Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

makeschool.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 101 posts

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

#21

Post by vinceguidry »

Kalium wrote: post #11
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…

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?

There's enough people in tech right now that don't have degrees. I'm one of them. So I doubt this would become a huge problem.

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

#22

Post by pitt1980 »

Kalium wrote: post #11
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…

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?

I don't see any evidence that taking college classes lays any foundation for learning additional skills later

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

#23

Post by Kalium »

pitt1980 wrote: post #22
Kalium wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I don't see any evidence that taking college classes lays any foundation for learning additional skills later

I have seen evidence that a fundamental understanding of computing makes it easier to learn particular languages later.

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

#24

Post by Kalium »

vinceguidry wrote: post #21
Kalium wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

There's enough people in tech right now that don't have degrees. I'm one of them. So I doubt this would become a huge problem.

I submit that bootcamps are creating this problem right now. Many bootcamp graduates have poor grasps of the basics of computing, which will tend to limit their skill and career growth. For instance, it's difficult to grasp functional programming if imperative PHP is literally the only thing you know.

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

#25

Post by nmrm2 »

pitt1980 wrote: post #18
cdr wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The fact that the educational institution takes on the risk of graduating students who cannot get jobs is a welcome change from the consumer's perspective.

But I fear at scale (and even now) it's paid for by higher prices. See my comment below -- at standard SV salaries, they're burdening students with much more "debt" in two years than typical four year institutions.

And it's not like the unemployment rates for CS majors are atmospheric... most CS majors with the social skills to make it through the non-technical portion of an interview will find a job somewhere.

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

#26

Post by Igglyboo »

codingdave wrote: post #2

Sounds like a good program, at least from your marketing. But I would market is an alternative to college, not a replacement. It is a just a matter of word choice, but the word replacement could take you down a road of comparison that isn't required and may distract your efforts. "Alternative" lets you focus on what you offer, and the value it will bring to a student's life, without getting caught into the mess of ar…

I thought the same thing.

The word "replacement", to me, makes it sounds like they think they are strictly better than college when in fact they are not, there are advantages and disadvantages to both. Also it comes off as somewhat arrogant.

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

#27

Post by mklim »

zeeshanm wrote: post #17
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…

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.

The average cost of a public, 4 year university was $16k per year in 2012 [http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=76]. It's expensive everywhere. You can definitely rack up higher bills at some places than others, but going to a public university isn't going to save you from having debt. I went to a public, in-state university, didn't live on campus, and it still cost me about $10k a year for tuition (including the $500 of miscellaneous registration fees that they would tack on each semester, and textbook costs). That's near impossible money to make if you can't work full time and can't get any jobs that require a degree. The only reason I didn't go into debt was because I lucked out and got a good scholarship, and had a mother who put away a fund for me while I was younger.

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

#28

Post by swatow »

pitt1980 wrote: post #20
nmrm2 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

But almost all top schools have needs-blind admissions which means that if you get in, they will provide the financial aid that you need if you can't afford it. So it's actually very unlikely someone gets into a top school but then decides it's not worth the money (assuming the school is worth the money, which it is, and the only issue is whether they can afford it right now).

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

#29

Post by pnathan »

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.

Looking beyond their marketing, their offering seems very much a trade school curricula. Which is not wrong, bad, or something that shouldn't exist. But it will not be within shouting distance of a decent four-year degree for education.

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

#30

Post by pitt1980 »

nmrm2 wrote: post #25
pitt1980 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The fact that the educational institution takes on the risk of graduating students who cannot get jobs is a welcome change from the consumer's perspective. But I fear at scale (and even now) it's paid for by higher prices. See my comment below -- at standard SV salaries, they're burdening students with much more "debt" in two years than typical four year institutions. And it's not like the unemployment rates for CS m…

fair

what's the going rate for a developer boot camp these days?

10K or so?

if their placement rates are as good as they advertise (I don't really have a way of know if they are or not), this seems hardpressed to compete with those, especially if you combine a bootcamp education with the available MOOC options

Post reply on HN