than 20 years; there are thousands of years of them. What a sad, myopic, even egocentric view of the world and of education. I feel bad for the people who will encounter so little of the world of knowledge. EDIT: Minor rewording
- dollar 12y ago
  This tired liberal arts approach of mandatory enlightenment is exactly why we have students graduating with tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt with no marketable skills. Students can become a well-rounded person on their own time, through the many life experiences they can afford when they are not paying off debt. I am so happy to see the world of academia get disrupted, and I cannot wait for the coming revolution where liberal arts education is reserved to those people with a true desire to pursue it.
  - 12y ago
pskittle 12y ago
This seems too good to be true. Are there any plans of making the curriculum available to students who are not in the US. Perhaps for a fee? You could reach a wider audience. Don't know how the internship thing would work. As a student on leave from school in the US, this is something i could see myself doing
- DesaiAshu 12y ago
  Let's chat :) - ashu@makeschool.com
dollar 12y ago
Sorry, but 25% of a persons salary for two years is a ridiculous amount of money. With a first year programmer making $75-$85k this cost will be similar to college debt. Will these payments qualify as tuition and be tax deductible? That could soften the blow slightly. I like the idea that companies will pay the school for their candidates and relieve the student burden. But why not go all-in on this model and just guarantee that the school will be able to place a graduate? The salary sharing model is just another form of debt.
- eonw 12y ago
  you are aware of what most higher-end 4 year colleges cost? i think 25% of two years wages is a lot less debt than many are left with.
  - nmrm2 12y ago
    This is not true. The opposite is true. The average person has 27k, which means it's a pretty exceptional person who leaves college with 40k in debt (that's 25% of 80k over 2 years). The real cost disparity is probably even larger than 10k due to taxes.
    - eonw 12y ago
      I am speaking about higher-end, which they seem to be looking to compete with, not averages. Also the 2013 average is $28.4k across the board, with private colleges closer to $39.9k. You are also assuming that the person will be making $80k. A fresh grad outside of SF probably wont be making that.
      - nmrm2 12y ago
        Be consistent. Graduates from top private/public unis will have more debt, sure, but they also do make 80k+ on average, as a matter of fact. So the debt load is best case comparable in 1/2 the time and for no degree. As others have pointed out, undergrad debt numbers include R&R but the 25% for 2 years doesn't. What's 2 years of rent in SF for two years.
matthewmacleod 12y ago
I'm suspicious for two reasons: 1. I struggle to believe that a well-rounded CS and engineering education can be squeezed into two years. Describing this as "the future of computer science education" (their words)—when it appears to be a trade school which teaches CS basics followed by Rails, Python and iOS development—is doing CS a massive dis-service. There's nothing wrong with this kind of trade school, but it is emphatically not "The future of computer science education". 2. It's rather expensive. What'a a starting salary for a developer in SV - maybe $70k? AT 25% over two years, that's $35k – which is comparable to college debt. It's great that this prevents the broken US higher education funding system, I suppose, but it's not cheap. Maybe I'm just cynical, but I've seen too many graduates of similar trade school programs who have a couple of years of experience on paper, but are woefully under qualified for the development and deployment of computer systems in the real world. Given the sort of attendees this program will see, I don't imagine it'll be the case here, however.
- fuzzywalrus 12y ago
  I'm in the skeptic camp too, one of inevitable bonuses of a full college is having many fields in close contact. Cross academic pollination probably is one of the best aspects of college, and honestly with the amount of resources at their disposal, they could facilitate programs for the current state of "Startups" as a minor or even major, ideally paired with an unrelated field. This on paper looks more like a trade school, I imagine a program like this could be designed to churn out competent programmers but beyond that, I'm not so sure.
aesthetics1 12y ago
What is the deal with this?: You'll need a mac laptop purchased in the last 2 years running the latest version of OS X and an iPhone or iPod touch running the latest version of iOS. We provide need-based hardware assistance for students who can't afford a mac or iPod.
