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Comment by ProblemFactory | Hacker News Reader

> But there was no stipulation that the job needed to be in tech or anything. So the whole thing might be a total waste of time and you would still have to fork away a cut of your salary when you find a job as a kitchen hand or whatever.

But isn't it objectively less "scummy" than charging money up front, which most universities do? Then if you fail to find a good job after graduation, you are still responsible for the full amount regardless of your income.

Some minimum threshold before the percentage is taken off would make sense - the "tax" would be insignificant income to the university but a high cost to someone working for minimum wage as a kitchen hand.

But restricting it to tech is not that obvious. Every office job in the modern world benefits from a) having some sort of degree paper, and b) having some tech skills.

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FYI we (Holberton) have a minimum threshold: if you don't find a job or if it under 40k you don't pay us back because we failed at either training you or selecting you as a student.

> ...or selecting you as a student

IMO this is primarily where many universities are failing, which is an enormous disservice to their students.

Any reasonably intelligent and dedicated student can go to university and come out the other end with a well-paying job.

> Any reasonably intelligent and dedicated student can go to university and come out the other end with a well-paying job.

That's a pretty restrictive filter. Currently you have to be at least two of smart, goal-directed, and curious to make it through the university system with a decent education and good job prosepcts. Many other students make it through with good job prospects but no real education because they were able to bull their way through an in-demand major program. But a lot of them slip through the cracks and end up with neither job nor education.

> That's a pretty restrictive filter

I agree. Ideally, tuition would be extremely subsidized and higher ed wouldn't constitute an enormous financial gamble. But in the current US system, the restrictive filter really is in the students' best interest.

That's a rather self-serving criteria, isn't it? Oh, you failed to get a job? Must be because you weren't reasonably intelligent enough!

It's not self-serving to tell someone "really, no, you shouldn't take out a big loan to pay for this because you're probably unprepared and will fail".

On the contrary, taking literally every student who can get a federal student loan -- regardless of your faith in their ability to get something meaningful out of the degree -- is extremely selfish!

90%! of my childhood friends succeeded at getting a degree but failed at that "well paying job" part.

Graduating is the easy part.

Interestingly enough, that's around the same number I came up with as a minimum wage for students with big loans to pay back a University. People would tell me that $15 an hour or so for IT work like we get out here was decent pay for new people. I said a lot of these people have Bachelor's degrees with minimum payments of $2,000 a month. Lowest cost-of-living out here (poor people life) + that payment = you need at least $40,000 a year just to scrape by. People just don't get how the traditional model of education plus companies not paying people anything puts such a financial burden on graduates that they're damn-near better off taking a no-degree approach.

Did you go to a private school? Federal loans (~90% of all student loans are Federal) have income based repayment plans.

Under the income based repayment plan, a single person making $15/hour 40 hours/week would only need to pay about $100 per month.

Yep. A choice I regret now.

> But isn't it objectively less "scummy" than charging money up front, which most universities do?

It entirely depends on the price and what you're getting for that price. I generally agree with you that the model is 1) interesting and 2) not at all scummy.

But the cost-benefit on these coding schools always confuses me.

The total cost of one of this certificate is probably something in the 30k-60k+ range assuming you're successful (location is SF -- and marketing print specifically mentions Google et al). That's just tuition, not cost of living. And that's for two 9 month project-based sessions.

For reference, the average student loan debt is 37k for four years and an accredited diploma. Which, okay, might not be the full cost. But to be fair, you can DEFINITELY pay for college in 100% debt + weekend jobs/internships, and come out in the 20k-25k range. And that's total cost, with no scholarships, assuming you go to a second-tier state school or can live at home (ok, that skews total cost, but it's a very real option for many, many students!).

IMO universities are the clear winner in this cost-benefit calculation. Hands down, no questions asked. You can double or triple major and have one or two very tenable backup careers if a tech bubble bursts. In addition to that, if you want, you'll have everything you would learn at a coding school. Plus some extra theory/systems knowledge that opens up the non-web-dev job market. Graduate school is an option if you want to go the research route. And, very likely, you'll have a much larger network of close-knit peers that includes not only coders but also managers, engineers, business types, doctors, lawyers, etc. Immigration becomes easier. You'll have some physics/chemistry/calculus knowledge as well as some econ knowledge if you choose the right courses. And so on.

The problem is that a lot of people don't take full advantage of university while they're there, or choose universities that don't align with their goals. I think coding schools are weird in this respect -- IMO they tend to be pretty expensive for what you're getting, but maybe the target clientele wouldn't thrive in a university environment or don't want to take 4 years to get a holistic education.

So again, not at all scummy! But also IMO definitely not a better deal than the traditional route.

In terms of scumminess I think it is relevant that the student loans (mostly) come from the federal government. Neither the for-profit or nominally non-profit universities bear any risk of default. They make sure to get all their cash up front. This means that their incentives are as well aligned as they might be.

One interesting proposal I've seen is to create a 'skin in the game' rule akin to the one that was supposed to go into place for mortgage originators under Dodd-Frank (but mostly didn't). That is require educational institutions themselves to finance and hold part of the student loans used to pay for their programs.

Agreed, 100%!

> That is require educational institutions themselves to finance and hold part of the student loans used to pay for their programs.

Wouldn't this requirement make "17%" institutions illegal? I think the 17% approach is reasonable. IMO coding schools should be allowed to offer bona fide diplomas. Maybe not Bachelor's Degrees, but they should be able to get accredited and be eligible for GI bill etc.

The last thing higher ed needs is even larger moats.

So, skin in the game -- absolutely! But not at the expense of making it even harder for new players to enter the market.

I would think that the skin in the game requirement would be tied into eligibility for federal student loans. Since a 17% institution wouldn't be using those it wouldn't impact them. I agree that model is even better at aligning incentives and shouldn't be forbidden.

What would a bona fide diploma be? A diploma is just a certificate that you have completed a course. It's not legally protected in any way is it?

It's not the certification of the student that matters; it's the accreditation of the company providing the education! You can't use your GI bill benefits or subsidized student loans at most coding schools. That's a shame in cases where the coding school is high quality!

If the coding school is an accredited degree-granting institution, then federal/state assistance can be used to pay for the education.

Your $37k debt figure sounds low...really low. I graduated 20 years ago with a (then average) debt load of ~$20k. Tuition rates and debt loads have skyrocketed since then. $37k could represent average debt load including those who have been paying for years already but I'd love to see your source for that figure.

Here's where I got the number; no citation but they do stipulate 2016 at time of graduation: https://studentloanhero.com/student-loan-debt-statistics/

Here's a breakdown by state for 2015 from a more legit looking source and a report I don't have time to read; they actually put it at 30k: http://ticas.org/posd/map-state-data

> Tuition rates and debt loads have skyrocketed since then

Total debt load across the entire population has skyrocketed in part because there are a lot more people attending college and during the recession a lot of people weren't paying off their loans, so that number could be misleading for this reason. Could be that debt load at graduation per pupil has not increased, but total debt load has skyrocketed.

Tuition rates have certainly increased, but it's really hard to find data on what people are actually paying outside of borrowing rates. I graduated high school with high ACTs but an extremely low GPA and still had >66% "scholarship"... Tuition != amount paid. If you have "actual amount paid" data I'd love to see it.

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