> A lot of the value of Harvard or Stanford is that they only pick the top n% of the country.

The difference between the people who go to Harvard and those that don't has much more to do with money. Hire people with this assumption at your own peril.

I'm glad someone said it. Merit= very short bootstraps. This is a much denied truth here in the US, where everyone is so desperate to believe in our national mythology of anyone who works hard can do anything and be anything they want to. This myth can't even carry an aroma of truth these days. No one who has "achieved" anything ever wants to get real and admit how they really got it--- they'd rather tell you and themselves a great American tall tale. Becase if it isn't earned, if it isn't "merit" in any real sense, then what? Then does everyone have a right to opportunity? Yeikes. We don't have enough opportunity for that. Instead, we avoid facing these issues by focusing on "diversity" now... but only a certain very narrow definition of diversity, and only when we want to raise ourselves above others of merit for being so meritorious as to think of diversity. Then, we wonder if "diversity" has made us less competitive. The only answer here is money. Money. That's it.

I absolutely agree with what you are saying, but I also believe most hugely successful people who work, work (or worked early in their careers) just as hard as anyone else, they just happen to be working at the right thing with the right people. Of course once you are successful, you can hire people to do most of the work for you while you just monitor.

Finding the right thing with the right people is where the socioeconomic status comes in, particularly having a well connected family.

On my graduation year, my university created a slogan, "It's not what you know, it's who you know." Having just spend 5 years getting a degree from said university, I thought that wasn't a very good slogan for such an institution. It was absolutely correct though.

Bill Fernandez (Apple Employee #4) did a nice interview last year where he talked about (among other things) the origins of Apple. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ca-LXxMpveE

In it he talks about how Steve Jobs and company were just immersed in a technological community from a young age. They had after-school tech clubs (that the kids actually wanted to go to) as early as elementary school, virtually every Dad on the street was an engineer... yeah, no shit they created Apple. Not discounting the skills of Jobs and Woz, but they had about the most fertile soil possible in which to grow a tech company and a network of contacts from childhood. Listening to that piece made me insanely jealous. Would have killed for that kind of community as a kid.

You are wrong, at least in some sense.

I was teaching English in China making about $800 per month. I wanted to build an application and had no experience and certainly no money. I went to school for Journalism and have zero family money or connections.

I bought Agile Web Development with Rails. I spent the next year or so trying to learn while working an ultra low pay job with almost a dial up connection.

I applied for an accelerator with my terrible app, got accepted, ultimately didn’t raise any money but I did end up with a junior engineer job. Which led to another, then another until finally here I am, I still work contract jobs but finally that terrible app is actually good and generating real money.

I own a house now. I get paid more in a month than I would make in 18 months teaching in China.

I didn’t go to a bootcamp, I didn’t go to Stanford and I have never raised investment money.

How I really got it? I worked very hard. Studied cheap books, reached out to experienced developers I tracked town through sheer force of will.

By most definitions, I am successful however that success might not have yet resulted in a million dollar pay day but life is pretty food.

Another story, the founder of the Gringos restaurant chain in Houston, literally started as a dishwasher and now he flies in a private jet and gives millions to charity. And before someone declares “white privilege” or some other nonsense – he’s brown.

Another kid I knew was a minimum wage bar-back at a nice Houston bar. 5 years later, he owned the place.

Look at Asian immigrants to the US, plenty of stories of first generation immigrants that speak not a word of English and arrived in the US with $500 and now they’re sending their kids to Harvard.

How many Algerian immigrant kids are in France’s elite schools? Probably close to zero.

There are tens of thousands of stories like that.

You rarely hear about rags to riches in Europe.

While the US doesn’t have a monopoly on success stories, the American dream os far from a myth. It is literally there for the taking. Look at the Apple story, Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, Warren Buffet. How many self-made billionaires are there in Europe? How many self-made millionaires even?

Nothing is stopping a poor guy with a squeegee and a bottle of Windex from creating a window washing empire – if he’s willing to dream that big. Good luck doing that in most other countries – they’d crush him with taxes and regulations before he could even afford to buy his first truck or hire his first employee.

In Europe, starting or growing a business is only for the rich or privileged generally. In America, anyone can do it; but not everyone wants to put in the sweat and hours to actually execute.

Born Stanford and Harvard provide very generous financial aid packages to those that "get in" but aren't rich. The problem is getting in requires a lot of prep and achievement long before the college application is submitted, and that's where the rich get their leg up. And at the end of the day, that is still worth something to employers.