- joshvm 12y ago
  Given that a big chunk of the course is developing iOS apps, it makes sense for participants to own both a Macbook (for XCode) and the hardware they're running their code on.
- s73v3r 12y ago
  One of the big pillars of their curriculum is iOS development.
sah88 12y ago
Neat. Would be interesting to see a more detailed syllabus of what is covered when. Also is the 25% rake net or gross? It is two years full time (well 1.5 if you consider internship) so I don't think it is really fair to compare it to a 3 month program. At my local university doing 3x semesters of just CS classes leaves you 1 course short of the required CS courses for a degree. Mind you I'm not including the math requirements. But on the other hand this is probably more intensive and with a better student/teacher ratio arguably you will be learning stuff quicker. Not to say they are equivalent... but I'm not sure its fair to write it off as being "code monkey" school. Not a fan of the location choice though. I get that SF has a lot of really good networking opportunities but for a two year program it is crazy expensive. The difference in rent compared to where I live makes this more expensive than attending university. If I was to get an apartment with equivalent square footage to what I have now the cost of this would actually be pretty close to doing a 4 year degree. That's before factoring in the 25% rake. Mind you I'm in a relatively inexpensive Canadian city.
PhoenixWright 12y ago
As someone who took their online gaming course I wouldn't have anything to do with these guys. They abandoned Make games with us and have been spamming my inbox with at least 3 different business models since then, this being their latest one. The online gaming course had buggy code and horrible stumbling lessons. I heard about them on here and was conned out of $100. Stay away from these scammers.
- DesaiAshu 12y ago
  Founder of Make School here. I'm really sorry you had a bad experience with our online game development course :(. We're continuing to improve both the curriculum and user experience. Please drop me a line - ashu@makeschool.com - and I'll be sure to give you a refund.
  - PhoenixWright 12y ago
    I'm not interested in a refund. I posted my experience so others can learn from my mistake. When make games with us was on HN I believed in your company and by the end I felt duped. Maybe things have changed but I would never give you guys a second chance. Also, my experience is not unique. During the course many students voiced their frustration. Your site crashed the first day, content was posted late and the example code had bugs in it. That was the time to offer refunds, privately, to every one of your customers. Not here, publicly, to one person exposing your company.
    - xerophyte12932 12y ago
      I totally understand your frustration, but frankly I think you're being a bit harsh on them. I have recently started providing CS courses independently and trust me, it's not as easy as it seems. Shit happens. As a first timer, I know I have made mistakes and I have learned from them. I know my current course wasn't all that but I know my next would be better. Obviously I am going to email people telling them about my newest venture, though I would try not to make seem like spam. Anyways, everyone deserves second chances. Just because my first code draft had bugs in it, doesn't mean I should stop coding. (though I really should remove those bugs before shipping)
tomazz 12y ago
Given enough effort and determination I can totally see how this could work. Maybe you won't be a programming god but I can totally see how those 2 productive years easily replace a 5 year CS masters course. High schools, colleges, universities often have boring teaching programs that force everybody to learn at the same speed, programs that look like a progress bar (The Matrix training program?) In real life we can't ask Tank to load the Networking course from a floppy disk and yet that's what metaphorically most Universities are trying to do. Because of that kind of system we are maybe 10-20% as productive as we could be. We are bored with exercises and we don't really want to do leaving them till the last moment before the deadline. Now, take a moment go back to your ol' university years and think. When did you learn the most? In labs and lectures? Or when you thought "It would be cool to do a 2048 clone that negotiates every move with the server side that you cannot cheat"? You got excited, spent a week coding, learning new things, redoing, rebuilding, learning even more. I remember doing project of that kind in my 1st year of the University. Over the Christmas holiday I learnt more than in the past 3 months at uni... Yeah I could totally see the Make School work. At least I hope it will ;)
