Having seen how demand side subsidies destroy the rest of the education sector, why oh why would they think this is a good idea for tech?
If they want to promote tech boot camps they should have community colleges open free to the public ones. Then all the bullshit paid ones will have to compete against a free product and the price will go down. To solve the demand issue start off with a lottery system and tweak class size accordingly.
> If they want to promote tech boot camps they should have community colleges open free to the public ones.
Some of these even already exist, but seem not to have as good PR behind them. For example, De Anza College, a community college in Cupertino, offers a variety of intro programming courses for a $140 enrollment fee, with fee waivers available for low-income students.
I took a c++ course at Canada college in Redwood city and the professor had us watch YouTube videos for instruction and submit assignments as Microsoft Word documents. Their is a huge lack of quality control that ultimately lowers the value of the accreditation of such institutions IMO.
Community colleges have been doing this for many years (read: my CC in 1999 had this). However, they have a twofold problem which makes them relatively poorly suited to this.
Community college students are not very smart on average, so it's very difficult to teach proper computer science. And community college professors are generally older and not very fad driven so it's unlikely they will effectively teach the Rails-Mongo-Heroku stack (complete with unsanitized inputs).
The way the various code schools get around this problem is to hire young hipster coders (as opposed to a former academic with a Ph.D.) to teach for a year or two. But that's not really a model which one can reasonably expect community colleges to adopt.
Additionally, the post-code academy hiring model isn't well suited for CC's. The hipster who taught GA/hackerschool/etc for a year or two becomes part of the alumni network and is likely to hire some grads. That doesn't happen at community college - even the temporary faculty just go to become temporary faculty elsewhere.
> Community college students are not very smart on average, so it's very difficult to teach proper computer science.
Economic standing and intelligence have jack shit to do with each other. Now education is impacted by wealth, but not raw intelligence or capability. I'd wager the majority of CC students are there because they don't have the funds to go to a 4-year school.
Now I'm generally against the government intervention like this, but if they are going to do something, I'd much rather they do it like this rather than dish out money with zero oversight. It's got a fixed cost (facilities + teacher's salaries), can be tailored to the local community, and within months of a student completing a class you'll get feedback on whether it's working.
> And community college professors are generally older and not very fad driven so it's unlikely they will effectively teach the Rails-Mongo-Heroku stack (complete with unsanitized inputs).
I've taught in the past and genuinely enjoy it. If there was a local forum for me to do so I'd be game to do it part time. Throw in a decent amount of $$$ and I'm sure you'll find others as well.
I attended a community college before I went to university. The computer science program was kind of a joke. They did remote classes from partnered state universities where the CC students would watch a live stream of professors at the state unis. I mostly took just Calc, Physics, and some other general requirement classes before transferring, but I did take one CS class. There was myself and two other students doing Intro to Programming (Java).
The same kids who were in Physics, were in Calc, etc. There were only about 20-30 of us. The majority of the student body was there to study Nursing and Law Enforcement.
I found I enjoyed the professors at CC more than most of my state uni professors. At CC, instead of having Physics in a 300 person lecture hall, it was a 20 person classroom. Same with Calc. All of the STEM-related professors at CC had their doctorates, where at state uni I had a bunch of grad students teaching - not that everyone wasn't knowledgeable enough.
That simply isn't true. Intelligence tests - e.g. the older SAT - are strongly correlated with wealth. That's why, in order to make things "fair" (both on the basis of income and "too many Asians"), the college board has tried to make it more education/prep based and less g-loaded.
As for your willingness to teach as a part time gig for fun, that's a model that many code schools are happy with (and probably favor). CC tends to have mostly academic faculty. If you want to teach computer science at CC, nothing is stopping g you from applying.
Fundamentally, if CCs have not already done this, and code schools are filling the gap, it's because CCs squandered their 20 year lead.
> That simply isn't true. Intelligence tests - e.g. the older SAT - are strongly correlated with wealth.
That's education, not intelligence. The former is a function of the latter and your surrounding resources.
I don't care how intelligent you are, your not going to know the meaning of some seldom used SAT vocab word unless you've studied the language and that study takes education (both classroom and self directed).
Pulling up the community college for a midwestern state capital and a neighboring large city is fairly high up on the income disparity and segregation scales, I found that while the capital's community college had a fairly large selection of programming classes with focuses in multiple language tracts, the large city's community college had CNC technician, telecoms installation and computer electronics technology that could be considered in the technical realm.
