Nanodegree Plus: Get hired within six months of graduating, or tuition refund
udacity.com
udacity.com
In reality, they did nothing. If the guy got selected, they kept the money; if he didn't, they gladly refunded it. Easy money.
My experience was the exact opposite - most Udacity courses seemed (disappointingly) lightweight. I remember taking their Object-Oriented JavaScript course, which is marked on their website with "intermediate difficulty", and completing it all in an evening.
The guarantee still doesn't prove that Udacity's credentialing process provides any incremental value above and beyond just taking the classes. Is it the knowledge, or the credential, that got you the gig? I'd like to see some kind of analysis comparing results for people who got certified vs. people who didn't.
Any hiring managers in this thread? Would you ever hire someone, say, with no degree or a BA in English Lit or something and no experience for an actual development role, if all they had was one of these nanodegrees?
Absolutely on the side of the 'disruptors' here, and agree that our existing educational model is hopelessly fucked from a cost-effectiveness and outcome perspective, but just not sure if it's worth it for someone to shell out $299+ for something that most employers won't recognize or value.
Would I have been able to have gotten the job without the actual Nanodegree? To be perfectly honest, probably. However, the Nanodegree provides structure to a rather cluttered catalogue of courses (not entirely a bad thing). Worth $200/mo? (That's how much it was for me to do it at the time). It depends on the person. Certainly cheaper than something like General Assembly or App Academy (not comparing the two as they are entirely different things, but they have similar "guarantees").
But knowing what projects I had to do, and what courses I needed to take to prepare for those projects, made it much easier for me to go through the curriculum, rather than just taking ALL of the front-end courses, ALL of the AJAX courses, etc.
Based on your comment it almost sounds like your "portfolio" is what got you the job, not the certificate itself. But I guess where the coursework comes in is giving you a project that's a) feasible at one's current level of skill b) able to be completed in a reasonable timeframe c) demonstrates real development chops. Kind of a sweet spot that you might not get to without some external nudging.
Personally I'm in a marketing role with some development aspects, but I'm trying to move into a more technical role in future and while I "feel" qualified to be a Python data hacker, I have nothing other than personal projects to show my skills. Might take a look at this.
Don't get me wrong; it definitely did!
However, I wouldn't have gotten this role without another credential I got (front-end certification at Free Code Camp); without that credential I wouldn't have been able to apply for the job.
The same wouldn't be said of Udacity, but I did need to attend office hours more than a few times. Had I not had access to office hours, I may not have continued on with my free curriculum. There's only so many times you can bang your head on the wall alone before you give up on something. But if you have someone else there to help you when you need it, then you can get past barriers more easily.
Protip: do as much of the free courses you can until you get stuck. Then enroll. They might hate me for saying that, but even Mike Wales (curriculum developer at Udacity) suggested that :)
Paying Iinternship or "freelancing programs" is a bit slippery. You freelanced once that is a job! This being said Udacity should be commended for taking a step forward and putting money up in a way to back up their service.
Then again, Udacity is really trying to be a Software Dev Technical School so that is par for the course imo.
They don't even promise a partner will take you for something. They just promise an "opportunity to make money".
"Oh, you don't want to make an Android app for $10, well we gave you the opportunity. We're sad to see you passed on it"
That is what I meant by something.
"Further, in your new job Udacity guarantees that your gross income from such job will be in excess of your cost of tuition (pre-tax) within a 3 month period following job placement."
> Further, in your new job Udacity guarantees that your gross income from such job will be in excess of your cost of tuition (pre-tax) within a 3 month period following job placement
But given you are paying about 3600 for the degree, that comes out to making minimum wage.
"* Graduate has not rejected any job offers."
* Obtain degree
* Turn down all jobs for 6 months
* Get refunded, then get a job.
If you were a "problem" or lacked potential, you'd get a job offer for either remote South Dakota or high in the Appalachians.
"Tuition refund guarantee not valid if offer of work turned down".
The name scheme is interesting because it tells you what you will become rather than what you will learn. The ML and Web Developer Nanodgrees are pretty new, but we already have reviews for the first two:
https://www.class-central.com/certificate/ios-developer-nano...
https://www.class-central.com/certificate/android-developer-...
But Udacity's part-time remote program is $299 a month, https://www.udacity.com/nanodegrees/nd009 so charging by percentages is less worthwhile.
If you graduated already, and therefore stopped paying tuition, it doesn't make sense for you to expect any additional services. I'm really grateful that, even a year past graduation, they still review my resumes and other professional documents. I haven't paid them a penny since I've graduated.