cottonseed 12y ago
Reminds me a little of ADUni: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ArsDigita_University https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ArsDigita_University
Geekette 12y ago
Seems odd that the actual cost of tuition is not stated anywhere on the site and discussion on it is vague; all that's stated is that you pay it with your internship earnings + 25% of your salary for 2 years post-graduation. Seems ridiculously steep[1] and unscrupulously variable[2]. [1] With some companies paying interns to $10k+ monthly, a student could pay out around up to 60k earned (a 6 month internship period is referenced on the site), then get a $120 job afterwards and have to pay another 60k over two years, totaling 120k. [2] Meanwhile, a student who gets a 30k internship + 100k job only pays back 80k for attending the same school.
alexvr 12y ago
This is kind of gimmicky. Most people are probably better off going to a 4-year university and studying CS/engineering/math/physics or something, and the few who want to learn in a nontraditional way and don't intend to get a corporate or hardcore engineering job would probably be smart enough choose to use books, a startup internship or some freelance gigs, and, say, the Internet (???) over something like Make School. Many big cushy corporate jobs require traditional degrees, and most startups could care less about your formal education if you can show what you're capable of. I'm having a lot of trouble picturing the market for Make School, even as a massive proponent of autodidacticism and hands-on learning.
- clay_to_n 12y ago
  >the few who want to learn in a nontraditional way and don't intend to get a corporate or hardcore engineering job would probably be smart enough choose to use books, a startup internship or some freelance gigs, and, say, the Internet (???) over something like Make School I'm not convinced of this. The value of having mentors and teachers is tremendous, even if you know you can learn to code on your own. Having someone to ask "What's the best way to structure this program?" or "Does this idea make sense to you?" is very valuable - someone to answer questions that text books, google, and stackoverflow can't.
kriro 12y ago
First of all I applaud all attempts to find alternative ways of CS education (or I guess applied CS/software engineering). I'm still convinced that programming is essentially a selflearning and experimentation kind of discipline that benefits from a hands on approach (and collaboration with others that are on a similar path). That being said if they position themselves as "for startup minded people" they should focus a lot more on the "get out of the building" aspect. In fact I think there'd be huge value in a program where you essentially learn this. Talk to a lot of potential customers simulate it find creative ways of going about it. I think this is what a lot of us need more than (not meant as an insult) "yet another bootcampish thingy". I think they need to clearly pick one focus and go allin on it. Either "you'll be excellent founder material" or "you'll be a great hire". I think they try to spotlight the former but the latter creeps in. I think the biggest potential is taking the "university like we wished it was" line and the "no debt" line and mix it with "hands on/projects/good hire" and focus less on the startup angle. If you want to focus on the startup angle...way more non-technical hands on talk to people things. I think there's a nice gap there. It's easier for a sufficiently curious person to teach themselves technical things than to have access to potential customers and interview them (imo) Either way, good luck :)
danielscrubs 12y ago
If this is computer science I will eat my hat. checks site No it's just computer programming. so surprised As one who is often in charge of interviews I could tell you that if I saw a CV with this school and no other redeeming qualities it would go straight to the bin. I will now go and salute D. Knuth and get drunk.
xasos 12y ago
Let me give some perspective from a high school senior: The main reasons for going to college is (a) a highly specialized education, (b) ability to grow your network, and (c) a good social setting that you may not get anywhere else. Particularly on point (a) - sure there are a lot of good online resources to learn, but you can't beat having an expert in the field at your disposal. Some topics like The basics of machine learning (Stanford CS229) can be found, but it's the truly specialized courses (more advanced machine learning) that are hard to find.