That said the "computer electronics technology" appears to be computer repair (installation and hardware) rather than a programming. The computer programming class (just one class) is there to get an idea of what can be done. The job prospects include "computer electronics technician, computer network technician, computer systems technician, network specialist, pc specialist."
The thing that I took away from this is that if one goes anywhere where the "in the desk tech jobs" are not common (and with openings), you will find few if any programming focused certificates at community colleges. This is despite the nature of computer programming jobs often being the easiest to facilitate remote work.
I wonder how much of the lack of courses is also related to the "if you are a competent programmer and are capable of teaching others, can you find better paying jobs than working as a community college instructor on the low income side of the city?"
> I wonder how much of the lack of courses is also related to the "if you are a competent programmer and are capable of teaching others, can you find better paying jobs than working as a community college instructor on the low income side of the city?"
This is actually a problem for all STEM and vocational programs a community college offers. It is also a problem for specialized certificate training (e.g. Commercial Drivers License, Cisco). It is not cheap to hire competent instructors. The only advantage the short term training in these circumstances has that you are more likely to be able to get an instructor for a short run or hire an outside contracting company to provide an instructor. Semester length or multi-Semester classes basically require the hiring of a faculty member.
Frankly, a lot of the vocation jobs have better pay and career advancement these days with all the infrastructure fixes, new construction, and lack of competition.
I didn't say graduates, I said students. Students often have trouble getting jobs because they need part time jobs, and industry wants full time. Teaching a class at CC would be part time.
Considering where I was in college and my skills at teaching then (and even now to an extent - mentoring is another matter), I would be very concerned about me, or my peers back when I was in college to be responsible for teaching a class on programming. And that was when things were simple (you used vi and make).
While I am sure that there are many individuals who now come in with more code experience than the typical college student in the early 90s, there is a significant aspect of "are you mature enough to teach?" and "do you have enough experience to help students that need help?"
Assisting teaching a class, maybe. But looking at the quality of the code I wrote and the advice I would give based on that code that I wrote, I would be very concerned for the future prospects of anyone who I taught when I was 21 and looking for a summer job.
College students often provide paid tutoring of students a year or two behind them on an ad-hoc basis, should that be prevented?
The choice for CCs isn't between student teachers and experienced degree'd teachers. It's between student teachers and no teachers or teachers who know nothing about programming.
> College students often provide paid tutoring of students a year or two behind them on an ad-hoc basis, should that be prevented?
The skills needed to run a classroom and the skills needed to tutor are quite different. I am unaware of any current rules about the education-level of tutors, and I doubt there are or will be any.
> The choice for CCs isn't between student teachers and experienced degree'd teachers. It's between student teachers and no teachers or teachers who know nothing about programming.
Student teachers (unless part of a TA situation and supervised) probably aren't a solution either unless we're talking certificates and not college credits.
You have a point for classrooms with kids in them. But for adults? I don't see it. I've taken many classes from adults who've never taught a class before. I've taught classes yet have had zero instruction in classroom technique. Frankly, I don't see a difference in effectiveness between them and people with teaching degrees.
On the other hand, a lot of CCs are close by major universities. It doesn't have to work for all CCs in order to be very practical for many of them.
Also, college students often go home for the summer, where they have a hard time finding summer jobs. A local CC offering to hire them to teach a summer class in programming would be a win-win for everyone concerned.
You'll find a lot of summer attendance in CCs is a lot lower due to summer jobs students take (many low experience jobs are available in summer unlike other seasons). To the point, a lot of 9 month contracts are happening much like regular schools.
I don't really understand your point. Is it because it won't work 100% of the time for 100% of the CCs it should never be considered? Because it seems clear to me that for situations where it can work, it should be considered.
Of course summer attendance is less. So there are fewer classes. Why is that a problem if there are enough people wanting to learn programming in the summer to form a class?
Heck, I learned accounting in summer school. The college had 10x the number of accounting students during the rest of the year, but in the summer they still had enough to fill one class and found a local instructor who wanted to supplement his income.
My point is its of limited utility to a lot of institutions because students need to earn money and summer is the time to do it.
Plus, the accreditation rules have changed in recent years to make people without a 4 year degrees (and indeed in some areas without a Masters) to be problematic for teaching.
Maybe other institutions could do it and get away with it. I cannot see the average CC with normal staffing, student, and rule patterns.
> Another example of good intentions gone awry.
?
We have to live with the rules the accreditation boards set. You lose your accreditation and its game over and the whole community suffers from not only the loss of a learning institution, but an employer and social work organization.
> Of course, such a course in programming doesn't have to be accredited.