It's only for the Sr. FEND, iOS, Android, and Machine Learning programs.
As a side note, I graduated before they had the "receive half your tuition back" and when they added it in, I asked if I could get half my tuition back. Support said I wasn't eligible, but gave it to me anyway.
I'd suggest you at least contact them to see what they can do for you.
Although I was already quite technical (already running Debian as my OS of choice, back when it was not as frendly as it is now) I had a totally non-computer-related degree, so I decided to get some paper certs to get me started.
I found a recruitment company in London that also did training on the side - technical and also job application coaching. The deal came with a guarantee: job within 3 months paying £20K+ (at the time a very reasonable entry salary) or your money back.
I thought it was a great system - the company got a pool of candidates that they got to know well over a few months and supervised their training and we got a lot of help getting that entry job (more difficult at the entry level in my experience than later as you move higher up).
In the end I got a job before the end of the course and through a different agency but it was still a useful experience.
"Nano" implies "really small." So am I too understand that this degree will get me a really, really, really tiny bit of knowledge about the subject?
I think using the traditional term "certificate" is a better bet. It's also an easier thing to sell employers since they're already familiar with that language.
Traditionally, a degree can be very broad. For example, a CS degree can cover a lot of classes in different areas of Computer Science in addition to other non-major classes.
In contrast, a Nanodegree, sounds like a specialized degree to me. The Nano implies that it is small, but degree has that well known definition to most people. Together, it brings a sense of being a highly specialized program.
It's far from perfect and students shouldn't expect miracles, but it's a step in the right direction.
Edit: I feel dumb now. If you scroll down on the detail page, there is more information. For some reason I thought it was just the footer down there.
When I clicked through, it turned out that the person had also completed a 'B.S. in Computer Science at UCLA'.
rasheed [dot] bustamam [at] gmail [dot] com
Is it wrong for boot camps to do that?
I am genuinely asking since I'm not familiar with that. What exactly goes on and why is it bad?
Also, some bootcamps hire students that have trouble finding a job in order to keep their percentage of students finding jobs high.
Source: I was a bootcamp grad who was thrilled to be hired by my bootcamp. I learned a ton there. I work for Udacity now :)
rasheed [dot] bustamam [at] gmail [dot] com
I'm a Udacity graduate who works "for" Udacity as a code reviewer, and I had a mentorship role not too long ago.
The general rule was, if you don't know the answer, direct the students to more senior person, but there were very few questions that students had that I was unable to answer. I actually learned more as a mentor than I did as a student, which was nice.
They hire those students as teacher/aides. Most students want to be developers, not teachers, and are willing to pay $X to become a developer. Manipulating the hiring rates without full transparency re the odds of getting a real development job paints a false picture of value of the education.
So you basically operate a revolving door (or more like a ponzi scheme) and then get to "honor your guarantee for getting hired" in a way that is misleading.
Indeed it sounds unscrupulous.
This happens whenever any organization optimizes towards maximizing some narrowly-defined KPI: they find ways to game the system to juice their numbers.
[1] http://www.c-ville.com/uva-law-funds-the-first-jobs-of-many-... [2] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/12/16/corinthian-colleges...
1. People who just graduated from a 12 week bootcamp are not really practiced and skilled enough to be mentoring others, imo.
2. It sounds like a way to inflate the bootcamp's placement rates, which seems really sketchy and borderline false advertising to me.
My friend is considering this bootcamp around here called DevMountain and was telling me that the placement rate is supposedly around 90-95% within 3 months of graduation. This is for a 13-week program that costs over $10,000 I think. It might be a great program, but it sounds expensive to me and that placement rate sounds too good to be true. I warned my friend that they've probably found some way to manipulate that number, like people getting short-term contracts or something. My friend hears "90% placement within 3 months" and thinks he's got a 90% chance of getting a good, full-time job within 3 months of finishing the program (which is probably what the bootcamp wants him to think).
Unfortunately, it sounds like you could end up as a mentor for the program you just graduated from. Also, rejecting any job offer at all invalidates the refund.
This situation makes me sad. Udacity played a big role in helping me become a professional developer. But I think there are too many caveats here...
How was it?
Did it change anything in your life?
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I am an international student. Why is this restricted to the US?
We hope to expand this program in the near future to other countries. Stay tuned!
Just fyi, he is correct and that is the relevant text.
otherwise why would people bother stating the "or your money back" part?