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Comment by samcheng | Hacker News Reader

This is an interesting reaction to the "bootcamp" trend (and subsequent implosion).

I think it has a better chance of succeeding: you might not need four years of university education to become an entry-level developer, but a few weeks of intensive "bootcamp" training isn't enough.

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It really depends on the prequisite knowledge that you have. If you're good in reading knitting patterns, it means you have a tack for algorithms. If you know propositional logic because you were a philosophy major, then if-statements are basically a syntactic difference and nothing else.

When I was a bootcamp instructor I noticed that my top students were able to pick up React Native or Electron without me teaching them. One student needed to learn the basics of Python, PHP and later on Java Spring Boot. He was capable of doing that.

For students that are in the lowest 33% I would agree, but for everyone above that there is a debate and for the top students it is not a question in my opinion. They are employable, even for different technologies. Of course, they still have a lot to learn, but they also have demonstrated they're capable of doing that making them an investment that's easily calculated whether he/she will be an asset or not.

As someone with experience teaching younger people (middle school students) programming, I have also seen this three-way split, though it may not be an even one.

1. Learners who will succeed, regardless of the amount and nature of instruction.

2. Learners who will not be able to grasp the material, due to lack of engagement, interest, self-efficacy, or some other related factors that cannot easily be fixed in a one-to-many classroom setting.

3. Learners who will succeed with the right kind of instruction, but will flounder without it.

Effective instructors try to gauge who falls into the third category, and then concentrating their efforts on these individuals.

As an enterprise boot camp instructor who taught the same fullstack web dev curriculum to career desktop application engineers at a big company, I saw this three-way split as well.

Its how teachers in the UK put most effort in getting D level students to a C and tend to ignore both the struggling and high achievers.

I think the other advantage is that at most community colleges you are required to branch out from technical topics and take at least a few humanities and liberal arts courses. You end up coming out slightly more well-rounded which can be hugely beneficial both career and life wise.

Is there actually good evidence on the value of a "well-rounded education"?

But in any case, I don't think shoe-horning general education into what is basically jobs training is the right approach. We put kids through 12 years of "general education", if we haven't succeeded at that point, why would a few more college credits help?

I’m not sure that knowing about Æthelred the Unready is particularly useful for most jobs, but if you think of these classes as (covertly) teaching critical thinking and writing skills, then perhaps they make some sense even if you don’t value knowing about the world beyond your particular specialization.

But are they actually teaching critical thinking successfully? And why would you need to wait until college for those effects to show up? The humanities classes are taught throughout regular schooling.

The community college where I teach has English 001C: Critical Thinking/Composition -- “This course presents the elements of critical reasoning and logic. Students will learn to identify the basic structures of arguments and the ways people use language to fortify or to falsify arguments. Students will analyze and demonstrate these techniques by writing and critiquing essays and using research strategies.”

So, does this course actually work at instilling critical thinking in students, outside the narrow classroom setting? Does this effect persist over the long term? Is it better or worse to teach this in the context of composition, or something more domain-specific, e.g. economics/government policy?

I feel like people making claims that education that students don't ask for is useful have the burden of showing that it is does what they say it will, empirically, and not get to hand wave about "critical thinking" or "well-roundedness".

Not at that level its only when you get to A level and Uni you realy get to do much critical thinking.

Helps you pass the "Airport Test" If you have spent your uni years rote learning you not going to do very well.

If say you had been in the foot lights (Cambridge) got a blue or been on university challenge.

Our in a very interesting case when I worked at BT, been a under 21 international and had his foot blown off in the Balkan wars and been medevac'd to the UK

you're not required to do humanities/liberal arts at US universities?

It varies, but students are typically required to do anything from half a year to one year of breadth courses outside their major, which would mean arts and humanities courses for those headed into technical disciplines. But many students take what are called AP courses in high school which count as college credits, and quite a few students are able to satisfy breadth requirements that way. And some narrow programs, such as engineering degrees, require next to no work outside the main field of study.

On the other hand, at some institutions one can satisfy the major minimally without a whole lot of courses, leaving plenty of time for non-technical courses.

So to summarize, there is a lot of variability. A US graduate in a technical discipline may have taken anywhere from zero to two years of arts and humanities courses.

Outside the USA and its cultural appendages, Canada, South Korea and the like, it is assumed that anyone who goes to university has studied the liberal arts at secondary/high school. Given the low quality of secondary education in the US in the formative period of its third level system this could not be assumed so what would in Europe be considered (grammar school) high school classes and subjects are taught at university.

The big differences in Universities between the US and Europe developed over a century ago and were the result of philosophical disagreements about what qualifies as a liberal education. It had nothing to do with poor quality secondary education.

Parts of the US have world class secondary education and parts don't--just like Europe. Even taken as a whole the US education system ranks higher than many countries in Europe.

>South Korea

The South Korean education system is nothing like the US education system. It's hard to think of a large country more different from the US in this regard.

The US doesn't have "low standards", it has broader access to liberal arts education than Europe. It ends universal secondary education at grade 12, so the grade 13 (at college) completes the "liberal arts" foundation. European countries simply do grades 12 and 13 in a separate school between secondary school and university, for students that weren't forced out after grade 11.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sixth_form_college

You've somehow gotten strange ideas about the programs available at US high schools.

For instance, calculus is pretty widely available even if it isn't a diploma requirement.

I was referring to the “boot camps” that have popped up and not so much universities (where you are required to do those things, yes).

> (and subsequent implosion)

Can you elaborate?

Probably referring to articles like this: http://hackeducation.com/2017/07/22/bootcamp-bust

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