The claim is not that colleges provide no value, but that going to college is not a reliable indicator of anything but privilege. Using it as an indicator of intelligence or work ethic, especially as being more intelligent and hard working than someone who got their degree from University of Phoenix, doesn't work. It's just buying into the narrative that rich people must be rich because they're smart.

I think the parent comment was referring to Harvard/Stanford's need-blind admissions & full financial aid packages.

Not really. Money helps to get in, but elite universities provide the most generous financial aid of any schools in the country. If you come from a anything below the middle class and get in, you likely won't pay a cent.

yes, money helps in so many ways. it sure does help you get in. It starts helping you when you are an infant. It helps the whole way. I know this because I worked in the tutoring idustry that helps people get in in exchange for money.

It helps, but it's certainly not the dominant effect. I don't know anyone who went to an elite university without significant baseline intelligence. I've seen so many students who still didn't do that well even after extensive, expensive tutoring.

For example, SAT coaching only increases scores by around 50 points. [0]

[0] https://www.jefftk.com/p/sat-coaching-what-effect-size

>" I don't know anyone who went to an elite university without significant baseline intelligence"

Oh, I sure do. The strongest positive correlations I've noticed with elite schooling are conscientiousness, acquiescence to authority and then wealth, in that order. Intelligence is a relatively distant 4th place, thought it still correlates positively, IMO.

PG actually wrote a whole essay on this topic: http://www.paulgraham.com/colleges.html

"...what we've found is that the variation between schools is so much smaller than the variation between individuals that it's negligible by comparison. We can learn more about someone in the first minute of talking to them than by knowing where they went to school."

For what it's worth, I agree with pg and don't think your college is the best predictor of anything (after all, I actually decided not to go to an Ivy myself). That being said, I reject the notion that it's trivial to buy your way into an elite university. There's a whole class of second-tier private colleges that exist primarily because it's not that easy for rich kids to buy their way into the truly top schools.

I really hope that you see this, because this seems like a teachable moment.

We aren't talking about making a million dollar donation to get your son into school. That happens, sure, but it's an extreme example.

Here are things that richer people can do easily & poorer people struggle with.

* Not working or working part time for four or more years

* Moving across the country

* Living in places with high cost of living (think Stanford, Berkely, NYU)

* Getting tutoring for the SAT, taking the SAT multiple times

* Going to a high school where the teachers give a shit

* Having people in your life who went to college & can help you apply

* Having extracurricular activities that show you'd contribute to campus life

* Already being comfortable with being interviewed at age 18

These are just what I could think of in a few minutes. Scholarships _do not_ level the playing field (though they certainly help).

That's an extremely patronizing way of approaching this debate.

I'm well aware of the different kinds of privilege which money affords students. I grew up lower middle class but went to boarding school and university with some incredibly privileged people.

Money helps, but it's still not the dominant factor. If it were, I never would have gotten the education I received. Insinuating that those who went to elite universities just had enough money to get in and go is insulting to those of us who worked very hard to get there.

I'm not going to engage further with you, since you seem more interested in "teaching" me than engaging in a discussion of equals.

You're free to ignore me, but I'll engage just once more.

I read your comments and perceived that you were misunderstanding, and that I could present it in a way that would clarify things. I'm sorry that you felt patronized, but there is no shame in ignorance. I think you should be more open to people telling you that they have something to teach you; maybe I was wrong, and maybe this isn't the case for everyone, but when I try to teach someone something it's because I respect them enough to think it's worth the effort.

You see all of our points, but you keep coming back to this idea of buying your way into school, which is not a point anyone is arguing. Why is that?

Happy trails.

Edit: And yes, I do believe that, regardless of how difficult it was to get into school, people work very hard in school. I never said they didn't, though I can see how it would be easy to come away with that impression. What I am saying is that it doesn't show them to be harder working than someone who did not attend school.

This was bothering me, so I consulted with a friend, and tl;dr, I didn't pay your arguments the attention they deserved (as you are aware), and I shouldn't have mentioned a "teachable moment" because, while the phrase didn't have this connotation for me, I could have easily foreseen that you would've interpreted that as me putting you a rung below where I am.

I stand by views and the substance of what I've said, but I can see that the way I interacted with you was counterproductive to the conversation. I apologize.

You're missing the point. It's not about whether I'm "ignorant" about your points or am ashamed of said ignorance, it's that you should never assume you know more than someone else—especially if you barely know them.

