Slashdot Mirror
California Regulator Seeks To Shut Down 'Learn To Code' Bootcamps
cultiv8 writes: "The Bureau for Private Postsecondary Education (BPPE), a unit in the California Department of Consumer Affairs charged with licensing and regulating postsecondary education in California, is arguing that 'learn to code' bootcamps fall under its jurisdiction and are subject to regulation. In mid-January, BPPE sent cease and desist letters to Hackbright Academy, Hack Reactor, App Academy, Zipfian Academy, and others. Unless they comply, these organizations face imminent closure and a hefty $50,000 fine. A BPPE spokesperson said these organizations have two weeks to start coming into compliance."
Yep. This sounds like California.
I won't join Slashcott. OTOH, If Beta goes live, I just won't be back until it's fixed. Sorry Dice.
then surely there is good reason that this should be regulated.
“Our primary goal is not to collect a fine. It is to drive them to comply with the law,” said Russ Heimerich, a spokesperson for BPPE. Heimerich is confident that these companies would lose in court if they attempt to fight BPPE.
Sounds like a real charmer...
Control is only a part of the equation. I bet they're after money. Control and money go hand-in-hand, especially in this state.
I won't join Slashcott. OTOH, If Beta goes live, I just won't be back until it's fixed. Sorry Dice.
I absolutely detest the word "compliance." For some reason, it seems out of character to be used in what is ostensibly a "free society."
What are the regulations regarding wilderness survival camps? What about rock & roll fantasy camps? Is he going to start going after knitting retreats?
If these places are not offering a recognized credential of completion (such as a degree or certificate recognized by the prevailing accreditation bodies), then they are not an educational institution subject to state regulation. Instead, they fall under Federal Dept. of Ed Work Training facilities.
Federal Law is settled on this, and there are at least 100 cases that I can find that set this precedent.
So, what does compliance involve? That's the first question we should be asking.
If your local libertarian hot dog stand guy rages at you about maybe being shut down because the health department is on his back, instead of saying "fuck guvment", maybe you should figure out if it's something as simple as them having hygiene standards for how he cooks, and some small fee for a license. I mean, maybe there is something unreasonable or crazy, and there are some industries that corrupt government and do rent-seeking in order to limit competition, but these details matter.
For every problem, there is at least one solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
Ok, I'm gonna go ahead and disagree with you there. Would you care to cite any of these "100 cases" for us laypeople?
Maybe if colleges could teach software development there wouldn't be a need for these code bootcamps.
http://soylentnews.org/~tibman
The summary makes it sound like these are people in makerspaces getting free skills. The article says that these places are charging tuition $15k - $19k for an intensive (~ few months) training course, presumably with a certificate of completion. The state and the public have a vested interest in ensuring people get their money's worth. The article also states that the bureau doesn't not demand immediate compliance in 2 weeks, but that they show progress towards attaining compliance. Look around you. Experience shows that the free market is not effective at eliminating scammers. Sometimes regulation and auditing is good.
Not sure if you realize, but these camps are typical of private education that doesn't give you "credits" in that they cost an arm and a leg. They cost as much as my Master's Degree cost me.
There's actually a pretty good reason there are accredation standards in education. People are paying a lot of money. It's hard for someone to know (without actually taking the course) if the course is valuable or worthless. There are plenty of shysters out there who couldn't care less if you learn - they're just out for your money, and provide as little education as they can get away with ('For Profit" online universities are, IMO, more scam than educators).
Whether it's a government or a private body, setting clear expectations on curriculum standards and certifying compliance with them is a highly useful service to keep students from getting victimized. Which means "compliance" with someone else's idea of what a reasonable student needs is not only not anathema, it can be a Very Good Thing.
Being free to dupe people into paying a lot of money for a worthless service isn't exactly in character with a "free society" in any but the most extreme laisse faire ideologies.
Any financial transaction. This is fairly standard.
If I beat you every day your whole life, it's "fairly standard" but does not make it right.
There's lots of transactions that are not really regulated, especially cash ones...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I know what kind of developers bootcamp programs produce in 12 to 16 weeks. About 25% of them are useful as developers. 50% are useful as QA. And 25% are useful for converting O2 to CO2.
