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Show HN: Make School – College replacement for founders and developers

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Re: Show HN: Make School – College replacement for founders and developers

#11

Post by Kalium »

vinceguidry wrote: post #5
Jimmy wrote: post #4

I'm confused. College is amazing. Why would you want a college replacement? >Your education will be focused on building apps and websites that improve the lives of those around you. Getting a wide-ranging liberal education was never really that important, huh?

> Getting a wide-ranging liberal education was never really that important, huh? It's important, but it's also expensive. Unbelievably so. What I see happening is ambitious kids going here to gain marketable skills, and figure out what they like doing, and then using those skills to pay their way through college with a much better idea of what they want to do. That way you don't have to be saddled with a crapload of…

That's a nice ideal. Have you considered that people will tend to do the former part and not the latter, leaving us with a population of people with obsolete skills and lacking the foundation to easily learn new ones?

Re: Show HN: Make School – College replacement for founders and developers

#12

Post by pnathan »

> 2 month capstone project where you can build a startup or dive deep into computer science topics like artificial intelligence and machine learning.

There is no deep in two months. There's broad, there's skim, there's sophomoric. But there's no deep. Particularly for people not already seasoned and experienced in ingesting vast quantities of difficult data and drawing out inferences.

Edit: Some more notes. There are 6 headliners in https://www.makeschool.com/education. Of those, one (CS) was covered adequately in my college career, one was given lip service (Communication, something I struggle with today), one I learned on my own (Open source), app dev & web dev were largely irrelevant to my education (principles over practice), and networking (people, not wires) was totally neglected.

Communication and networking are both subjects that deserve to be a higher priority in collegiate CS environments.

My perspective is that this is essentially a trade school, which is a good thing. It's not a replacement for a four year degree, it's a two year degree, which is something basically lacking in the software world. Now, if this general package could be rolled up into a traditional two-year trade school, I'd be all for it.

Re: Show HN: Make School – College replacement for founders and developers

#13

Post by nmrm2 »

CzechsMix wrote: post #3

So what you're saying is we've found a way to fund education without debt to students or taxes, and the school has an incentive to get you internships so that you graduate with work experience AND incentive to place you at the highest paying job after college? Consider my interest piqued.

Read the admissions page. It's a well-connected trade school for gifted students entering the tech industry as defined by SV, not a scalable alternative and repeatable model for general-purpose higher ed.

edit: This isn't judgemental. Nothing wrong with trade school But that's what this is.

Re: Show HN: Make School – College replacement for founders and developers

#14

Post by nmrm2 »

cdr wrote: post #9
vinceguidry wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Getting a wide-ranging liberal education was never really that important, huh? It's important, but it's also expensive. Unbelievably so. What I see happening is ambitious kids going here to gain marketable skills, and figure out what they like doing, and then using those skills to pay their way through college with a much better idea of what they want to do. That way you don't have to be saddled with a crapload of…

25% of your salary for 2 years is not a crapload of debt?

In fact, if your starting salary is 80k, this is ten thousand dollars MORE THAN the average college debt! And no opportunities to branch out of software engineering. Your starting salary would have to be around 55-60k for you to take on less debt than a typical four year degree, even accounting for subsidized interest rates.

edit for downvotes: here's the math: Average college debt is 27ish k. Bump it up to 30k for interest.

    80000 * .25 * 2 = 40k.
    60000 * .25 * 2 = 30k.
Is there something I'm missing?

--

You could argue that there's a two year opportunity cost here. I'm not so sure:

1) If your only goal is to become a web dev and you don't want any other background knowledge (that is, knowledge otuside of computer science), then you can do that in two years at most universities. What I mean by this is that the CS major portion of a degree is a little more than half your courseload most places.

2) But IMHO it's silly to major in CS without picking up a secondary major/minor in an interesting application area. So I it's at least debatable that there's a real opportunity cost benefit here.

Finally, to be fair, they seem well-connected. The YC etc. connections might help offset the comparatively high price.