In my experience, there is never a benefit to assuming ignorance. Your original comment would have been much better without mentioning a "teachable moment." If you avoid assuming ignorance, then there are two outcomes:

1. The other person can actually not know what you're talking about and ask clarifying questions.

2. They do know what you're talking about, and can confirm your statements and extend it.

If you assume ignorance, you automatically put anyone who already knows what you're saying on edge. (This is also part of why "mansplaining" is such a grating phenomenon.) It's a conversational strategy with no upside and many downsides.

====

Having made that point, I'll say that I agree with everything you've said of there being lots of advantages that wealthy students have for getting into elite universities. That doesn't mean companies are necessarily wrong to concentrate on elite universities. Even though I think there are much better signals out there, if I had to choose a random Ivy league student vs. a random state college students I'd still choose the former.

I didn't assume ignorance, I observed it. I didn't mean to imply you were ashamed of being ignorant, what I meant is that it isn't an insult to tell someone that a moment is teachable, as we all have much to learn. I do apologize for framing my points in a way that was liable to be misinterpreted, and for not reading your argument closely enough. However, I'm not the only one missing something.

Best of luck, stranger.

> I didn't assume ignorance, I observed it.

Correction: you observed that I did not mention certain facts. From that observation, you have no way of knowing whether I am ignorant of said facts or simply don't agree with you on their importance ot the issue at hand.

I don't think they're saying that money buys your way in a Ivy school, but in that it gives you a legs up with stuff like better and earlier education for example

I haven't taken the SAT in a long time, but I can speak on the GRE

For the GRE Verbal, you just have to memorize about a thousand words to basically get everything right except for the reading comprehension. that puts someone's score somewhere around ~158/170. I dont think memorizing 1k words is a very hard thing to do, though i am baffled that people dont do it.

For math, a person should memorize special right triangle ratios, prime numbers under 100, and some geometry rules. the rest is just practicing a finite set of question types.

Its all very coach-able

For what it's worth, I boosted my SAT score by 400 points (2100 out of 2400) just by being more aware of the tricks used on those tests. My weakest subject was writing, but not because I am a bad writer, my handwriting is garbage.

It's just like taking IQ tests over again, once you know what to expect, you can game the system a bit by memorizing patterns. Scores on any standardized testing should be taken with a grain of salt.

I would disagree. Having money helps in a lot of things. For one, if you've got money, your family probably isn't struggling to eat. If you've got money, you're likely living in a better area of town.

It is the dominant factor if it is enough money. I'm not talking about a meeting 1 million dollar 'donation'

Works well for most companies that hire exclusively from top tier universities. They definitely miss out on some talent but unless they need thousands of engineers, they can find all talent they need from just a few top universities. Probably overpay 10k-40k/year for that privilege compared to equally skilled/smart people from other unis but it's chump change in overall employee cost. Also makes interviewing easier - rejecting 90-95% of applicants from lower tier state schools who could not fizzbuzz is not fun.

Another part of the value of a university is that they factor in SAT scores heavily into admissions. SAT scores correlate strongly with IQ.

Hiring based on IQ tests is illegal, but hiring mostly from certain universities is not.

For those (like me) who immediately wondered if SATs correlate with socio economic status rather than IQ, this Slate article covers some of the debate about standardized tests and points to meta studies. SATs do track IQ and predict college success, but social emotional skills, grit, and other factors also count. http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/201...

That's a very interesting article. One of the points that really stood out to me, despite the present but weak correlation with socioeconomic status, is that it still serves as a very strong springboard for gifted children out of poverty. The article mentions that the SATs can be the bane of upper middle class parents trying to get their children into good schools (test prep works, but only goes so far), while even kids with a lower SES get perfect scores on the SAT.

I can easily imagine that abject poverty would mess with SAT scores (or probably even prevent someone from taking the SAT), but for the majority of the country I would expect the SAT levels the playing field rather than hurting it. For example, I live in a rural town in Missouri. No one here is rich, but the majority of the town is not in poverty. I can't think of a better way than the SAT for a precocious child here to get into a top-tier school.

Exactly. There are many schools (in the east in particular) where privileged children end up who didn't get into the Ivy League, Stanford, U of Chicago or U of Michigan.

The value of the alumni and professional network of these lesser schools, as well as the brand name, is lower than the top tier schools, but the parents often did attend a more elite school, and their network offers inter-generational benefits.

