These courses seem like a good way to expand one's experience however I don't think they should be used as a substitute for a formal education. Also with all the free/cheap resources available I don't understand how you can justify spending 8,000 - 20,000 dollars on this. There is no way you can expect to replace a four year degree with an 8-12 week crash course regardless of the length of the days.
What about App Academy? I feel like this article does not address the business model of investing in the students until they get a job. http://www.appacademy.io
I did App Academy in the summer of 2012, and learned iOS from them, in fact. I used all my vacation from my employer to take the class, and when it was done I successfully interviewed with our mobile team. I've been there ever since.
in my opinion, hack schools are a complete waste of money. For $ 10k you are over paying. Personally as an Economics major I started with codeacademy a few months ago, git the basics and then started a project. between stack overflow, a dozen other forums and github I am learning quite a lot, and with results. Part of software engineering is quality if products not background academically and am sure with one more year I could be a more than passable apprentice in this
shrug depending on exactly how the instructional hours work out, ~10k for 8-12 weeks is actually more or less on par with standard engineering tuition. For example, I pay ~7k for 13 weeks of actual instruction (exams don't count I feel...) at ~25 formal instructional hours from professors/TAs per week. I mean, there's lots of opportunities for informal instructional hours to get your value for your money, but honestly, like ~80% of students don't take advantage of that anyways.