116 points by DesaiAshu 12y ago

Sounds like a good program, at least from your marketing. But I would market is an alternative to college, not a replacement. It is a just a matter of word choice, but the word replacement could take you down a road of comparison that isn't required and may distract your efforts. "Alternative" lets you focus on what you offer, and the value it will bring to a student's life, without getting caught into the mess of arguing about the value of higher education.

Igglyboo 12y ago
I thought the same thing. The word "replacement", to me, makes it sounds like they think they are strictly better than college when in fact they are not, there are advantages and disadvantages to both. Also it comes off as somewhat arrogant.
rpcope1 12y ago
I agree, but I would take it further. I worry that things that are already somewhat lacking in a lot of CS degrees, like having a reasonable background in mathematics, are only made further problematic. This program sounds excellent if you just wanted to be an app developer, but if you get tasked to do something a little out in the weeds, one has to wonder what other aspects of education got shortchanged.

Jimmy 12y ago

I'm confused. College is amazing. Why would you want a college replacement? >Your education will be focused on building apps and websites that improve the lives of those around you. Getting a wide-ranging liberal education was never really that important, huh?

vinceguidry 12y ago
> Getting a wide-ranging liberal education was never really that important, huh? It's important, but it's also expensive. Unbelievably so. What I see happening is ambitious kids going here to gain marketable skills, and figure out what they like doing, and then using those skills to pay their way through college with a much better idea of what they want to do. That way you don't have to be saddled with a crapload of debt.
- cdr 12y ago
  25% of your salary for 2 years is not a crapload of debt?
  - nmrm2 12y ago
    In fact, if your starting salary is 80k, this is ten thousand dollars MORE THAN the average college debt! And no opportunities to branch out of software engineering. Your starting salary would have to be around 55-60k for you to take on less debt than a typical four year degree, even accounting for subsidized interest rates. edit for downvotes: here's the math: Average college debt is 27ish k. Bump it up to 30k for interest. 80000 * .25 * 2 = 40k. 60000 * .25 * 2 = 30k. Is there something I'm missing? -- You could argue that there's a two year opportunity cost here. I'm not so sure: 1) If your only goal is to become a web dev and you don't want any other background knowledge (that is, knowledge otuside of computer science), then you can do that in two years at most universities. What I mean by this is that the CS major portion of a degree is a little more than half your courseload most places. 2) But IMHO it's silly to major in CS without picking up a secondary major/minor in an interesting application area. So I it's at least debatable that there's a real opportunity cost benefit here. Finally, to be fair, they seem well-connected. The YC etc. connections might help offset the comparatively high price.
    - idyllicshine 12y ago
      I think there is an assumption that this enables such a job that otherwise would be unattainable. As an individual, of course you want the $80k job, despite the $60k job "requiring less debt", plus you then get to keep the $80k job after the 2 years.
cylinder 12y ago
No, a wide-ranging formal liberal education is not that important. We're in an era of specialization and autodidactism. I've learned far, far more myself with the internet than I ever did in my useless, overpriced English and History classes in university.
Dewie 12y ago
> Getting a wide-ranging liberal education was never really that important, huh? I haven't heard of many people who have gotten that where I live. So maybe it isn't.
johnmarinelli 12y ago
College student here, and college has not been so amazing. I wish that the whole e-learning/computer science oriented college alternatives thing took off when I was still in high school. My tuition amounts to ~$30k a year (without grants), which is pretty ridiculous - especially considering the "quality" of the classes. Granted, the social life is nice, but it's hard to maintain that social life when I'm busy making up what school should be teaching me (namely undertaking a bunch of side projects). Maybe I'm just an angsty young adult, but I am really unhappy with the higher education model in the modern world.
- glesica 12y ago
  If you're not happy with the education then do something about it. One great option that isn't presented often enough is to transfer to a different institution. Don't think that just because the school you're at sucks for you that all of them will. In some cases you can actually get into a better school than you got into out of high school as a transfer student (although some schools are weird about accepting transfers, Google can help). Also, note that I said "for you", very few, if any, colleges or universities in the US suck in general. Some are stronger or weaker in certain areas, some emphasize certain aspects of education over others, and some will better prepare you for various jobs than others, but it is an individual evaluation. Another thing to keep in mind is whether what you're hoping to get out of school is really what colleges and universities offer. Maybe college isn't right for you. Colleges and universities do not prepare you for a job (with a few notable exceptions like professional programs such as law and medical school, and certain business programs). Instead, they prepare you to prepare yourself for a job. A lot of people like to trash the emphasis on theory in academic CS programs, but if you pay attention, and work hard (which it sounds like you are, with your side projects) the theory becomes pretty damn useful later when you get a job and you're shown a couple hundred (or thousand if you're really "lucky") lines of spaghetti code and asked to figure out why it is "slow", etc. A lot of people don't take the time to digest the theory they learn and therefore they aren't able to apply it to real problems when they go out into the world. Don't make that mistake. However, does everyone need those exact skills? Nope, we need tons of people who can pump out relatively simple, relatively repetitive (though not enough to automate) code for relatively standard applications. We also need people who can maintain that (and other) code, write tests, automate processes, and a hundred other things each requiring a slightly different mixture of skills, not all of which are (or should be) taught in college. Additionally, and this is important for startups, we need people who have strong social and organizational skills, who don't necessarily spend all day writing code (not to mention the hardware people, everyone always forgets about them :) So instead of plowing $30k/year into an education you aren't sure you want, you might want to think about a different path. Do some research. If other schools are stronger in what you want to learn, maybe you should transfer. It could also be that college just isn't what you should be doing right now, perhaps a program as described in TFA, or one of the other "code schools" would be more your style and better fits your interests. You can usually go back to college and pick up where you left off if you change your mind (although depending on the school your tuition might go up in that case).
clay_to_n 12y ago
It's important to some people. But others don't really care, and would prefer a cheaper and better way to do what they want to do (in this case, become a founder or developer). I think this is more aimed at the college-dropout techie / entrepreneur type than your typical CS student.