It's interesting that state schools like Michigan accept a large number of less competitive in-state students, thereby providing the sort of springboard you mention, while also attracting a top tier of students that is on par with those attending Ivy League schools.

For what it's worth, when I saw that you looped in U of Michigan with the ivy leagues I thought you must have attended U of M. I don't view U of M with anywhere near the same level of prestige.

FYI, some non-trivial bodies have ranked U of M as the top public university in America.

It's not illegal, it's just considered defacto discrimination and you have to prove it's actually beneficial.

There's no reason that you couldn't be sued the same way if you're only hiring from a certain university and that leads to excluding people from a protected class.

You can use "disparate impact" doctrine to argue that just about anything is illegal. It's pretty hard to full proof yourself against that.

But there's a big difference between something that existing legal precedent has ruled as strongly likely to be illegal for hiring (IQ testing), and a currently widespread hiring practice that may at some future date suffer the same fate (hiring from particular schools). The legal risk of the former is extremely high, while you would have to be extraordinarily unlucky to suffer damages from the latter. Even if the courts do so rule in the future, you'd have to win (lose?) the lottery and be the one or two companies that get taken to court in that test case.

Interestingly the NFL uses the Wonderlic test.

From what I understand SAT grades what you've learned and ACT grades what you are capable of learning. At least that's what I understood years ago.

Edit: Oh yea, don't believe me? Here's a link. Apparently I got it backwards though. :)

http://www.educationplanner.org/parents/act-sat-scores.shtml

>Hiring based on IQ tests is illegal

Citation pls?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griggs_v._Duke_Power_Co.

It would be legal if you can prove in court that IQ is reasonably related to the job.

I don't know if this is accurate, but reading between the tea leaves it seems the commitment to diversity compromised their ability to signal their student quality. Their values are certainly laudable, but perhaps unprofitable. Maybe they would have been better off as a non-profit? It seems like rich and famous people would love to throw money to this initiative as a non-profit.

How diverse was charging $10k/head in New York City in the first place? Are we just talking about racial diversity? Seems like an awfully strange hill to die on.

Diversity usually means diversity of race, sometimes gender and sexual orientation, hardly ever age or wealth, and never diversity of opinion.

I'm guessing not very diverse at all since most people had to float 6 months+ without income.

Gee, $40k per year? But with huge return on investment in education? Why don't we give people loans, and tie them to their future income?

I smell a business opportunity.

Haha. Yeah I'm the founder of https://lambdaschool.com/computer-science - a computer science academy that's free up-front and takes a percentage of salary for two years after you get a job.

The side benefit of this model instead of a loan is that if, by chance, you don't get a job in software engineering, you never pay anything. It shifts the risk from the students to the school, which is IMO how it should be.

Also we're online, so you don't need to move anywhere (but still live instruction and world-class instructors).

but then one has to be affluent enough to afford to not work for the time it takes to do a mountain of pre-work and then get educated or re-educated, or for many in the USA, re-re-educated, and then one has to then afford to remain unemployed (bootcamps tend to go light on this part when recruiting) while looking for a place that wants to hire a bootcamp graduate.(hint: tough for diversity candidates here) These places are hard to find for many, even many who previously attended and paid for! an ivy school in a dying field. If this were such a wonderful model, and if we actually had a skills gap that needed filling, why aren't these hundreds of desperate and honorable tech employers who are faced with such a gaping skills gap hiring people and training them themselves? If there were such a clamour for those with basic tech skills, why are bootcamp graduates from tier 1 camps struggling to find actual work in their field for months and months? Why are these camps reporting inaccurate or highly embroidered outcomes to potential students?

We're not a bootcamp, but your points are well-founded.

> But then one has to be $$ enough to afford to not work for the time it takes to get educated or re-educated

You're right: Not everyone can afford to not work for six+ months. We don't have a perfect solution for everyone yet. But it's much easier for most Americans to find a way to stay alive for 6 months than it is for them to find $10,000 lying around. Basic subsistence, especially with a tiny bit of help from a safety net of some sort is generally close to within reach, and if it's not we don't have a way to help yet.

For example, we had a student last week that has been living with a friend, and we learned she was so poor she couldn't afford a computer to code with, and had been using an old Android tablet and a cloud editor. We shipped her one, but for many "enough to stay alive" is much, much easier to find than some amount of cash.

> If we actually had a skills gap that needed filling why aren't these employers who are faced with such a gaping skills gap hiring people and training them themselves?

