Is this just easier to SEE in a bootcamp type scenario?
How many people got the traditional education route, rack up even MORE debt, still don't end up doing the thing / end up where they want to be?
Is this maybe an easy to see problem that is part of a larger education problem none the less?
Full disclosure: I'm the product of a boot camp. Changed careers and learned to code after age 40. It worked out great for me, but yeah I was in camp with a lot of people who shouldn't have been / it was a waste of time / money for them.
I have to wonder as jobs and careers change, having faster ways to retool seems all but required. At the same time I think those efforts will be hit and miss, and I'm not sure there's a solution to that.
(That doesn't excuse any of the scummy nature of some of the storytelling around bootcamps, but honestly I've worked with university interns and they seem to tell each other their own stories about how much they'll be making and it's interesting how that hype sort of builds.)
> Is this just easier to SEE in a bootcamp type scenario?
You can certainly find universities that charge high prices, deliver a poor education, don’t have their act together, and leave students with a lot of debt and little to show for it.
The difference in this case was that Lambda School was pushed on everyone as the superior bootcamp. It was supposed to be a top-tier bootcamp. One of the best. Famous people like Paul Graham touted it constantly on Twitter and even wrote an essay defending the Lambda School founder when the first criticisms started gaining momentum.
> Is this maybe an easy to see problem that is part of a larger education problem none the less?
Trying to reduce all education options to the same level removes the nuance that makes this story what it is. Of course you can find bad education experiences in many forms, but it’s also easy to discover that Stanford has an excellent CS program while some private no-name for-profit university has no reputation. In this case, the most reputable bootcamp that was being touted by industry titans as the superior education option turned out to be one of the worst. That’s the story.
The article claims that their true placement rate was below 30%. Even for a graduate program in an oversaturated field - and I’m very comfortable describing such programs as scams themselves - that would be kinda low.
You can argue about the value of traditional education.
But I think you would be hard pressed to find a university, even a crappy one, where it's up to the students to TA themselves, there are 100 students to one professor, and the curriculum constantly changes in the middle of a semester. So it's not quite accurate to try and compare Lambda to a traditional univeristy.
But congrats on your success in career changing. It begs the question of whether you could've done that on your own without attending a boot camp.
I don't think I could have done it without a camp. I think that initial push to get "over the hump", at least the first hump for me really required someone I could immediately bounce questions off of, the structure of a classroom environment, and push to keep going because, class goes on.
Granted after that... I was fine learning on my own / that's half the job of programming. But initially I don't think I would have made it over that first hill.
I do think that is a personal learning style thing. When I was younger I was a TERRIBLE formal schooling type learner. When I went back I was appreciative / loved that environment.
I don't really think the primary value of a bootcamp is teaching you anything you couldn't learn on your own, but that it pushes you into a structured environment with other like-minded people to interact with and mentorship from experienced developers.
How many people got the traditional education route, rack up even MORE debt, still don't end up doing the thing / end up where they want to be?
Is this maybe an easy to see problem that is part of a larger education problem none the less?
Full disclosure: I'm the product of a boot camp. Changed careers and learned to code after age 40. It worked out great for me, but yeah I was in camp with a lot of people who shouldn't have been / it was a waste of time / money for them.
I have to wonder as jobs and careers change, having faster ways to retool seems all but required. At the same time I think those efforts will be hit and miss, and I'm not sure there's a solution to that.
(That doesn't excuse any of the scummy nature of some of the storytelling around bootcamps, but honestly I've worked with university interns and they seem to tell each other their own stories about how much they'll be making and it's interesting how that hype sort of builds.)