(I grew up around my parents' vocational school, board of education interactions looked totally insane)

Good thing you don't need your syllabus accredited to have an approved curriculum (and in fact not even sure there's such a thing?)

Also, accredited institutions make small changes to syllabi (such as the one you mentioned) all the time.

(e: Just noticed your comment down-thread, and now assume you're not in the USA. So edit, prepend "In the USA" to my comment. Relevant at least to the article I guess.)

We didn't really drop anything, an extra day appeared because they were already better prepared before starting the course with basic materials.

A syllabus -- per dictionary.com, "an outline or other brief statement of the main points of a discourse, the subjects of a course of lectures, the contents of a curriculum, etc." -- is required by a governing authority that presumably has an interest in what citizen/subject (per your local regime) are being taught. This seems legitimate in the general case.

Your syllabus can be "unit-n: overview of current layout technologies for www browsers". Problem solved, no?

One of the operating models of bootcamps is as a recruiter for tech companies. In addition to tuition from students, the bootcamp receives a fee from employers when graduates are hired. This provides incentives bootcamps to encourage students to take jobs as apprentices. And whether a student has the financial resources to take on an apprentice role can also factor into admission selection.

I assure you, a bootcamp for European medieval history will not produce average salaries of $73,000.

That's like saying coding bootcamps don't produce chefs. Different goals for different programs.

The parent poster is comparing how successful universities are at getting their graduates well-paying jobs, compared to how successful coding bootcamps are at getting their graduates well-paying jobs.

I point out that this is an unreasonable comparison. University averages are dragged down by low-earning, low-employable majors.

(One may conclude that going to university for the sake of a low-wage, low-employable major is worthless. To which I will have to ask - how well do you think software engineers will be paid, if the 20 million current American college students were to switch their major to comp sci tomorrow?)

If the goal is to get a high-paying coding job as quickly as possible, bootcamps look good. Would be interesting to look at longer-term trends in a few years - career advancement, job type, management level, industry within tech, etc.

> CS graduates going into other fields [like finance]

Finance is just like every other high-professional industry, they train you for what you need to know because they are invested in your success. I worked in that industry for 6 years. Most banks run a 2-3 month internal bootcamp for fresh college hires. I was a math/econ double major and sat next to an english lit major in my class. My brother was a poli-sci major and went straight from college -> bootcamp -> Goldman Sachs as a developer.

I think people greatly overestimate the value of their major (excluding those going into academics). My personal experience in finance and tech is that Finance and CS majors are the absolute worst about overvaluing their education. 2 years of work experience^ erases any "superiority" of an industry-specific major compared to an art history major (all else equal).

^ I've done a fair amount of mid-level hiring. I've told people in the past that mentioning your major in an interview after 2 years of work experience is a strong strike #1 to me. If your major is still relevant to your ability to do a job, I generally assume your recent work experience has been worthless.

College:

    30 weeks
    40 hours per week
    4 years
    = 4800 hours

    49 weeks
    50 hours per week
    2 years
    = 4900 hours

This seems like a left turn from my comment. Nowhere did I say bootcamps are a replacement for formal education. I was comparing the value of time in the workforce vs. time spent in school. I was discussing finance majors who, shockingly, also do internships. I don't know anyone that took a bootcamp as a replacement to a college education, so I'm not sure where you pulled any of this from.

> I don't know where you work that a developer working "only" 50h weeks is "generous" but I hope I never find myself applying there.

Maybe my part of the world is unique, but I've never worked less than 50 hours per week in my 10 years and I honestly can't say I know anyone that does excluding people with "non-professional" jobs.

Some of the stats in the thread seem to indicate that a not insignificant minority do self employ or consult.

I say this as someone who just went to college because that's what you do and only got into software because my degree led to a $10/hr job which could not pay rent and student loans. If I had gotten 25 or 30 an hour there's a good chance I never would have had the impetus to teach myself anything

I wasn't, I explicitly said I can't speak for finance majors. My point I would not consider 2 years of work and a 4 year CS degree from a well-regarded school to be equivalent for technical hires.

(This is at a state school in the US.)

Seriously, that's insane. I've never heard of anything even resembling that.

My main complaint about boot camps is that they give students the impression that the 2-6 month intense boot camp is close to what they will need to be successful in their career. It's not. However, my experience has been that after boot camp it's pretty easy to reorient those people to understanding that they will need to work hard to improve for their whole career. Basically, a good boot camp graduate is very similar in skill level to a good 2nd year coop/intern student -- but then they need to study the rest of the stuff on their own.

My main complaint about university programmes is actually pretty similar. People leave the programme with the idea "I know CS", sort of like how Neo knows kung fu in the Matrix. My experience has been that it's much harder to explain to new graduates that they still have a lot to learn. People with master's degrees are even harder to convince. In addition, because coop/intern sessions are poorly monitored, quite a lot of graduates are actually completely hopeless at programming.

But either way, I think you can make a successful career. Sometimes you see boot camp graduates complaining, "How could I have known that" when the answer is, "Yeah, having 4 years to screw around with this stuff and do a variety of different projects really helps". Sometimes I see CS graduates say, "Wait, this complexity is completely ridiculous. Nobody can be productive in this mess" when the answer is, "Yeah, working on realistic projects has a huge benefit".