Well, some do. Others have ridiculous recruiters' fees that are enough to pay for student tuitions. This is true not just of alternatives to higher ed, but of colleges. Why doesn't Google also become Stanford? Probably because that's a lot of work and what we have is close enough.

To be clear, with regard to SWE, I don't think there's that big of a skills gap. It's not like there's a desperate shortage for junior rails semi-devs out there. But employers definitely hire folks and they definitely pay big recruiting fees and there's definitely demand.

> Why are bootcamp graduates from tier 1 camps struggling to find actual work in their field for months?

Other than the requisite time to get your first job (which is generally 3-6 months regardless), I haven't seen that any from tier one bootcamps struggling to find work for months. Probably three months on average, but that's pretty normal. Maybe we have a different understanding of "tier 1."

> Why are these camps reporting inaccurate or highly embroidered outcomes to potential students?

Because crappy bootcamps want to lie and make money.

I mean look, there's ITT Tech, which is a complete rip-off for the vast majority of people, but that doesn't mean college in general is a bad thing for everyone. Somehow, though, that's how non-university programming academies get lumped together - one bad bootcamp? This entire idea must be horrible! As with everything, there are shades of grey.

I appreciate your taking the time to speak to these issues honestly. This fact alone sets you very much apart. While I do think your model is better, even lots better, the tuition deferment model can be very misleading to those who don't get the tax/rent burden in SF or NYC (not saying you or your school is misleading students as I don't know it or you... I'll read up). As far as tier 1 bootcamps, I'm pretty sure you and I know who we are speaking of. I do think students should question these schools and their supposed outcomes with a critical mind. The facts aren't reaching these recruits because their desperation for employment is clouding their view, and because many who stand to profit from this desperation are actually in a state of desperation themselves. I'm not saying you are in particular. I am saying that we need to be more responsible and act like a supportive community.

I dropped out of top tier university(online continue education) but yours looks great. I will check it out may be I will get enrolled.

Hmm, I was under the impression that these kind of salary percentage schemes weren't legal? (Mostly just because I've never seen one before.)

Nope, just new. Purdue University uses one as well.

>It shifts the risk from the students to the school, which is IMO how it should be.

I love this idea, thank you for starting this! I think this something there should be more of. I just looked at your site, and noticed the 3% acceptance rate for the $0 upfront cost tier. Just curious how that's changed over time as your exposure has increased. I assume you are trying to maintain some instructor/student ratio, etc? Are you willing to share what limits you from accepting more students at the $0 upfront tier? If so I'd love hear more, lmk.

We've grown almost in line with the increase in applications in number of instructors. We haven't raised real money or anything, so we're limited by the number of instructors and cash we can pay them, but we're growing as quickly as we can without sacrificing quality.

We see hundreds of new applications per day and can only service a small fraction of them. Hopefully we can change that to some degree soon.

Is your program appropriate for students who are high school seniors/graduates as a alternative, or lead-in to college? What level of programming experience is required?

Yes.

You'll want to know intermediate JavaScript coming in. We have courses that prepare you for that free, so apply and we'll figure it out.

That's how undergraduate University education works in Australia (at least it did when I attended. Perhaps someone younger than me can comment if things have changed in the last 20 years).

Effectively the government pays your undergraduate university fees. There is then an additional tax applied against your salary, after it reaches a certain threshold. This of course results in jokes that Arts graduates may as well be enjoying free tertiary education.

I think this is a much fairer system than being asked to pay upfront and perhaps taking out a student loan in order to pay fees. The Australian system allows any student with the ability and desire to attend University (it's not completely perfect, but it is much better).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tertiary_education_fees_in_Aus...

That's effectively how it works in the US as well for most people.

Federal loans (90% of all loans) come with income based repayment plans that charge 10% of your disposable income and are cancelled after 20 years if you don't pay it off.

I don't believe they are cancelled ever. There is a special condition that if you work for the federal government for 20 years, they can be cancelled after 20 years if they aren't paid off, but AFAIK, that's it, and you have to attempt to pay them off during those 20 years.

If there is a new exception, please let me know. My wife has some.

If you opt into the income based repayment plan they are cancelled after 20 years of payments. I'm not sure how they retroactively count payments made under old repayment plans if you switch now.

I can't believe we're acting like taking 10% of disposable income for 20 years is a good deal

It's not 10% of your disposable income for 20 years. It's capped at 10% of your disposable income for 20 years.

