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Comment by vinceguidry | Hacker News Reader

> Getting a wide-ranging liberal education was never really that important, huh?

It's important, but it's also expensive. Unbelievably so. What I see happening is ambitious kids going here to gain marketable skills, and figure out what they like doing, and then using those skills to pay their way through college with a much better idea of what they want to do. That way you don't have to be saddled with a crapload of debt.

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That's a nice ideal. Have you considered that people will tend to do the former part and not the latter, leaving us with a population of people with obsolete skills and lacking the foundation to easily learn new ones?

I don't see any evidence that taking college classes lays any foundation for learning additional skills later

I have seen evidence that a fundamental understanding of computing makes it easier to learn particular languages later.

There's enough people in tech right now that don't have degrees. I'm one of them. So I doubt this would become a huge problem.

I submit that bootcamps are creating this problem right now. Many bootcamp graduates have poor grasps of the basics of computing, which will tend to limit their skill and career growth. For instance, it's difficult to grasp functional programming if imperative PHP is literally the only thing you know.

25% of your salary for 2 years is not a crapload of debt?

In fact, if your starting salary is 80k, this is ten thousand dollars MORE THAN the average college debt! And no opportunities to branch out of software engineering. Your starting salary would have to be around 55-60k for you to take on less debt than a typical four year degree, even accounting for subsidized interest rates.

edit for downvotes: here's the math: Average college debt is 27ish k. Bump it up to 30k for interest.

    80000 * .25 * 2 = 40k.
    60000 * .25 * 2 = 30k.

Is there something I'm missing?

You could argue that there's a two year opportunity cost here. I'm not so sure:

1) If your only goal is to become a web dev and you don't want any other background knowledge (that is, knowledge otuside of computer science), then you can do that in two years at most universities. What I mean by this is that the CS major portion of a degree is a little more than half your courseload most places.

2) But IMHO it's silly to major in CS without picking up a secondary major/minor in an interesting application area. So I it's at least debatable that there's a real opportunity cost benefit here.

Finally, to be fair, they seem well-connected. The YC etc. connections might help offset the comparatively high price.

I think there is an assumption that this enables such a job that otherwise would be unattainable. As an individual, of course you want the $80k job, despite the $60k job "requiring less debt", plus you then get to keep the $80k job after the 2 years.

If I want to optimize for longevity of career and salary, then a college degree is the obvious choice.

My assumption based on your posts is that you have a degree you are proud of and look down on those that don't. Anything that makes that choice seem unwise is quickly put down or dismissed. I find this attitude quite common with those that spent a lot of money for a piece of paper.

it'd be interesting to read the fine print

it'd be interesting to know the tax implications of that 25% (is it pre tax/post tax)

it appears to be risk free, as in, what happens if you flake out and move to India, or develop a debillitation illness, or simply decide that programming isn't for you

which is substantially different than the non-dischargeable debt that you might take on to attend college

The fact that the educational institution takes on the risk of graduating students who cannot get jobs is a welcome change from the consumer's perspective.

But I fear at scale (and even now) it's paid for by higher prices. See my comment below -- at standard SV salaries, they're burdening students with much more "debt" in two years than typical four year institutions.

And it's not like the unemployment rates for CS majors are atmospheric... most CS majors with the social skills to make it through the non-technical portion of an interview will find a job somewhere.

fair

what's the going rate for a developer boot camp these days?

10K or so?

if their placement rates are as good as they advertise (I don't really have a way of know if they are or not), this seems hardpressed to compete with those, especially if you combine a bootcamp education with the available MOOC options

It's expensive when you just flat out decide to go to an expensive school taking out a massive amount of debt when you're only 17/18. Whereas the same kind of education can be gotten at a public school.

The average cost of a public, 4 year university was $16k per year in 2012 [http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=76]. It's expensive everywhere. You can definitely rack up higher bills at some places than others, but going to a public university isn't going to save you from having debt. I went to a public, in-state university, didn't live on campus, and it still cost me about $10k a year for tuition (including the $500 of miscellaneous registration fees that they would tack on each semester, and textbook costs). That's near impossible money to make if you can't work full time and can't get any jobs that require a degree. The only reason I didn't go into debt was because I lucked out and got a good scholarship, and had a mother who put away a fund for me while I was younger.

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