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Former Students Say Steve Wozniak's $13,200 Coding Bootcamp Is 'Broken' and Sometimes Links To Wikipedia (9to5mac.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the to-each-their-own dept.

Last year, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak announced a coding program called Woz U that's designed with the goal of offering an affordable education. "Our goal is to educate and train people in employable digital skills without putting them into years of debt," Wozniak said last fall. "People often are afraid to choose a technology-based career because they think they can't do it. I know they can, and I want to show them how."

Now that a round of students have been through the 33-week program, a number of problems have appeared. Former student, Bill Duerr, called the program "broken," and that "lots of times there's just hyperlinks to Microsoft documents, to Wikipedia." 9to5Mac reports: "Duerr said typos in course content were one of many problems. So-called 'live lectures' were pre-recorded and out of date, student mentors were unqualified, and at one point, one of his courses didn't even have an instructor," reports CBS. CBS heard from over 24 current and former students and employees that reiterated Duerr's experiences. Instead of a quality program, Duerr said Woz U was comparable to an ultra expensive e-book: "'I feel like this is a $13,000 e-book,' Duerr said. While it was supposed to be a program written by one of the greatest tech minds of all time, 'it's broken, it's not working in places, lots of times there's just hyperlinks to Microsoft documents, to Wikipedia,' he said."

A former Woz U enrollment counselor said that at times he had to do things that didn't feel right: "Asked whether he regrets working for Woz U, Mionske said, 'I regret in the aspect to where they're spending this money for, it's like rolling the dice. [...] But on the reverse side, I have to support my family.'" According to Business Insider, Steve Wozniak said that he's "not involved" in the "operational aspects" of Woz U and doesn't know anything about the report this morning.

9 of 135 comments (clear)

  1. "I know nothing!" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    "I just cash the checks." - Woz

    1. Re: "I know nothing!" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Let's see, half the shit doesn't work, a quarter of it is cribbed, most of the documentation is just links to online docs, and the people in charge can't be bothered to be directly involved and just cash their paychecks.

      Actually that perfectly describes how programming works in the real world.

  2. Woz University, meet Trump University by Swave+An+deBwoner · · Score: 5, Funny

    Sad, so sad.

  3. Why pay $13,000 when you can learn yourself? by Ashthon · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I don't understand why anyone would pay that sort of money when you can buy a $50 book and learn from that. Not only is it much cheaper, but the ability to learn on your own is an essential skill for a programmer since programming requires continuous learning in order to keep your skills up to date. If you're unable to study yourself, and need information spoon fed to you, it's probably not the career for you.

    Besides, you don't learn to program in a boot camp. All you're going to learn is the basic language syntax and features, which you can learn easily yourself. To develop actual programming skills you need to write software. After writing an application you'll likely find there were many things that could have been done better and you'll be able to use those lessons in your next application, thus improving your skills.

    Programming boot camps are a con aimed at people who aren't actually interested in programming but who have seen the high salaries you can get as a programmer. Real programmers more than likely learned to program around age 13, and they did it because it interested them, not for the money.

    1. Re:Why pay $13,000 when you can learn yourself? by commodore64_love · · Score: 3

      > you can buy a $50 book and learn from that.

      That's how I learned VHDL and Verilog (though it actually cost $100). One problem is the lack of degree for those using this approach. HR won't look at your resume unless you have that "college sheepskin" to prove qualification.

      - And even if you do have a degree, they won't give you the time of day if it's the "wrong" degree. I have an EE, tried dozens of times for a programming job in C++, but my resume never got past HR. (Some even said, "Sorry no, but we have some EE openings we could put you in.") It's kinda like typecasting.

      The "risk" of putting an EE in a Software engineer job is too great, so the HR people simply avoid the risk.

      HR is risk averse.

      --
      "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
  4. Re:Classic problem with computer science educators by Potor · · Score: 3, Interesting

    My CS teacher in 1985 was a math teacher who was into computers as a hobby, but into algorithms with a passion. One of my favourite classes ever, and it still influences me ...

  5. Woz U or Wazoo? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    I've heard of paying out the Wazoo, and now people are paying out the Woz U?

  6. On the other hand, we know how to scale by raymorris · · Score: 3, Insightful

    That's true.

    It's also true that computer science and computer engineering people know how to scale things, through automation and other means. A very simple example is that a lot of courses in other fields still have quizzes and such grades by hand. Anyone with even half a clue about computer anything wouldn't generally do that. Open source software like Moodle provides very flexible quizzes which can adapt to the student. I'd rather watch a recorded lecture by one of the best in the field than a live lecture by just another guy.

    We CAN have high-quality education in this field, more efficiently, which means lower costs to students. The OMSCS at Georgia Tech looks promising, for example.

    We also have to remember that graduating school doesn't mean you stop learning. I study daily and I've been in the field professionally for 20 years. College should give us the background we need in order to build our knowledge in different areas, and the skills and interest to learn. If we expect to do an entire career worth of learning in 2-4 years we're going to be dissapointed every time.

  7. Re:Woz is one of my heros by TheFakeTimCook · · Score: 3, Informative

    I know of many projects the Woz worked on, his ability to rework circuits to use 20% less chips is legendary.

    There is a reason the Apple 1 looked like an Atari video game board.

    One of the most interesting things the Woz did that stunned everybody is the way his floppy disk drive worked.

    When I first got mine I could not believe what I was looking at, the controller card only had a few msi ttl chips on it and the disk drive electronic only had a couple small chips that were mainly analog?!? how could this possibly work?

    The Woz did it all in software

    Yep.

    And he used to tell the story about how, one late night before a big computer show where the Disk ][ was introduced, he and Randy Wigginton were able to change ONE BYTE in the Controller's State Machine PROM and reduce their raw error-rate from 1 X 10^9 to 1X 10^12.

    For those who don't remember, this is how the typical Shugart SA400 controller looked in 1978:

    http://www.s100computers.com/G...

    Now, compare that with the Disk ][ controller:

    http://i2.wp.com/www.appleresc...

    Amazing that they do EXACTLY the same thing, isn't it?