I do find the luv/hate libertarian thing kinda funny when these things come up. Statist sorts believe that since people are fallible, there needs to be people to regulate people. Libertarians believe that since people can't be trusted to run the lives of other people, then we need to trust individuals instead of groups. Both sorts miss the fact that the basic problem is that we recognize there are people we can't trust. Anyway, as far as regulation goes, I've gotten salmonella twice in my life, both times from large corporate food chains that were regularly inspected by the health department, had food handling standards in place, etc. I've eaten plenty of time at mom and pop greasy spoons and have not gotten sick from them. Likewise, I didn't go to a coding boot camp, but got my degree from an accredited four year college. While most of my professors were good, the guy teaching the .NET class I took had simply gone to a weekend seminar on coding in .NET and copied all the .ppt slides and used them as his own (I knew more than he did about .NET). I had another professor for calc who, while not intentionally being a fraud, absolutely could not communicate the subject matter in a way that was comprehensible. In both of these cases, I figure I was out money because of fraud, so it can happen anywhere. If the coding boot camps are making false claims, then it seems more like grounds for a hefty lawsuit by former students, than grounds for another layer of regulatory compliance, particularly when the products of the four year colleges may or may not be subject to the same type of scrutiny in terms of product quality (disclaimer -- I don't know what the process for this is in CA).
"We don't want money. They need to bow down and acknowledge us as Lord."
Back in the late 90s / early 2000s, training companies were making tons and tons of money funneling people with zero computer experience through MCSE certification bootcamps. Basically, they would do the entire set of certification exams in 2 weeks, and not all of them were 100% honest to students about their chances of passing or even getting a job once they were done. These bootcamps still exist, but from what I've experienced, they're only for people who actually know the material and just need to update their skills quickly. The earlier iterations of these were definitely certification mills though. I went to one around 2001 because I wanted to update my certs. The class was split -- some of us were there to just do a quick skills upgrade, and others had obviously been suckered in by a dishonest recruiter. To get these folks to pass, instructors would give them copied exam questions to study and pay for these students' extra chances to pass the exams. The school would then be able to tout their super-high pass rate for the exams. And these weren't cheap either -- some were $7K or $8K in 1990s dollars. Even when you factor the cost of a hotel stay, meals and an instructor, the profit margin is huge.
Now it seems that the focus is less on system admin skills and more on "web coding" like these schools are offering classes in. Seems like a perfect hook -- young students who use their iPhone or Android mobile constantly get sold the dream that they too can be the next great app writer and make millions. And it really does seem doable -- with all the web frameworks out there, there's very little a "coder" has to know about what's actually going on under the hood to make something that works. Problem is that paper MCSEs didn't work out so well when they got on the job, so I doubt these classes will help mint genius developers either. My boot camp class back in the day had a former bus driver and someone who was fresh out of the army in an unrelated field.
Libertarians will say it's OK for businesses to take advantage of people, but I think education is a little bit different. Selling someone thousands of dollars in classes and telling them they're equivalent to CS graduates just isn't honest, and these schools profit off peoples' naivete and sell them dreams. The state gets to regulate educational institutions, so it makes sense that they're taking a look at them. And what if it was something simple like needing to publish student outcomes or pass rates? The libertarian free market would be all excited then, because the bad ones might be weeded out if students could be bothered to do research on statistics available from regulation.
It took ages to weed the paper MCSEs out of the workforce, and it's still not 100% complete. Every time I meet an "IT professional" who has no troubleshooting ability, I think back to these bootcamps.
You are aware the constitution is not the only piece of legislation the regulates societal affairs, right?
You are apparently unaware that both the US and California state constitutions are not pieces of legislation.
Incidentally, the US Constitution does give the state of California the ability to regulate such "bootcamps" via the Ninth Amendment. The real issue is whether California's constitution does.
10th amendment. "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."
Since the US Constitution doesn't prohibit the regulation of education, it is permitted to the states.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
I had the same question and started clicking around. I came up with this:
http://www.bppe.ca.gov/lawsreg...
Just browsing through the dense wall of legalese, it seems largely related to being clear (and documented) in purpose and intent, having structured hierarchy of responsibility, good record keeping practices, providing appropriate resources (access to staff, libraries/labs, equipment etc), having clearly defined financial policies in place, making sure your faculty is competent and up to date on their subject matter, have clearly defined admission standards, etc.
I don't see anything particularly onerous in these requirements.
