Flatiron School settles for operating without license, employment/salary claims • Hacker News Board

Re: Flatiron School settles for operating without license, employment/salary claims

#211

Post by heedlessly2 » Thu, Oct 19, 2017, 5:33 PM UTC

vkou wrote: post #144

heedlessly2 wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

your logic makes no sense. That's like saying coding bootcamps don't produce chefs. Different goals for different programs.

> 58% of classroom graduates making $74,447 average seems better than most universities out there. 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…

the ultimate goal of college is not to be the most financially well-off. I'm not sure how you can imply that those who work in social services and teaching would be considered "worthless".

Your argument and the other poster's both are making incongruent comparisons.

Re: Flatiron School settles for operating without license, employment/salary claims

#212

Post by cat199 » Fri, Oct 20, 2017, 1:46 PM UTC

wallace_f wrote: post #91

cat199 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> take exams to do this and who manufactures these magical exams you speak of, and on what authority?

They're not magical. If I want to be a doctor, there are two primary sets of exams I need to take: 1-the MCAT, and 2-the USMLE. 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 uni…

> They're not magical.

> 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.

Re: Flatiron School settles for operating without license, employment/salary claims

#213

Post by wallace_f » Sat, Oct 21, 2017, 5:50 AM UTC

KGIII wrote: post #207

wallace_f wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a lot of us here are engineers who came from unrelated disciplines, or some even with no formal education at all beyond HS. 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 sti…

They can CLEP some classes and skip them. That sort of helps.

In med school or just in undergrad?

Re: Flatiron School settles for operating without license, employment/salary claims

#214

Post by sleigh-bells » Sat, Oct 21, 2017, 1:45 PM UTC

Dtrane wrote: post #93

learc83 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have a much lower acceptance rate than the vast majority of CS programs. You'd need to compare them to Stanford, MIT, Harvard, Berkeley etc...

Being intellectually honest, I'd have to say that they aren't really comparable. The low acceptance rate is true, but the sheer amount of completely unacceptable applications that are filled out after seeing one of these "make 75k in 3 months" ads contributes heavily to the percentage. I attended this school and while most of my classmates were highly-intelligent people of diverse backgrounds, I can absolutely say it…

I've heard that many people who don't know any coding at all often apply to bootcamps and simply just flunk the first coding assessment they get. They probably help account for much of the low admissions rate at any half decent bootcamp (that have coding assessments).

Re: Flatiron School settles for operating without license, employment/salary claims

#215

Post by jli75 » Mon, Oct 23, 2017, 3:27 PM UTC

Now it's acquired by WeWork.

Re: Flatiron School settles for operating without license, employment/salary claims

#216

Post by reitanqild » Mon, Oct 23, 2017, 4:24 PM UTC

JessRudder wrote: post #103

The issue isn't fake employment stats. If you read the AG release, the complaint was that "Flatiron did not disclose clearly and conspicuously" what the 98.5% and $75k numbers consisted of. This information was included, in detail, in each of their job reports. This is from their earliest one from December of 2014: "Of the 225 job seeking graduates with salary information available: a. 162 accepted full-time salaried…

Wow. This was impressive.

I can't remember last time I saw anyone but lawyers manage to defend someone they really don't like

Re: Flatiron School settles for operating without license, employment/salary claims

#217

Post by acjohnson55 » Tue, Oct 24, 2017, 4:30 PM UTC

rahimnathwani wrote: post #187

JessRudder wrote: post #103

The issue isn't fake employment stats. If you read the AG release, the complaint was that "Flatiron did not disclose clearly and conspicuously" what the 98.5% and $75k numbers consisted of. This information was included, in detail, in each of their job reports. This is from their earliest one from December of 2014: "Of the 225 job seeking graduates with salary information available: a. 162 accepted full-time salaried…

It seems the headline numbers were intentionally misleading, not just not 'clear enough'.

I would agree, and I think a fine of this magnitude seems appropriate. "Buyer beware" is not a good excuse. In dream world where people have infinite time to parse fine print, it maybe could work. But in the real world, there is tremendous information asymmetry at play. A school should be focused on how to present information in a way that can be readily understood.