Thread about Holberton School and the bootcamp warning signs
1–10 of 32 posts
Re: Thread about Holberton School and the bootcamp warning signs
#2Re: Thread about Holberton School and the bootcamp warning signs
#3I'm no fan of for profit boot camps, but also, we need to compare them to the alternative of 1/2 year CS or "data science" masters degrees from accredited universities:
- Cost: $$$ (50-100K or more) - No job guarantee or any incentive for the school to help - Lots of out of date material - Faculty could care less (there to do research, teaching is a secondary job) - Little career support (over worked job offices with 1-2 staff for 100s) - Few connections in major tech hubs (typically)
I would claim these programs are more predatory than these accelerators. And that's saying something!
The fact is, if you want to transition to tech after doing a non-technical undergraduate degree, it is going to be hard and there's really no shortcuts. But who has money to do a second undergraduate degree?
Re: Thread about Holberton School and the bootcamp warning signs
#4I remember someone posting her thread about Lambda School. I didn't find it very convincing. Definitely not convincing enough to justify her now calling it "trash".
Re: Thread about Holberton School and the bootcamp warning signs
#5ABET accreditation is still a very important thing to have. I am not terribly surprised.
Sounds like you'd learn more in a (non-ABET, even) community college for two years, at an absolute fraction of the cost, if you wanted to retool after undergrad.
Re: Thread about Holberton School and the bootcamp warning signs
#6Is anyone else shocked at people's willingness to take on nearly six figures of debt with so little research? Accredited or not, there are a significant amount of educational institutions churning out unemployed and underemployed graduates like it's their job.
Re: Thread about Holberton School and the bootcamp warning signs
#7This isn't a comment about Holberton (which I can't speak for), and sure an $85k cap for a school with no instructors is high, but I'd just like to point out that the methodology of "I'm going to find 3-4 students who want to complain about their school off the record" is not a good way to consider the quality of schools.
Imagine what would happen if someone went after... any school you've ever attended with such an approach. Think they could find a half dozen students to rant and rave about how the school was awful? Certainly.
Of course, I'm biased - she has another thread about Lambda School (where I'm CEO), and reading the criticisms I know exactly who the students are. It says something that of the 6,000+ Lambda School students of all-time I can pick out the 3 or 4 complaining from the complaints, and if you dug into those students' complaints you would find there's much more at play than what is mentioned.
Re: Thread about Holberton School and the bootcamp warning signs
#8How do you separate out the bad schools (or is there a list of good ones)? I have exactly one data point: my girlfriend did General Assembly in Austin and had a good experience. I don't know if that translates to other GA locations, and I certainly have no idea which other schools are and aren't legitimate. It seems more and more that she just got incredibly lucky signing up for one that wasn't a scam.
Re: Thread about Holberton School and the bootcamp warning signs
#9How do you separate out the bad schools (or is there a list of good ones)? I have exactly one data point: my girlfriend did General Assembly in Austin and had a good experience. I don't know if that translates to other GA locations, and I certainly have no idea which other schools are and aren't legitimate. It seems more and more that she just got incredibly lucky signing up for one that wasn't a scam.
The best way is to take a sampling of students who attended that school and ask them directly.
As someone who runs a school, all the review sites are so easily gamed it's not even a data point you should consider. I've literally seen schools ask, "Did you have a good experience?" If yes -> go leave a review, if no -> submit this feedback form. Like it's the app store.
Re: Thread about Holberton School and the bootcamp warning signs
#10I'm no fan of for profit boot camps, but also, we need to compare them to the alternative of 1/2 year CS or "data science" masters degrees from accredited universities: - Cost: $$$ (50-100K or more) - No job guarantee or any incentive for the school to help - Lots of out of date material - Faculty could care less (there to do research, teaching is a secondary job) - Little career support (over worked job offices with…
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