=Smidge=
I know what kind of developers bootcamp programs produce in 12 to 16 weeks. About 25% of them are useful as developers. 50% are useful as QA. And 25% are useful for converting O2 to CO2.
Sooo. About the same ratio as a Masters in CS?
Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
Time for an IT / Tech apprenticeship system that can be a good way to train people while at least keeping from being an outright cash cow with all kinds of marking BS about jobs that you will get and why you should pay 50K+ to go to classes hear.
My ME cost (my former company) about $36k, and while it was in Systems Engineering, from a highly ranked engineering school, it didn't teach me specifics about systems engineer, more the process and how to think about development. If these bootcamps really do saturate your mind with a thorough understanding of how to code, from start to finish, and a person is able to process and retain all that data, I think they're worth it. $15k worth of education that could, under the right circumstances net you a much larger return on investment seems pretty good, to me.
Federal law normally preempts state law, in cases where both jurisdictions have an interest. However, the courts have generally allowed states to provide more specific regulations so long as they meet the requirements of the federal law. Two examples.
Consider minimum wage laws. The US Government requires a minimum wage of $7.25 an hour. Many states and jurisdictions require a higher wage, and are fully allowed to do so, because whatever rate they set above $7.25 meets the requirements of the federal minimum wage law.
Consider emissions standards. The EPA sets emission standards for the country as a whole, but, in practice, California does. Because the California standards meet the minimum requirements of the federal statute, they can set more strict standards.
Start with some free online courses. I just started a freebie through Coursera (it's a regular freshman EE course, which is great, but.. news flash: homework still kinda sucks :-)). If you want to get more serious, you can try a local community college. The best advice is to start with free or cheap options, because now there are plenty of those that will get your feet wet.
I'd say Article 9 of the California Constitution. With a side of Article 4 and 5.
ARTICLE 9 EDUCATION
SECTION 1. A general diffusion of knowledge and intelligence being
essential to the preservation of the rights and liberties of the
people, the Legislature shall encourage by all suitable means the
promotion of intellectual, scientific, moral, and agricultural
improvement.
So if the Legislature wishes to encourage the promotion of such activity by preventing fraud and dishonesty in such endeavors, it's certainly a reasonable interpretation.
One might even take it as an obligation on their part to use all suitable means to do so.
The headline and summary are about shutting them down. The article says both sides are working towards compliance.
I was going to post the same quote, but not to show my badge of uninformed cynicism like you. Since this was created by California law, much as someone thinks it unnecessary, it is state law. And working for compliance instead of shuttering these camps is a good thing.
California has piles of referendum votes, so if they think regulation is not needed they can get this stricken.
Meanwhile, this is a reasonable quote from someone charged with enforcing the law. Feel free to inform me why the sarcasm to which I responded was based in something other than the illusion of wisdom that disillusionment brings?
94930. Deposit of Fees, Adjustment of Fees, Reserve Balance
(a) All fees collected pursuant to this article, including any interest on those fees, shall be deposited in the Private Postsecondary Education Administration Fund, and shall be available, upon appropriation by the Legislature, for expenditure by the bureau for the administration of this chapter.
(b) If the bureau determines by regulation that the adjustment of the fees established by this article is consistent with the intent of this chapter, the bureau may adjust the fees. However, the bureau shall not maintain a reserve balance in the Private Postsecondary Education Administration Fund in an amount that is greater than the amount necessary to fund six months of authorized operating expenses of the bureau in any fiscal year.
94930.5. Fee Schedule
An institution shall remit to the bureau for deposit in the Private Postsecondary Education Administration Fund the following fees, in accordance with the following schedule:
(a) The following fees shall be remitted by an institution submitting an application for an approval to operate, if applicable:
(1) Application fee for an approval to operate: five thousand dollars ($5,000).
(2) Application fee for the approval to operate a new branch of the institution: three thousand dollars ($3,000).
(3) Application fee for an approval to operate by means of accreditation: seven hundred fifty dollars ($750).
(b) The following fees shall be remitted by an institution seeking a renewal of its approval to operate, if applicable:
(1) Renewal fee for the main campus of the institution: three thousand five hundred dollars ($3,500).
(2) Renewal fee for a branch of the institution: three thousand dollars ($3,000).
(3) Renewal fee for an institution that is approved to operate by means of accreditation: five hundred dollars ($500).