It's designed as a safety net for people who can't find a decent job after taking out student loans.

If you get a high paying job you're not going to qualify for the income based repayment plan because you only qualify for the newer income based repayment plans if it will lower your monthly payments below the standard repayment plan.

>It's not 10% of your disposable income for 20 years. It's capped at 10% of your disposable income for 20 years.

Yes, and also there's lots of non-typical deductions that can furthur reduce your effective income for these plans, and ways to reduce the forgiveness period to 10 years. Lots of lawmakers say that program is not sustainable, and Congress may try to change it soon... If your not utilizing it and have student loan debt, I'd recommend looking into it sooner than later, as you may be grandfathered in if/when it's restructured. Most people who are elegible don't take advantage of it yet, and loan servicers do their best to steer students away from signing up for IDR.

I did not know that. So why all the noise about how expensive tertiary education is in the US?

As you can see from my sibling comments, people who make too much money to qualify for income based repayment (because they'd be paying more than the standard plan), people who went to college years ago, and the generally uninformed just don't know about income based repayment plans.

Not every loan is a federal loan. Additionally, federal loans almost NEVER cover the full amount of university, unless you're at a state school or community college.

My federal loans covered about 1/8 of my tuition.

Federal loans make up 90% of all loan disbursements.

The vast majority of college students only have Federal student loans.

>unless you're at a state school or community college

Private colleges enroll about 15-20% of students. If you don't want $100k in debt, go to a public school, or go to a top tier school like Harvard that has very generous financial aid.

If you can't get into a top tier school with excellent financial aid (or your parents make too much money to qualify), you have to decide whether $100k in debt is worth it.

It's not society's job to pay for private college.

I'm from CA. Even with the resident discount, UCs are just as pricy as private colleges.

UC Berkeley tuition and fees comes to about $13k per year for California residents. The average private school tuition is over $30k per year.

Not sure why you think that it's so expensive. I went to school in Georgia (much lower cost of living area) and UCs are only about 15% more expensive than our flagship schools (Georgia Tech and UGA, and GSU).

Cost of university education has risen much faster than inflation for decades primarily due to easily obtained loans and increasing bureaucratic overhead. At the same time, the job prospects for many degree-holders have decreased. Additionally, student loans are for life and can not be cancelled by filing bankruptcy now. The 20 year thing mentioned by the above comment only applies to very specific government jobs.

So education is more expensive, student loans are more expensive, student loans can't be cancelled, and job prospects and real income are worse.

>The 20 year thing mentioned by the above comment only applies to very specific government jobs.

No you are completely incorrect. For public sector jobs the loan forgiveness happens after 10 years. Under the income based repayment plan anyone who makes payments for 20 years will have the remainder cancelled.

https://studentaid.ed.gov/sa/repay-loans/understand/plans/in...

Large student loans affect your credit and there is no threshold for your salary for when you have to start paying back.

>there is no threshold for your salary for when you have to start paying back.

There is. You pay back 10% of your disposable income. Disposable income is income above 1.5x the Federal poverty level.

If you make less than that, you pay $0.

The federal poverty level for a single individual is a bit less than $14,000.

Because a. not everyone qualifies for that, and b. 10% of disposable income for 20 years for something that didn't work out is still a pretty awful deal

>Because a. not everyone qualifies for that

Everyone who has federal student loans (90% of all loan disbursements) qualifies for income based repayment plans if the plan will lower your payment.

*PLUS loans your parents took out don't qualify, but you won't need those if you're going to a 4 year state school.

>20 years for something that didn't work out is still a pretty awful deal

Didn't work out meaning can't make much money. For a family of 4 making $50k (about the median household income), you'd pay back around $100 a month.

Not everyone qualifies for government loans.

Government loans are credit independent. Subsidized loans are need based (the interest that accrues while in school is subsidized by the government), but unsubsidized loans are not. The vast majority of students qualify.

If you are a felon, once you are released from jail, you can still qualify.

The only people who really can't qualify that I'm aware of are non residents, people who have been convicted of drug offenses that occurred while accepting federal financial aid, and people who already have degrees.

That's how App Academy works already. Put a deposit down, go through the program, then pay them a percentage of your first years wages from your new job. I did it, and rich people at the golf club where I worked were telling me it was a bad idea, sounded illegal, etc. In my opinion I got an awesome job in an awesome career for super cheap. I had no money, someone was finally willing to give me a chance based on my ability to work through problems in the application. It was the hardest thing I ever did but well worth it.

