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Code Bootcamp Fined $375K Over Employment Claims and Licensing Issues (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader quotes Ars Technica:
[O]ne of the most prominent institutions, New York's Flatiron School, will be shelling out $375,000 to settle charges brought by New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman's office. The AG said the school operated for a period without the proper educational license, and it improperly marketed both its job placement rates and the salaries of its graduates. New York regulators didn't find any inaccuracies in Flatiron's "outcomes report," a document the company is proud of. However, the Attorney General's office found that certain statements made on Flatiron's website didn't constitute "clear and conspicuous" disclosure.
For instance, Flatiron claimed that 98.5 percent of graduates were employed within 180 days of graduation. However, only by carefully reading the outcomes report would one find that the rate included not just full-time employees, but apprentices, contract workers, and freelancers. Some of the freelancers worked for less than 12 weeks. The school also reported an average salary of $74,447 but didn't mention on its website that the average salary claim only applied to graduates who achieved full-time employment. That group comprised only 58 percent of classroom graduates and 39 percent of those who took online courses.
The school's courses last 12 to 16 weeks, and cost between $12,000 and $15,000, according to a statement from the attorney general's office [PDF]. (Or $1,500 a month for an onine coding class). Eligible graduate can claim their share of the $375,000 by filing a complaint within the next thee months.
For instance, Flatiron claimed that 98.5 percent of graduates were employed within 180 days of graduation. However, only by carefully reading the outcomes report would one find that the rate included not just full-time employees, but apprentices, contract workers, and freelancers. Some of the freelancers worked for less than 12 weeks. The school also reported an average salary of $74,447 but didn't mention on its website that the average salary claim only applied to graduates who achieved full-time employment. That group comprised only 58 percent of classroom graduates and 39 percent of those who took online courses.
The school's courses last 12 to 16 weeks, and cost between $12,000 and $15,000, according to a statement from the attorney general's office [PDF]. (Or $1,500 a month for an onine coding class). Eligible graduate can claim their share of the $375,000 by filing a complaint within the next thee months.
The real results are actually pretty impressive.
For that same amount of money, those with good hand eye coordination will be better to become crane operators who earns well in to six figures.
...Trump 'university'.
When you're unemployed, you get desperate. And desperate people often will let their guard down in their desperation. You also quickly discover that there is a whole industry of trade schools, bootcamps, etc. happy to exploit that desperation with all kinds of bullshit promises.
I had the misfortune of being unemployed for a while not too long ago. And while I found few real jobs available (most job postings are complete BS, for those who don't know), I found no shortage of schools promising to GET me a job. They trade on success stories of people who went through their course and had great job offers thrown at them as soon as they graduated. Of course, most of those success stories are complete BS too, but when you're desperate you really WANT to believe that you've finally found your answer. I came very close to letting myself get taken advantage of more than a few times, in sheer desperation. And I'm normally a pretty hardcore skeptic in normal circumstances.
In short, if it were up to me I wouldn't just fine schools like this. I would send their administrators to prison for a long, long time. They've done one of the lowest of the low things a human can do--exploit the weakest and most vulnerable of their fellow men for a quick buck.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Are these effective? Is there evidence to support this? Why aren't we seeing John Carmacks piling out the doors?
I really think software development is something that is self-taught and inherent in the individual psyche. I've never met anyone who went to a "code school" that was worth a shit. Sorry.
There seems to be some confusion about what the word prominent means. I'm from New York, and I just asked three colleagues about the Flatiron School. Pretty sure someone has to know you exist before you're considered 'prominent'.
"and got used to being rob with a gun pointed to his face every six months."
He was impersonating Rob Malda with a gun?
"Unfortunately, society didn't need any more TV repairmen"
https://www.rossmanngroup.com/
Maybe your roommate got a contact stupid from being near you so much?
, a href="http://www.al-awa2el.com/%D8%AA%D9%86%D8%B8%D9%8A%D9%81-%D9%85%D8%AC%D8%A7
I feel like Flatiron is getting kind of screwed here. I've looked through their jobs reports and it is very clear that only about 50-60% of their grads get full-time work as developers right after graduation.