CzechsMix 12y ago

So what you're saying is we've found a way to fund education without debt to students or taxes, and the school has an incentive to get you internships so that you graduate with work experience AND incentive to place you at the highest paying job after college? Consider my interest piqued.

nmrm2 12y ago
Read the admissions page. It's a well-connected trade school for gifted students entering the tech industry as defined by SV, not a scalable alternative and repeatable model for general-purpose higher ed. edit: This isn't judgemental. Nothing wrong with trade school But that's what this is.
- CzechsMix 12y ago
  Yes, now it's a very specific, tough to get in trade school. You might recall it was quite a luxury to have a mobile phone not too long ago. Demand for this kind of education might persuade others to implement a similar model, and I don't see any major roadblocks for other areas. Employers will finally get graduates with work experience, as well as access to cheap intern labor. Looks worth exploring if nothing else.

ripb 12y ago

I really like the innovative funding model, although intuitively it seems pretty high risk?

pitt1980 12y ago
"intuitively it seems pretty high risk" for who?
- ripb 12y ago
  For the company. Depending on how it is implemented, taking a cut of the first 2 years' salary could be very high risk. Intuitively there seems to be little to stop someone taking the education and then absconding abroad.
  - jacobsenscott 12y ago
    There is a lot to stop most people from "absconding abroad". Family, friends, culture, language, visa requirements, ...
  - pitt1980 12y ago
    it's be interesting to know how a situation where student takes school, then starts their own company and pays themselves ramen salary is handled seems like a good portion of their target market might have something like that in mind also (opportunity cost of two years and having to live in one of the more expensive real estate markets in the US isn't exactly risk free for the student either)

pnathan 12y ago

> 2 month capstone project where you can build a startup or dive deep into computer science topics like artificial intelligence and machine learning. There is no deep in two months. There's broad, there's skim, there's sophomoric. But there's no deep. Particularly for people not already seasoned and experienced in ingesting vast quantities of difficult data and drawing out inferences. Edit: Some more notes. There are 6 headliners in https://www.makeschool.com/education https://www.makeschool.com/education. Of those, one (CS) was covered adequately in my college career, one was given lip service (Communication, something I struggle with today), one I learned on my own (Open source), app dev & web dev were largely irrelevant to my education (principles over practice), and networking (people, not wires) was totally neglected. Communication and networking are both subjects that deserve to be a higher priority in collegiate CS environments. My perspective is that this is essentially a trade school, which is a good thing. It's not a replacement for a four year degree, it's a two year degree, which is something basically lacking in the software world. Now, if this general package could be rolled up into a traditional two-year trade school, I'd be all for it.

nmrm2 12y ago
But they're looking for top students, so presumably their competitors are MIT, CMU, Stanford, etc. rather than the local Community College. Trade schools are great things, but I'm not sure I could feel comfortable advising a student to turn down MIT for a trade school, even one with really great connections.
- pitt1980 12y ago
  considering the price tag of those schools, they should be the most vulnerable to competition
  - swatow 12y ago
    But almost all top schools have needs-blind admissions which means that if you get in, they will provide the financial aid that you need if you can't afford it. So it's actually very unlikely someone gets into a top school but then decides it's not worth the money (assuming the school is worth the money, which it is, and the only issue is whether they can afford it right now).

ajaymehta 12y ago

Having met some of the students that went through Make School's summer session, I was very impressed. They seemed to be more widely-experienced and driven than your average student at a top-tier school. Excited to see that Make School is turning this into a full two-year program.

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]

tomc1985 12y ago

So it's a fancy trade school, without all the general ed that makes for well-rounded adults? ITT Technical Institute

Alex3917 12y ago

Great idea, two years seems like too long though. It shouldn't take more than 6 - 9 months to learn the basics of being a full stack web developer, with another 6 - 9 months to actually become competent enough to work semi-independently. I think it would make more sense to make the program 18 months, and then have things like swift and devops as optional six-month extensions.

rpcope1 12y ago

I think I would far rather see this as a supplement to college than a replacement. I know it's in vogue today to claim that education is about "job training," but I worry that this attitude is short sighted and destructive. Saying that you're a "replacement" to a quality four year degree is also rather arrogant.

