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Billionaire Launches Free Code College in California (arstechnica.com)
Xavier Niel is the billionaire founder of France's second-largest ISP. In February he bought a former campus from DeVry University, and tried building something better.
Slashdot reader bheerssen writes: 42 US is a free coding school near Facebook's headquarters in Fremont, California. The courses are boot camp like experiences that do not offer traditional degrees, but hope to provide programming skills and experience to students for free.
Ars Technica calls it "a radical education experiment" -- even the dorms are free -- and the school's COO describes their ambition to become a place "where individuals from all different kinds of backgrounds, all different kinds of financial backgrounds, can come and have access to this kind of education so that then we can have new kinds of ideas." Students between the ages of 18 and 30 are screened through an online logic test, according to the article, then tossed into a month-long "sink or swim" program that begins with C. "Students spend 12 or more hours per day, six to seven days per week. If they do well, students are invited back to a three- to five-year program with increasing levels of specialty."
Ars Technica calls it "a radical education experiment" -- even the dorms are free -- and the school's COO describes their ambition to become a place "where individuals from all different kinds of backgrounds, all different kinds of financial backgrounds, can come and have access to this kind of education so that then we can have new kinds of ideas." Students between the ages of 18 and 30 are screened through an online logic test, according to the article, then tossed into a month-long "sink or swim" program that begins with C. "Students spend 12 or more hours per day, six to seven days per week. If they do well, students are invited back to a three- to five-year program with increasing levels of specialty."
Sounds like age discrimination, to me.
There must be thousands of older people between the ages of 30 and 55 whom are equally capable of contributing - and many of them already know how to program.
~childo
It's amortized over the lifetime of the graduates' lower salaries.
Cooper Union was established by the industrialist Peter Cooper in the 19th century and until recently also had a free tuition. It was established for the same reasons: lack of skilled labor needed by the industrialists in New York. The school has 3, essentially independent, divisions: art, architecture and engineering. While their ability to offer free very high quality education (Cooper Union was ranked 1st among engineering schools by US News for many years) has diminished, the idea was still pioneered in the 19th century. So it's not all that revolutionary.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
Is throwing quantity at this problem the right answer? If we train lots and lots of people in programming is it really going to help? Is it even going to be successful? How can people believe in this approach?
If someone opened a massive free school for training sculptors and enrolled 1000s of students no one would believe that they would end up with hundreds of Michelangelo's. They wouldn't get lots and lots of excellent sculptors. They'd be lucky to find a 1 or 2 really good ones out of every 1000 students. Then they'd find a few more fairly good ones and the rest would be mediocre to bad. Some would be able to create really elegant statues, some would be good at making blocks, bricks and tombstones and the vast majority would make gravel.
The only difference between this and the mass programming schools is that with sculpting most people could look at their rock based product and easily discern its quality. Not so for programming. That's why this industry is rife with gravel producing developers who try and pass their product off as statuary.
I think the public is being deluded about this.
Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of congress. But then I repeat myself. -- Mark Twain
Except for the details
Details like Facebook's headquarters are in Menlo Park, not Fremont, with the SF Bay in between?
Putting a school like this in the SF Bay Area, where there are already oddles of opportunities, isn't doing much. If he wanted to make a difference, maybe he should have opened his school in West Virginia, or the Mississippi Delta.
Release all the education materials and the lesson recordings online for free for anyone and everyone not rich enough to move there or live there.
True freedom is to give it to everyone everywhere.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.