But I'm still considering going because if you ask me, that kind of number for what the program is is still pretty good.
Anyone who just takes their 98% number (with the big freakin asterisk next to it) at face value and doesn't read the jobs report (that they repeatedly emphasize), before they drop 15K, is simply not doing their due diligence.
I think the bootcamp field is ripe for abuse but the AG should have gone after the scummier schools. Instead it seems like they wanted to make an example of one of the more prominent ones, which seems to me misguided.
Creimer troll. Mod this shit down.
student loans need to have chapter 11 and 7
I remembered when grammar nazis went after EVERYONE. Alas, that was 20 years ago. Now they just belittle fat white conservative males. So racist.
It's considered good writing not to write utter crap in the first half-sentence of an article.
Of course, on a decent site the editors would pick that up.
This is precisely the reason K12 needs to drop calculus and mandate instead statistical reasoning.
And there should be an entire test along the way where every question involves reading some promotional brochure, preferably sourced from the certification industry (if the documents remain identifiable, even better—perhaps supplied by those entities convicted of fraudulent representation, as part of their penance).
Time for the old 3Rs to step aside, in favour of factual, figurative, and fraudulent—the three modes of cognition essential to modern life.
Have you stopped taping the neighbors' goats?
And yet government and its collaborators in media keep peddling college, one of the greatest financial scams of all time, as being a good investment, despite the fact that tuition keeps rising and tens of millions of Americans are straddles with huge student loan bills and degrees that are virtually irrelevant in the modern job market.
It is funny how you conveniently have a roommate for each and every made up story you post on /., desperately trying to grab any kind of attention you can.
***please pay attention to the Moon update***
C.D. Reimer is a renowned Slashdot collaborator, as he puts it himself; "Because of the quality of my posts and my article submissions, I'm a highly rated commentator and moderator."
But does anybody ever wondered what "C.D." stands for? Well, it stands for Creimy Dumpty of course!
Creimy Dumpty sat on the wall,
Creimy Dumpty had a great fall.
All the king's horses
And all the king's men
Couldn't put Creimy Dumpty
Together again.
Creimy's siblings video and theme song, very realistic, especially the pants, just like Creimy's:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
With "Vice President Pence Vowing US Astronauts Will Return To the Moon", we are sure they will need miracle workers up there, here is what it would look like. Note that Creimy takes care of bringing a lot of food to the moon as depicted below:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Creimy's real pictures:
Before the sex change:
https://ibb.co/cc7Ddw
After the sex change:
https://ibb.co/gVad65
Creimy's "enterprise-level" chair, he talks about it all the time on slashdot:
http://www.keynamics.com/image...
Creimy's head, while his supervisor was talking to him, not with him, since it is impossible to do with Creimy:
https://school.discoveryeducat...
Creimy acting in educational resource document, he actually confirmed himself on Slashdot that he was handled by Special Education for the Santa Clara County Office of Education! He is really a king Dumpty!:
http://www.sccoe.org/depts/stu...
Indeed, indeed, as I wrote below "It isn't Chris' fault if he is the way he is. We do the best we can do with him and he is partially integrated into society. We try to cure his abnormal need for attention but he is kind of stubborn and won't listen to anybody."
The worse part about the Slashdot episode is that Chris' needs for attention are so bad that he doesn't even care about looking like a fool. As long as he grabs attention. He seems happy.
For the valuable /. users that might already have read the following, please note that there is an important update.
IMPORTANT UPDATE:
Special Education for the Santa Clara County Office of Education has invested money to buy Chris a new chair:
http://www.keynamics.com/image...
Information about Christopher Dale Reimer and autistic people:
Autistic people have obsessions about things normal people don't care. For example, one of our autistic patient went haywire when he realized that there was a penny missing in his pocket change.
To calm him down, one of our educator pretended to have found it on the floor and gave a penny to him.
The autistic patient condition went even worse because he realized it wasn't the same penny!
Chris has an obsession with budgeting every penny. He doesn't understand that most people do not budget to the penny and have a flexible amount they allow for miscellaneous items.
I am Nancy Guerrero and I am Director of Special Education for the Santa Clara County Office of Education. We use Chris' (a.k.a. creimer,cdreimer) picture in our document because he is the hardest case we have ever had to handle:
http://www.sccoe.org/depts/stu...