Ya, we're kinda like App Academy except not a bootcamp (a longer, more exhaustive CS program), online (so you don't have to move to San Francisco), and with no down-payment (because most of our students just don't have $4k, even for a down-payment).

Please add a Java based web development option (ideally with JSF), I'd join in a heartbeat. The web dev is too javascript / front-end centric, and the CS (I'd assume) is too math-centric.

Java / JSF / MyFaces is the best of both worlds, imo. No need to write most front-end javascript, 80% of dev time can be spent on business logic.

The CS Academy does teach Java. It's our main tool for understanding a lot of the lower-level stuff such as architecture, scaling, etc.

We use JavaScript as the front-end web language, for reasons that are likely obvious (as well as React/Redux), and also use JS learn a lot of the data structures/algorithms portion, but Java is our main compiled language.

Does it cover JSF?

No. We use JavaScript for front-end stuff as that's the native language of the browser.

We'll also use a little bit of Spring, so JSF isn't far away, but I wouldn't go into looking for a school that teaches exactly one (relatively small) framework. Look for the fundamental principles and worry about frameworks later.

Fair enough, and I'm no expert, but isn't JSF 2 a formalized / built-in standard, rather than a relatively small framework?

I thought most of what made Spring useful and popular was blown away by JSF 2.

Yeah, it's formally a part of the Java platform, and it's widely used, but I'd recommend becoming adept at using several different kinds of frameworks before I single one out. JSF, like all frameworks, will have advantages and disadvantages, and I'm sure there are Spring vs JSF holy wars, but the best advice someone can give a budding programmer is do not get caught up in that until you actually understand the underlying principles.

Spring and JSF are to some extent mutually exclusive. I worked on a project that used JSF views with Spring EL that called Spring beans. However, the best practice, according to BalusC on StackOverflow, is to avoid mixing Spring components and JSF managed beans (https://stackoverflow.com/questions/18387993/spring-jsf-inte...).

Exactly my point. Why are bootcamps teaching Spring, when JSF 2 is built-in and does it all better? Or at the very least should be assumed to be the future.

Aren't most bootcamp grads being hired for frontend roles?

And this is exactly the issue with most of them.

There are a million resources online to learn javascript, that isn't challenging. I want a solid DBA / backend developer bootcamp.

Depends. We're not really a bootcamp, most of our grads are hired for full-stack roles

We are doing this at Holberton since we announced in 2015. It's a 2-year program based in San Francisco, no upfront tuition but a percentage of students salary when they get a job.

The program is also quite different from regular education, we have no formal teachers, no lectures, students learn by working on projects and by collaborating with their classmates. Check us out https://www.holbertonschool.com/

It's indeed a "business opportunity" but I also believe that this the tuition model that post-secondary education should adopt if we consider that its main role is to train students to get a job after graduation. The success of schools should be proportional to students success.

Who can afford to live in San Fran without working for 2 years (9 months)?

And who can afford to have $15,000 taken off the top of their salary between $51,000 and $100,000? I hope this graduate can find remote work and live in a tent in a national park campground nearby a major tech employment city with a killer public transportation system that reaches its public park campgrounds. There are actual bears on Bear Mountain by the way.

How many software engineering jobs in San Francisco pay 50,000?

The $50,000 lower limit is there for people looking for work in more rural communities. For example, yesterday we had a student that was formerly a forklift driver making $10/hr get a job offer in the middle of nowhere for $78k (and that was only two days after graduation). He lives in an area where he pays $500/month for rent.

If he only went from making $10/hr to making $50k, the lifetime economic value is still indisputable - easily over a million dollars during his lifetime. Him paying us back for a couple of years in exchange for making that possible at no money down and shouldering the risk if it didn't work out is a fairly reasonable ask IMO.