dkyc 12y ago

These types of programs represent a funny trend in the SV tech scene: While workers of every other sector are busy increasing the barrier of entry in order to reduce competition for jobs, every other week some new startup / bootcamp / code school wants to tear down the barriers and provide "CS for the masses". Of course a noble goal, but if it actually works, it also means the end of the privileged, six-figure-entry-salary, 20%-of-your-time-free tech jobs.

hackuser 12y ago

It sounds more like a graduate program than a college education, a sort of Masters in IT entrepreneurship? As a college education, it shortchanges the students: * There is so much more to life than a job. You will be a citizen; how do you decide on war and peace, economic issues, social policy, etc. without understanding history, politics, economics, social issues, other cultures, languages, etc.? Without being able to grasp and think critically about sophisticated propaganda, and how to challenge ideas? You will be a social animal: A member of the community, a friend, and maybe a parent. You will be a person, a being with an identity and life outside of your cubical; if all you know are technical skills for a job, what are you? What will you get out of life? Where will you learn about the things that make our lives rich, such as the arts -- you know, much of the content that is the purpose of the wires and systems you hope to build. * There is so much more to a career than one job. If you focus your education on the skills needed for one job at one time, you'll find that soon both you and the world have moved on. The demand for skills change and, more importantly, you will change, and the skills will be obsolete. * There is so much more to a job than technical skills. As simple examples, you need to understand other people, to undertand other cultures in the U.S. and around the world if you will sell to or help (or work with!) people outside of SV. As was discussed yesterday, some in SV still don't even undertand those people called "females" enough to realize they may not enjoy playing male characters. You need ideas, and most great ideas are outside tech and outside SV and older than 20 years; there are thousands of years of them. What a sad, myopic, even egocentric view of the world and of education. I feel bad for the people who will encounter so little of the world of knowledge. EDIT: Minor rewording

dollar 12y ago
This tired liberal arts approach of mandatory enlightenment is exactly why we have students graduating with tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt with no marketable skills. Students can become a well-rounded person on their own time, through the many life experiences they can afford when they are not paying off debt. I am so happy to see the world of academia get disrupted, and I cannot wait for the coming revolution where liberal arts education is reserved to those people with a true desire to pursue it.
- 12y ago

pskittle 12y ago

This seems too good to be true. Are there any plans of making the curriculum available to students who are not in the US. Perhaps for a fee? You could reach a wider audience. Don't know how the internship thing would work. As a student on leave from school in the US, this is something i could see myself doing

DesaiAshu 12y ago
Let's chat :) - ashu@makeschool.com

dollar 12y ago

Sorry, but 25% of a persons salary for two years is a ridiculous amount of money. With a first year programmer making $75-$85k this cost will be similar to college debt. Will these payments qualify as tuition and be tax deductible? That could soften the blow slightly. I like the idea that companies will pay the school for their candidates and relieve the student burden. But why not go all-in on this model and just guarantee that the school will be able to place a graduate? The salary sharing model is just another form of debt.

eonw 12y ago
you are aware of what most higher-end 4 year colleges cost? i think 25% of two years wages is a lot less debt than many are left with.
- nmrm2 12y ago
  This is not true. The opposite is true. The average person has 27k, which means it's a pretty exceptional person who leaves college with 40k in debt (that's 25% of 80k over 2 years). The real cost disparity is probably even larger than 10k due to taxes.
  - eonw 12y ago
    I am speaking about higher-end, which they seem to be looking to compete with, not averages. Also the 2013 average is $28.4k across the board, with private colleges closer to $39.9k. You are also assuming that the person will be making $80k. A fresh grad outside of SF probably wont be making that.
    - nmrm2 12y ago
      Be consistent. Graduates from top private/public unis will have more debt, sure, but they also do make 80k+ on average, as a matter of fact. So the debt load is best case comparable in 1/2 the time and for no degree. As others have pointed out, undergrad debt numbers include R&R but the 25% for 2 years doesn't. What's 2 years of rent in SF for two years.