Our artists were inspired by the low carb diet that Christopher follows scrupulously for the small lunch box and by the picture linked below for the rest. I am sure that you will notice the similarities such as the bump on the side of his chest and more:
https://ibb.co/gVad65
Please be easy on Christopher although, I am aware that some of our staff handling Chris post joke comments here and obvoiusly, the Santa Clara County Office of Education disapprove that behavior vehemently:
https://school.discoveryeducat...
But it isn't Chris' fault if he is the way he is. We do the best we can do with him and he is partially integrated into society. We try to cure his abnormal need for attention but he is kind of stubborn and won't listen to anybody.
Thank You dear users,
-Nancy Guerrero
Christopher, my love,
I am deeply sorry. I didn't feel well lately but I am better now. I am sorry that I called you all sorts of names on /. and I feel truly ashamed of myself.
The python click script you wrote for me my sweet love for my pheromone revenue stream web site suddenly stopped to work.
Could you come visit me in my studio so we could look at it?
Update: I could go get you at work around noon and we could go have lunch at the Cafe Latte near by where we went last week and tonight we could have a look at that python click script you wrote for me my sweet love for my pheromone revenue stream web site.
Signed:
Your sweetee who will love you for ever.
It is funny how you conveniently have a roommate for each and every made up story you post on /., desperately trying to grab any kind of attention you can.
It is funny that the creimer trolls keep providing free advertising by drawing attention to his -1 comment, which in turn makes people curious enough to click on his home page link and/or signature link, multiplying the traffic to his websites by three folds. Makes me wonder if the creimer trolls are just creimer. What do you think, Chris?
Chris, I don't think Chris would waste his time with that kind of shit. He's more content to post two comments every 48 hours, have his merry band of wanker trolls provide free advertising, and work on other stuff while the money pours into his business checking account. He's truly a brilliant marketeer because he got his trolls to think that they're doing a "public service" to the Slashdot community when they are actually advancing his agenda.
Chris, you're probably right about Chris. He's the Steve Jobs of our era.
Nice try, but unfortunately, Creimy-Dumpty is too simplistic and dumb to have any kind of agenda.
Actually, the tests we ran on Chris have shown that Chris has the intelligence of an ameba:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
So, technically, he is able to conceive some kind of agenda but it will be silly or impossible to follow on a human scale.
For example, Chris had an agenda to post anything he felt like on Slashdot which did not work well because it was based on his false beliefs that he had an infinite number of karma points as he wrote here several times.
Several people here explained to Chris that karma maxed out at some level like 50 or so but Chris kept on insisting that his python script had confirmed that he had millions of karma points!
Oh well, as I wrote before: "It isn't Chris' fault if he is the way he is. We do the best we can do with him and he is partially integrated into society. We try to cure his abnormal need for attention but he is kind of stubborn and won't listen to anybody."
Nancy Guerrero
Director
Special Education
Santa Clara County Office of Education
Community College is the fix for this.
a) it isn't pay-through-the-nose expensive
b) it has **realistic** expectations for how long learning this stuff requires
c) For most people, coding is an entry level job. I coded for about 10 yrs, then moved on into architecture, CIO, retirement (in my early 40s).
d) I never took a programming class for my college BS degree in engineering.
e) I tool C, C++, intermediate C++ courses at a local community college POST-University graduation (paid for my the company where I was working). Then I took an advanced C++ class at a partner company "night school" taught by their employees - which greatly upped my C++ skills.
Online courses should be $120-$180 tops through an accredited college. You can learn the same material watching select youtube videos for free. YOU just have to decide and follow through daily to get the knowledge. MIT Courseware teaches Python FOR FREE! There's a great free Ruby on Rails training book that teaches everything related to professional programming using Ruby, Rails, github, TDD, etc. Work through the 13 chapters on your own and you are ready for a beginning level RoR job creating internal webapps for any company.
Paying someone $1500/month is just crazy. Crazy.
Thanks Nancy,
Your posts are always enlightening and right on topic! Keep up the good work over there at Special Education!