I personally don't like the current generation of boot camps, mainly because of the potential to exploit the students badly. However, I think there is a huge need for something like them and I'm looking forward to seeing how things evolve. Having said that, for people who know they want to be a programmer and are young/able I still recommend getting a CS degree at the moment.

You'd need to compare them to Stanford, MIT, Harvard, Berkeley etc...

I attended this school and while most of my classmates were highly-intelligent people of diverse backgrounds, I can absolutely say it is much easier to get into Flatiron school than any of the programs listed above.

1. Education industry fails to meet industry demands and to offer fair, affordable education

So, 2: Innovators ask, "If it pleases the crown, we would like to be allowed to try to fill this gap and offer an education that people can voluntarily pay for if they desire."

3. Only if we say so. Prove to us you can teach adult humans, peon.

4. But you already failed to do this? And you had the advantage of taxpayer dollars funding you. Why do you have authority?

The school should be punished and pay compensation for lying. However, we should not hand over the right to offer education to a government that, given the opportunity to provide it, failed the competency test to "actually teach adult humans" already.

Any accredidation should be voluntary.

The thing that is held behind a barrier is issuing a credential. And it seems reasonable that someone generating diplomas (or claims they can teach you enough to get you a job) should itself be held to accreditation or a standards body.

But we (software developers in industry) could be making that standards body, rather than sitting on our butts and waiting for the government to do it.

A story everyone speaking of education reform should be cognizant of is that of Jaime Escalante.

Another issue aside from innovating to meet demand: Personally, if I want to sit down tomorrow and earn a degree in a subject, I don't know why I can't just self study and take exams to do this. To me, anyone in the world being able to earn the equivalent of a Harvard degree appears to be the ultimate policy in dismantling inequality and advancing opportunity. Why should Harvard degrees be limited to a small number of people? They really shouldn't.

What happens in the classroom is largely not what defines a Harvard degree/graduate -- quite the contrary, actually. While some classes are very well taught, many of them round to something like "hey, you're smart, I'm going to pretend to teach, give you some reading lists, and you can figure it out for yourself."

There are little learning hacks like office hours (maybe) or talking with TAs (maybe), but again these are not the defining features of a Harvard grad (high quality or otherwise).

and who manufactures these magical exams you speak of, and on what authority?

Both sets are managed by non profits.

There should be no reason why a poor minority, boy or girl, struggling to make ends meet in a rough neighborhood cannot get online, self study, and one day go and take a seat for these exams. In fact, this should be subsidized by government more than university classes--it is far more efficient and more fair, just better overall.

So these are the primary tests, both in a literal and figurative sense, which establish ability and competency to practice medicine.

After this point, getting the residency requirements and practical lab skills is just a formality.

If what it comes down to is basically some exams, we should be able to give more people access to that. Especially in STEM fields.

> Both sets are managed by non profits.

without an explanation as to how these non-profits are founded, given authority to regulate a given credential, and populated with people, fail to see how 2 negates 1.

You can do this with some professions, but I'd like to think my medical doctor has had actual experience with living people and cadavers.

At that point, as I said, the hospital training is just a formality with some exceptions. Surgeons obviously need to demonstrate dexterity and composure. Candidates need to show up to work on time, etc.

Except that instead of checking in awful, unmaintainable spaghetti, they'll be making life or death decisions.

I wouldn't let an unsupervised zero-work-experience fresh grad be solely responsible for a product. Doctors make important decisions - without any supervision or 'code review' on a daily basis.

We standardized for a reason. Could those standards be changed? Absolutely. I still don't think some poor person should be allowed online study and then to pass an exam and be a medical doctor.

Fwiw, I'm still saying we should have residencies.

In both cases you study the material and are tested on it. There is nothing magical about paying to study inside a university.

There are also labs that cover things that aren't going to be on the tests. There are practical examinations along the way. It's a whole big process and fairly standardized for a reason. It's not like many other disciplines. I got to witness my daughter go through it.

As much as love her and think she's the most brilliant person ever, she needed the full educational experience and would benefit from more. In fact, many medical doctors keep adding to their education.

Other fields could be the same way, if they could get over the cultural and authoritarian bureaucracies. Architecture has less scientific foundations, but it's nearly impossible to do without the prestige of an academic institution.

Medicine is one of the most difficult fields, but I still think if you can demonstrate the same ability, you should be able to go to a residency program.

Academia has an unfair grip on modern credentials, and I think that is one of the great things about tech. For example, some of the very most brilliant modern innovators abandoned academia, Musk, Gates and Newell come to mind.

"The government" can only do the job that elected politicians allow it to do: the dedication and professionalism of front-line staff can easily be wasted by poor strategy and questionable agendas from the people at the top. Source: 10 years experience working in education.

Most law schools lie about their graduate employment prospects as well. If the risk of being caught times the penalty is smaller than the increased revenue, why not fudge the numbers?

This is way too generic. To grant a standardized degree (e.g., BS, MBA, PhD), sure. As a generic, "show me that you are qualified to teach adults before I let you" I could not disagree more. Adults can decide what they want to learn (karate or Python, basket weaving or machine learning) and where they want to go. The state's role, if there is one, should be to inform, not limit the options. My 2c.

No opinion about this. But taxpayer's money should not be used to enable schools that do not provide an adequate education. No one is better off with a diploma from ITT Technical Institute or Corinthian College, there is no good reason for places like ITT or Corinthian to exist and even less reason to support them with public money.