"I’ve been for them because they aim to help people learn to code and try to keep costs low compared to a similar degree from a university. I’ve been against them because most just take my books, teach my material, then rip off students for $15k programs that don’t actually get anyone deployed."

Isn't that what traditional education/university courses do?... but over a much longer period of time and more money?

Light is the best disinfectant, I hope your post spark some strong discussion because that rarely happens with universities and the stakeholders.

I wonder very strongly what happened to the students of Livingsocial's Hungry Academy experiment led by Jeff Casimer and JumpStartLabs in 2012. It was a initial class of 8-15 or something with promised contracts at the end. LivingSocial chose not to continue the program and I believe gschool(galvanize) spawned off of that model.

Jeff talking about his vision for teaching people to code on ruby rogues in 2012 http://rubyrogues.com/050-rr-hungry-academy-with-jeff-casimi...

I started Dev Bootcamp in early spring 2013, signing up after lamenting that http://pragmaticstudio.com/ in Reston, VA was 2-3,000 for a 3 day course. It just made sense in comparison.

I've found Dev Bootcamp to change and evolve as time moved due to student feedback(I parttime coached students there to stay in touch). The curiosity to learn everything and knowing how to find the answers was my favorite takeaway from the bootcamp.