(c) The following fees shall apply to an institution seeking authorization of a substantive change to its approval to operate, if applicable:
(1) Processing fee for authorization of a substantive change to an approval to operate: five hundred dollars ($500).
(2) Processing fee in connection with a substantive change to an approval to operate by means of accreditation: two hundred fifty dollars ($250).
(d) (1) In addition to any fees paid to the bureau pursuant to subdivisions (a) to (c), inclusive, each institution that is approved to operate pursuant to this chapter shall remit both of the following:
(A) An annual institutional fee, in an amount equal to three-quarters of 1 percent of the institution's annual revenues derived from students in California, but not exceeding a total of twenty-five thousand dollars ($25,000) annually.
(B) An annual branch fee of one thousand dollars ($1,000) for each branch or campus of the institution operating in California.
(2) The amount of the annual fees pursuant to paragraph (1) shall be proportional to the bureau's cost of regulating the institution under this chapter.
(e) If the bureau determines that the annual cost of providing oversight and review of an institution, as required by this chapter, is less than the amount of any fees required to be paid by that institution pursuant to this article, the bureau may decrease the fees applicable to that institution to an amount that is proportional to the bureau's costs associated with that institution.
94931. Late Payment
(a) A fee that is not paid on or before the 30th calendar day after the due date for the payment of the fee shall be subject to a 25 percent late payment penalty fee.
(b) A fee that is not paid on or before the 90th calendar day after the due date for payment of the fee shall be subject to a 35 percent late paymen
I went ahead and read the regulation, with which the "boot camps" are being forced to comply.
The regulation is actually extremely minimal. It requires the educational institutions to pay a yearly fee ($3500) plus various other fees; it requires the educational institutions to track all their students and track who gets jobs, how soon, how long they took to graduate, and so on; it prohibits education institutions from making promises about future employment; it requires the educational institution to hire only teachers or instructors who have some kind of qualification; etc. There are also various other provisions, all of which seem very minimalistic.
It seemed to me that most of the regulation involved requiring that schools provide certain kinds of truthful information, such as job placement rates.
The regulation would not prevent any reasonable educational institution from operating. It would still be possible to open a "boot camp" for coding in a building you rented, provided that the instructors have some kind of qualification and you submit truthful job placement information.
Nor would the regulation impose very much burden upon small organizations. It seems to me that the cost of compliance would be fairly small.
Exemptions to the CPPEA 2009. Notice the big one: schools charging a tuition of $2500 or less. That should outright exempt a lot of places once they file the right paperwork. The target of these regulations isn't the small places or pay-as-you-go classes. It's places like Silver State Helicopters that take in large tuition payments and then evaporate without delivering classes. That's why the regulations are light on teacher qualifications and heavy on the financial aspects of the schools and their owners including things like the required tuition recovery funds.
I'm a student at Hack Reactor. I was pretty cynical about that 99% hiring rate number before I started here, but now I tend to believe it's accurate. I say that based on what I've seen from the graduates of the last 2 classes. As far as I can tell, everyone in the class that graduated 10 weeks ago has a job and everyone I've talked to from the group that graduated in December seems to be getting job interviews and having success moving forward in their job search.
The trick isn't in how they do the math. If there's a trick to it, it's that:
* Admissions are pretty competitive. They pick students who are likely to be successful.
* They have chosen the right niche. It's all JavaScript all the time around here. There's a huge shortage of good JavaScript developers in the valley. A lot of companies see value in having someone who knows a bunch about JavaScript and is clearly highly motivated to learn even if they're weaker in data structures or some of the other areas.
* The numbers are small right now. Hack Reactor is only 14 months old. There's only something like 120 HR graduates in the job market.
But, and I'm in the minority around here on this, I also think coding schools should be regulated. CA passed a law to tighten regulation of trade schools in 2009 because there were lots of scams going on- a lot of bogus CNA training programs and cooking schools, etc. That law makes sense.
And if there's a law that regulates trade schools, it seems like it should apply to coding schools just as much as sound engineering programs, barber colleges and cooking schools. Creating loopholes in a good law for one industry that thinks its special seems like a bad idea.
Besides a little regulation will add legitimacy to a young industry and keep scam artists from moving into the space. There will be some compliance costs (paperwork is a hassle!), but I can't see it being much more than that.
Ah, California ... clearly with your thriving economy and bright future, even more regulation is what you need.