Well, I can't speak to SF. I can tell you that in NYC, these salaries are going down down down as the supply of "junior Rails semi-devs" (hilarious btw) climbs ever higher with the rise of the last viable profitable education gambit: the bootcamp. I've actually started to see full time SWE positions on AngelList for $40,000 per year. (I know!!!!!) I realize you guys aren't a bootcamp, and I'm not speaking to anyone in particular here. Although- how are you not a bootcamp? Because by bootcamp, I loosely mean: a non-degree granting thing that gives you some skills you can sell in the decaying labor marketplace, but quickly, before it totally decays and there is nothing left at all. Anyhow, labor is dead. We all know it. Here is a great little piece from The Baffler on this point. https://thebaffler.com/salvos/why-work-livingston

That said, it is tough to do the actual life of a 2017 Bourgeois Professional with the income of a manual laborer (debt slave), even for a few years, because the theater of this requires a lot of energy, perfect physical health, and a great wardrobe to start, not to mention the attitudes and social mores that take a lifetime to learn. No one speaks of this crushing emotional toll that adds up to very real financial expenditures that help one deal with these theatrical maneuvers over time. It comes at great financial and psychological cost. People wonder why there is so much burnout in this field... I'm not claiming you should take this on. Not at all. It's just that it is never talked about. Some of these these "bootcamps" are desperate... some of these are in the top tier in SF and NYC. It seems that these issues should be raised at some point and discussed in a place like this one is all I'm saying.

As someone who has spent most of their life in NYC, I can tell you that this is a load of crap. There have always been shitty developer jobs in this city, before and since bootcamps, with equally shit pay. There's a ton of companies here with a lot of needs and not a lot of budget.

1) New York laws have changed very recently to make it much, much harder to screw over freelancers and contractors -- the places where you'd otherwise see these companies sourcing labor.

2) Even competent developers take jobs for low pay. I see it happen all the time. I've even done it.

3) You could just be seeing signal that AngelList has a lot of mindshare now and poorly funded NY startups are listing there. I've seen people I know with vanity businesses hiring part time devs on that site for $29k.

4) Salary caps are still climbing here.

  And who can afford to have $15,000 taken off the top
  of their salary between $51,000 and $100,000?

Anyone who's BATNA is making $46,000 or less, i.e. the median working 25+ year old with an associate's degree or lower in the United States [1]?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_income_in_the_United_...

I made it work... Also that's cheaper than what it costs to live in SF for 2 years, even assuming your rent in that situation is free.

The two business models seems interesting. How do you track students once program completes? how do you know where are they working. How does the legal binding works ?

https://www.holbertonschool.com/

https://lambdaschool.com/computer-science

I can only speak for Lamdbda School, of course.

The original document is called an income share agreement (ISA). It's not a debt instrument or a loan, but is actually a legally binding "equity" stake in a student's future income under specific circumstances for a specific amount of time. Lambda, for example, takes a percentage of income for two years, only if they're working in a software-related field, and only if they're making above $50k/yr. We also cap the amount paid over the two years at $30k, regardless of how much a student is making. So, yes, if they don't get a good job, we never get paid. That only seems fair.

As for how it works practically:

In conjunction with the ISA, each student signs a 4506-T or 4506T-EZ (or any successor form) with the IRS, which effectively copies us on their taxes.

Students self-report their salary, and we adjust payments according to their reports, until year-end reconciliation, which happens around tax time. We get their taxes and double check that their self-reporting has been accurate, and adjust accordingly.

Should a student default, we have the same remedies that any other private lender would - we reserve the right to report to credit bureaus, we can sell the agreements to collections, etc.

Thank you for the detailed answer

On Holberton side:

-How do you track students once program completes?

We are working with http://vemo.com/, they are specialized in Income Share Agreements (ISA) and the goto in the industry if you want to do ISA. Purdue University is also using them. Vemo request access to students tax return so that we can see their income.

- How does the legal binding works?

Students are supposed to let us know about their employment situation so that we can adjust the payment. The deal is that they pay 17% of their income if they make $50k/year or more. At the end of the year tax time, we do a reconciliation where we compare the amount received against the student income, where the student or the school might owe money to the other part.

What is great about this model is that: -Student only contributes back to the school if they are employed. -Student contribution is proportional to their "financial success". -Holberton can only thrive if its graduates thrive, no bs.

If education loans and repayment plans were tied to future income, I feel like we would have a much healthier higher education system in the U.S. As it stands now, it seems to be one of the bleaker spots in our overall current situation (I know, I know there are a few bleak spots right now and no one is forcing people to take out these loans).

That's exactly it. Right now, barring government action, so long as I can keep students coming to my door there's no incentive to perform.

Schools like ITT Tech have shown, in my mind difinitively, that if you're willing to pay enough for student acquisition you can have absolutely terrible outcomes, still saddle up students with tens/hundreds of thousands of dollars in student debt, fail to get them jobs, and for some inexplicable reason they'll still keep coming.