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 :)