Silvia Bunge
Psychology Department
Berkeley University
Hey Creimy-Dumpty!
I remembered when grammar nazis went after EVERYONE.
Which means you don't remember anymore? If so, how can you write about it? So, do you remember or not you crammar renowned deficient writer?
Nice try, but unfortunately, Creimy-Dumpty is too simplistic and dumb to have any kind of agenda.
Creimer whistles, you hump leg. Where have we seen this before? Oh, yes. Pavlov's dogs (aka classical conditioning).
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_conditioning
Nice try, but unfortunately, Creimy-Dumpty is too simplistic and dumb to have any kind of agenda.
Lillyayayko55@yahoo.jp
103.208.220.144
Lilly, please stop posting these comments. The Slashdot community is monitoring you now.
This happened at the height of the last Dotcom Bubble, except the bootcamps were for MCSE or Java/Solaris certification. Now that everything's code and in the cloud, the people running the schools are just changing the advertisement a little bit.
The thing that sucks is that just like ITT Tech, U of Phoenix and other for profit schools, these places live on student loans and GI Bill education grants. Back in the early 2000s I went to one of these bootcamps because a consulting company I worked for at the time paid for it. It was obvious that a lot of people in the classes had just gotten out of a low-level job fixing tanks in the military, or were total newbies with zero experience or desire to learn beyond "make lots of money in tech!"
What I think is even worse this time around is that everything is so abstracted that coming in from the level of a JavaScript framework is going to produce not only people who aren't useful without using the framework they were taught, but also ignorant of what's actually going on inside the abstraction. It's way easier to understand this stuff if you start at a first-principles level and build up, but coming in at the top or near top of the abstraction tower ensures you'll never know what's happening inside the magic box. In this way, coder schools who just pump out Node.js or JQuery robots are doing their students a real disservice.
Sorry Creimy-Dumpty a Slashdot community composed of only one person, Creimy-Dunpty himself doesn't really constitute a community!
Lillyayayko55@yahoo.jp
I already posted this in the following thread but I think it is relevant here:
https://slashdot.org/comments....
Thanks Nancy,
Your posts are always enlightening and right on topic! Keep up the good work over there at Special Education!
Also, I have noted that Chris uses child psychology to convince his so called trolls to give up by pretending they just give him free publicity. That's adoring since; we are psychologists after all ;-)
---
Silvia Bunge
Psychology Department
Berkeley University
Creimer, you illiterate ameba,
My first name is: Lill
My last name is: Yayako
You definitely have to get your meds input regulated. You are furtherly loosing it as we speak, just as Silvia Bunge and Nancy Guerrero have mentioned here.
Creimer lives in the imaginary world of mangas. That's why he thought that Ayako was more common than Yayako.
---
Silvia Bunge
Psychology Department
Berkeley University
Learning to code is like learning a foreign language. It's going to take a long time to become fluent. With a crash course you can learn enough to make things work but you likely wont be writing maintainable, performant, accurate, correct, reslient, stable, future proof, reusable, adaptable, organised, secure, scalable and relatively bug free high quality code. Like with languages, it's not until you're fluent that you're going to be writing novels. Reading code written by such people would be like reading a novel written in terrible English with crazy structure, sequence of events, etc. You might just about followthe story but it wont be a pleasant read. In the worst cases it will end up completely broken. In other cases it will be filled with hundreds of pointless words, sentences and even pages with things like a character being killed off too early so now you have to implement a hack such as time travel to bring the character back later on. This is basically what this course is. You might learn enough to ask for directions to the nearest restaurant but don't expect any kind of sophisticated conversation to be efficient or entirely free of misunderstandings.
On top of that, writing really good software is difficult. The probability of doing it well is low at the average IQ range meaning that the majority of the population is going to do poorly without really intense hands on assistance. On top of that you have a numbr of necessary character traits. These are things that are high in demand and that many other industries. After all of this you start to have only a small percent of the population available for programming that are really well suited and generally speaking that proportion of the population still needs a lot of the right type of experience to become fully fluent.
There is massive demand for programming but just not enough really good programmers and courses like this try to cater to demand but they don't really give the ideal product.
What's his latest obsession with Lillyayayko55@yahoo.jp?