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Comment by josephwegner | Hacker News Reader

What a bummer that the tuition for this is still $30k for a year. I just can't imagine that $30k/year is a sustainable economic model for higher education. Especially in the technical arena, you can become proficient enough to get a junior-level engineering job pretty easily. Definitely for a lot cheaper than $30k.

I say this as a self-taught engineer - never went to college, and I've now got a pretty great software engineering job. Dropping $30k for a year of training (or, even worse, $30k/year for 4 years!) would have been a huge waste.

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$30k seems unreasonable. You can go to Canada, receive CS education from University of Waterloo for 22k/year international student tuition + 500/month rent * 12 months + 500/month living expense * 12 months = 32k / year. Granted admission will be far more difficult, but why would you pay $30k to an institution that is charging as much as a reputable university? I hope they reevaluate the price for the program.

CS creates computer scientists. It doesn't necessarily make good programmers. You can't compare this to CS.

The model in a year-long bootcamp (which is what this is) is vastly more expensive to operate than classic CS education. Being in this business, I think you'd be surprised by the numbers. They're probably barely breaking even at that tuition amount.

>>CS creates computer scientists. It doesn't necessarily make good programmers.

This is making the line between theory and practice too bright, there's actually quite a bit of overlap.

By 19 I was already working as a dev at a game studio you would know well and made a difficult decision to leave and do a CS degree.

It was incredibly worthwhile in my case, and I rely on theory and foundations learned all the time in the real world.

The point is yes you can get a job without a degree but in some cases you will never be quite as strong without investing in that foundation.

You make it sound like what matters most is not actually studying CS but getting a CS degree. Is there something special about getting a degree that would cause a programmer to "never be quite as strong" if they studied CS but not for a degree, for example outside of the traditional college system? Most of the science seems to be freely available, if one is willing to put in the effort needed to learn it without the assistance of a professor.

Yes, there is great quality content available free and online. But it is incredibly rare for some to get a CS level education from it, because it's not something you can easily do part time. Even if you just try to learn the materials from core CS classes I've taken, that's a few textbooks, a few large projects, and a LOT of hours of studying and work. College lets you get that done all at once - if I tried to give myself a "CS education" while having a full time job, I am pretty confident I would have failed. It certainly couldn't come in just a few years.

True, but Waterloo in particular is known for having a great coop program and producing people who know their stuff.

That is true now although it is quite hard to get in. I'm at UW for grad school (not cs) and I don't think I could of gotten into UW with my high school marks for CS or engineering.

It should be noted that top-tier tech colleges (E.g. CMU) are $30k/semester nowadays.

I don't think paying half price is worth the lack of name/credibility, at the least.

I think you mean "prestigious, private" tech colleges ... there are plenty of public universities that rank well in CS and other tech disciplines. Many are under $30K/year with room and board.

I agree. I'm in a similar situation, except I attended a hacker school in Chicago for some exposure. I got some great work experience and it got me a job -- and my tuition was just $3000. I guess this is a more sustainable cost for a business in California, but it's still high.

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