Re: Show HN: Make School – College replacement for founders and developers

#15

Post by CzechsMix »

nmrm2 wrote: post #13
CzechsMix wrote: post #3

So what you're saying is we've found a way to fund education without debt to students or taxes, and the school has an incentive to get you internships so that you graduate with work experience AND incentive to place you at the highest paying job after college? Consider my interest piqued.

Read the admissions page. It's a well-connected trade school for gifted students entering the tech industry as defined by SV, not a scalable alternative and repeatable model for general-purpose higher ed. edit: This isn't judgemental. Nothing wrong with trade school But that's what this is.

Yes, now it's a very specific, tough to get in trade school.

You might recall it was quite a luxury to have a mobile phone not too long ago.

Demand for this kind of education might persuade others to implement a similar model, and I don't see any major roadblocks for other areas.

Employers will finally get graduates with work experience, as well as access to cheap intern labor.

Looks worth exploring if nothing else.

Re: Show HN: Make School – College replacement for founders and developers

#16

Post by nmrm2 »

pnathan wrote: post #12

> 2 month capstone project where you can build a startup or dive deep into computer science topics like artificial intelligence and machine learning. There is no deep in two months. There's broad, there's skim, there's sophomoric. But there's no deep. Particularly for people not already seasoned and experienced in ingesting vast quantities of difficult data and drawing out inferences. Edit: Some more notes. There are…

But they're looking for top students, so presumably their competitors are MIT, CMU, Stanford, etc. rather than the local Community College.

Trade schools are great things, but I'm not sure I could feel comfortable advising a student to turn down MIT for a trade school, even one with really great connections.

Re: Show HN: Make School – College replacement for founders and developers

#17

Post by zeeshanm »

vinceguidry wrote: post #5
Jimmy wrote: post #4

I'm confused. College is amazing. Why would you want a college replacement? >Your education will be focused on building apps and websites that improve the lives of those around you. Getting a wide-ranging liberal education was never really that important, huh?

> Getting a wide-ranging liberal education was never really that important, huh? It's important, but it's also expensive. Unbelievably so. What I see happening is ambitious kids going here to gain marketable skills, and figure out what they like doing, and then using those skills to pay their way through college with a much better idea of what they want to do. That way you don't have to be saddled with a crapload of…

It's expensive when you just flat out decide to go to an expensive school taking out a massive amount of debt when you're only 17/18. Whereas the same kind of education can be gotten at a public school.

Re: Show HN: Make School – College replacement for founders and developers

#18

Post by pitt1980 »

cdr wrote: post #9
vinceguidry wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Getting a wide-ranging liberal education was never really that important, huh? It's important, but it's also expensive. Unbelievably so. What I see happening is ambitious kids going here to gain marketable skills, and figure out what they like doing, and then using those skills to pay their way through college with a much better idea of what they want to do. That way you don't have to be saddled with a crapload of…

25% of your salary for 2 years is not a crapload of debt?

it'd be interesting to read the fine print

it'd be interesting to know the tax implications of that 25% (is it pre tax/post tax)

it appears to be risk free, as in, what happens if you flake out and move to India, or develop a debillitation illness, or simply decide that programming isn't for you

which is substantially different than the non-dischargeable debt that you might take on to attend college

Re: Show HN: Make School – College replacement for founders and developers

#19

Post by ajaymehta »

Having met some of the students that went through Make School's summer session, I was very impressed. They seemed to be more widely-experienced and driven than your average student at a top-tier school. Excited to see that Make School is turning this into a full two-year program.

Re: Show HN: Make School – College replacement for founders and developers

#20

Post by pitt1980 »

nmrm2 wrote: post #16
pnathan wrote: post #12

> 2 month capstone project where you can build a startup or dive deep into computer science topics like artificial intelligence and machine learning. There is no deep in two months. There's broad, there's skim, there's sophomoric. But there's no deep. Particularly for people not already seasoned and experienced in ingesting vast quantities of difficult data and drawing out inferences. Edit: Some more notes. There are…

But they're looking for top students , so presumably their competitors are MIT, CMU, Stanford, etc. rather than the local Community College. Trade schools are great things, but I'm not sure I could feel comfortable advising a student to turn down MIT for a trade school, even one with really great connections.

considering the price tag of those schools, they should be the most vulnerable to competition
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