If the course is not accredited, it doesn't transfer and it doesn't count towards a degree. If it doesn't count for any degree we might as well do a workshop with certificates and hire a one shot instructor or contract for one from a company. That is something we already do and would not trust to a student.
> But for those in favor of bureaucratic rules over getting things done, they'll have to settle for no programming instruction in CCs.
I don't think you get the whole CC thing. Not following those rules, like murdering someone, would be an death sentence.
How many current community college profs are qualified to teach this?
Would you sign up to teach a community college bootstrap course? Normal pay is $10-$15 an hour, and you get to deal with all kinds of BS unrelated to your class.
The reason it kinda makes sense is it lets the programming teachers get paid market rate.
Great... more subsidized loans means more profit for me. Can't speak to the whole "benefit to society" piece, but thanks Uncle Sam. Sorry for the people who will be making these payments, whether it's the taxpayer or the debtors. Business is business.
Education in the US is a huge mess. How is a 13-week class in web development going to help low-income students?
I'm not sure how many readers of HN attended low-income schools. The problem I see is that many that get out of low-income schools don't know basics like the commutative law of multiplication (a * b == b * a) or how to use a semicolon. The education deficit by the time they hit CC is so large that it's unreasonable to expect them to be successful at programming.
I had low-income friends that took school seriously and these kids ended up in college on scholarships, but most of my classmates did not take school seriously. It wasn't a character issue that held them back, but more of a cultural issue. They were surrounded by people, friends and family, that didn't appreciate the value of education.
These problems started early, in elementary school, and by high school they were too far behind to be successful and simply checked out at best or became disruptive and tried to hold everyone else back at worst. Very sad.
How about instead of adding code academies to the student loan gravy train, they try something a bit innovative?
How about they pick a hundred community colleges and provide money for a competitive salary and housing costs for a number of STEM faculty members for about 3 years. That should generate enough data to figure out effectiveness.
I'm still trying to figure out the logistics of buying 3 small kit homes, placing them on the school grounds, and then hiring 3 new PhDs on a 3 year contract so they can get teaching experience, then cycling in a new set of PhDs. They probably won't be STEM, but you have to start somewhere.
Yeah, we'll skip that as I would want them to blend with the rest and I'm pretty sure it needs to look a bit more permanent to convince people to live in them for 3 years.
Scrolling down to the partnerships, you find things like:
> Institution: SUNY Empire State College (Saratoga Springs, New York)
> Non-traditional provider: The Flatiron School
> Quality assurance entity: American National Standards Institute (ANSI)
and
> Institution: Northeastern University (Boston, Massachusetts)
> Non-traditional provider: General Electric
> Quality assurance entity: American Council on Education (ACE)
The traditional education institutions are very respected. The non-traditional are also well respected already, just out of reach for the low income students (aside, Flatiron school was the only one to release an audited report of job placement earlier this year - http://www.ibtimes.com/code-boot-camps-fail-obama-unaudited-... ). And lastly, there's that quality assurance entity like ANSI which places like the university of phoenix and the fly by night boot camps would shy away from.
GE is in mixed company here; the other partners don't have nearly GE's deep pockets or long history.
I read this proposal and think of the poor / underserved people I know through working in the homework / dropin center at the local public housing project here in MA. A job at the GE turbine plant in Lynn would be a dream come true, and a ticket out of housing (absent layoffs or offshoring).
These folks can study online; we have the beginnings of a nice mesh network, and donors for computers. So the pattern might work.
A determining factor would be support for the students. Underserved people need encouragement and occasional bureaucratic intervention ("fix that registrar's mistake, please!") to get things done. They typically don't have family members capable of coaching them in such things.
But, Northeastern U? Seriously? That's a fine institution with a long history of experiential education. But it's expensive, and many of their students have deep resources (== helicopter parents) making sure they succeed. The young people I work with would be culturally outcompeted at such an institution. I'd much rather have a program like this at a community college. GE certainly could participate.
It's good these programs have independent quality measurement. Hopefully they'll measure the qualitative cultural stuff as well as doing stats on test scores.
Loans worry me. People shouldn't become debt slaves, especially to pay for experimental programs. I hope there's accountability, in the form of compulsory debt forgiveness, in case the programs don't meet expectations. That accountability needs to lie upon the .edu, the partner org, the QA org, and the government lending agency.
If they want to promote tech boot camps they should have community colleges open free to the public ones. Then all the bullshit paid ones will have to compete against a free product and the price will go down. To solve the demand issue start off with a lottery system and tweak class size accordingly.