matthewmacleod 12y ago

I'm suspicious for two reasons: 1. I struggle to believe that a well-rounded CS and engineering education can be squeezed into two years. Describing this as "the future of computer science education" (their words)—when it appears to be a trade school which teaches CS basics followed by Rails, Python and iOS development—is doing CS a massive dis-service. There's nothing wrong with this kind of trade school, but it is emphatically not "The future of computer science education". 2. It's rather expensive. What'a a starting salary for a developer in SV - maybe $70k? AT 25% over two years, that's $35k – which is comparable to college debt. It's great that this prevents the broken US higher education funding system, I suppose, but it's not cheap. Maybe I'm just cynical, but I've seen too many graduates of similar trade school programs who have a couple of years of experience on paper, but are woefully under qualified for the development and deployment of computer systems in the real world. Given the sort of attendees this program will see, I don't imagine it'll be the case here, however.

fuzzywalrus 12y ago
I'm in the skeptic camp too, one of inevitable bonuses of a full college is having many fields in close contact. Cross academic pollination probably is one of the best aspects of college, and honestly with the amount of resources at their disposal, they could facilitate programs for the current state of "Startups" as a minor or even major, ideally paired with an unrelated field. This on paper looks more like a trade school, I imagine a program like this could be designed to churn out competent programmers but beyond that, I'm not so sure.

aesthetics1 12y ago

What is the deal with this?: You'll need a mac laptop purchased in the last 2 years running the latest version of OS X and an iPhone or iPod touch running the latest version of iOS. We provide need-based hardware assistance for students who can't afford a mac or iPod.

joshvm 12y ago
Given that a big chunk of the course is developing iOS apps, it makes sense for participants to own both a Macbook (for XCode) and the hardware they're running their code on.
s73v3r 12y ago
One of the big pillars of their curriculum is iOS development.

sah88 12y ago

Neat. Would be interesting to see a more detailed syllabus of what is covered when. Also is the 25% rake net or gross? It is two years full time (well 1.5 if you consider internship) so I don't think it is really fair to compare it to a 3 month program. At my local university doing 3x semesters of just CS classes leaves you 1 course short of the required CS courses for a degree. Mind you I'm not including the math requirements. But on the other hand this is probably more intensive and with a better student/teacher ratio arguably you will be learning stuff quicker. Not to say they are equivalent... but I'm not sure its fair to write it off as being "code monkey" school. Not a fan of the location choice though. I get that SF has a lot of really good networking opportunities but for a two year program it is crazy expensive. The difference in rent compared to where I live makes this more expensive than attending university. If I was to get an apartment with equivalent square footage to what I have now the cost of this would actually be pretty close to doing a 4 year degree. That's before factoring in the 25% rake. Mind you I'm in a relatively inexpensive Canadian city.

PhoenixWright 12y ago

As someone who took their online gaming course I wouldn't have anything to do with these guys. They abandoned Make games with us and have been spamming my inbox with at least 3 different business models since then, this being their latest one. The online gaming course had buggy code and horrible stumbling lessons. I heard about them on here and was conned out of $100. Stay away from these scammers.

DesaiAshu 12y ago
Founder of Make School here. I'm really sorry you had a bad experience with our online game development course :(. We're continuing to improve both the curriculum and user experience. Please drop me a line - ashu@makeschool.com - and I'll be sure to give you a refund.
- PhoenixWright 12y ago
  I'm not interested in a refund. I posted my experience so others can learn from my mistake. When make games with us was on HN I believed in your company and by the end I felt duped. Maybe things have changed but I would never give you guys a second chance. Also, my experience is not unique. During the course many students voiced their frustration. Your site crashed the first day, content was posted late and the example code had bugs in it. That was the time to offer refunds, privately, to every one of your customers. Not here, publicly, to one person exposing your company.
  - xerophyte12932 12y ago
    I totally understand your frustration, but frankly I think you're being a bit harsh on them. I have recently started providing CS courses independently and trust me, it's not as easy as it seems. Shit happens. As a first timer, I know I have made mistakes and I have learned from them. I know my current course wasn't all that but I know my next would be better. Obviously I am going to email people telling them about my newest venture, though I would try not to make seem like spam. Anyways, everyone deserves second chances. Just because my first code draft had bugs in it, doesn't mean I should stop coding. (though I really should remove those bugs before shipping)

tomazz 12y ago

Given enough effort and determination I can totally see how this could work. Maybe you won't be a programming god but I can totally see how those 2 productive years easily replace a 5 year CS masters course. High schools, colleges, universities often have boring teaching programs that force everybody to learn at the same speed, programs that look like a progress bar (The Matrix training program?) In real life we can't ask Tank to load the Networking course from a floppy disk and yet that's what metaphorically most Universities are trying to do. Because of that kind of system we are maybe 10-20% as productive as we could be. We are bored with exercises and we don't really want to do leaving them till the last moment before the deadline. Now, take a moment go back to your ol' university years and think. When did you learn the most? In labs and lectures? Or when you thought "It would be cool to do a 2048 clone that negotiates every move with the server side that you cannot cheat"? You got excited, spent a week coding, learning new things, redoing, rebuilding, learning even more. I remember doing project of that kind in my 1st year of the University. Over the Christmas holiday I learnt more than in the past 3 months at uni... Yeah I could totally see the Make School work. At least I hope it will ;)

cottonseed 12y ago

Reminds me a little of ADUni: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ArsDigita_University https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ArsDigita_University

Geekette 12y ago

Seems odd that the actual cost of tuition is not stated anywhere on the site and discussion on it is vague; all that's stated is that you pay it with your internship earnings + 25% of your salary for 2 years post-graduation. Seems ridiculously steep[1] and unscrupulously variable[2]. [1] With some companies paying interns to $10k+ monthly, a student could pay out around up to 60k earned (a 6 month internship period is referenced on the site), then get a $120 job afterwards and have to pay another 60k over two years, totaling 120k. [2] Meanwhile, a student who gets a 30k internship + 100k job only pays back 80k for attending the same school.

alexvr 12y ago

This is kind of gimmicky. Most people are probably better off going to a 4-year university and studying CS/engineering/math/physics or something, and the few who want to learn in a nontraditional way and don't intend to get a corporate or hardcore engineering job would probably be smart enough choose to use books, a startup internship or some freelance gigs, and, say, the Internet (???) over something like Make School. Many big cushy corporate jobs require traditional degrees, and most startups could care less about your formal education if you can show what you're capable of. I'm having a lot of trouble picturing the market for Make School, even as a massive proponent of autodidacticism and hands-on learning.

clay_to_n 12y ago
>the few who want to learn in a nontraditional way and don't intend to get a corporate or hardcore engineering job would probably be smart enough choose to use books, a startup internship or some freelance gigs, and, say, the Internet (???) over something like Make School I'm not convinced of this. The value of having mentors and teachers is tremendous, even if you know you can learn to code on your own. Having someone to ask "What's the best way to structure this program?" or "Does this idea make sense to you?" is very valuable - someone to answer questions that text books, google, and stackoverflow can't.

kriro 12y ago

First of all I applaud all attempts to find alternative ways of CS education (or I guess applied CS/software engineering). I'm still convinced that programming is essentially a selflearning and experimentation kind of discipline that benefits from a hands on approach (and collaboration with others that are on a similar path). That being said if they position themselves as "for startup minded people" they should focus a lot more on the "get out of the building" aspect. In fact I think there'd be huge value in a program where you essentially learn this. Talk to a lot of potential customers simulate it find creative ways of going about it. I think this is what a lot of us need more than (not meant as an insult) "yet another bootcampish thingy". I think they need to clearly pick one focus and go allin on it. Either "you'll be excellent founder material" or "you'll be a great hire". I think they try to spotlight the former but the latter creeps in. I think the biggest potential is taking the "university like we wished it was" line and the "no debt" line and mix it with "hands on/projects/good hire" and focus less on the startup angle. If you want to focus on the startup angle...way more non-technical hands on talk to people things. I think there's a nice gap there. It's easier for a sufficiently curious person to teach themselves technical things than to have access to potential customers and interview them (imo) Either way, good luck :)

danielscrubs 12y ago

If this is computer science I will eat my hat. checks site No it's just computer programming. so surprised As one who is often in charge of interviews I could tell you that if I saw a CV with this school and no other redeeming qualities it would go straight to the bin. I will now go and salute D. Knuth and get drunk.

xasos 12y ago

Let me give some perspective from a high school senior: The main reasons for going to college is (a) a highly specialized education, (b) ability to grow your network, and (c) a good social setting that you may not get anywhere else. Particularly on point (a) - sure there are a lot of good online resources to learn, but you can't beat having an expert in the field at your disposal. Some topics like The basics of machine learning (Stanford CS229) can be found, but it's the truly specialized courses (more advanced machine learning) that are hard to find.