
Initiative for Low-Income Students to Access New Generation Of Higher Education - shagie
http://www.ed.gov/news/press-releases/fact-sheet-ed-launches-initiative-low-income-students-access-new-generation-higher-education-providers
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koolba
Having seen how demand side subsidies destroy the rest of the education
sector, why oh why would they think this is a good idea for tech?

If they want to promote tech boot camps they should have community colleges
open free to the public ones. Then all the bullshit paid ones will have to
compete against a free product and the price will go down. To solve the demand
issue start off with a lottery system and tweak class size accordingly.

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_delirium
> If they want to promote tech boot camps they should have community colleges
> open free to the public ones.

Some of these even already exist, but seem not to have as good PR behind them.
For example, De Anza College, a community college in Cupertino, offers a
variety of intro programming courses for a $140 enrollment fee, with fee
waivers available for low-income students.

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ben_jones
I took a c++ course at Canada college in Redwood city and the professor had us
watch YouTube videos for instruction and submit assignments as Microsoft Word
documents. Their is a huge lack of quality control that ultimately lowers the
value of the accreditation of such institutions IMO.

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yabb
Great... more subsidized loans means more profit for me. Can't speak to the
whole "benefit to society" piece, but thanks Uncle Sam. Sorry for the people
who will be making these payments, whether it's the taxpayer or the debtors.
Business is business.

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todd8
Education in the US is a huge mess. How is a 13-week class in web development
going to help low-income students?

I'm not sure how many readers of HN attended low-income schools. The problem I
see is that many that get out of low-income schools don't know basics like the
commutative law of multiplication (a * b == b * a) or how to use a semicolon.
The education deficit by the time they hit CC is so large that it's
unreasonable to expect them to be successful at programming.

I had low-income friends that took school seriously and these kids ended up in
college on scholarships, but most of my classmates did not take school
seriously. It wasn't a character issue that held them back, but more of a
cultural issue. They were surrounded by people, friends and family, that
didn't appreciate the value of education.

These problems started early, in elementary school, and by high school they
were too far behind to be successful and simply checked out at best or became
disruptive and tried to hold everyone else back at worst. Very sad.

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protomyth
How about instead of adding code academies to the student loan gravy train,
they try something a bit innovative?

How about they pick a hundred community colleges and provide money for a
competitive salary and housing costs for a number of STEM faculty members for
about 3 years. That should generate enough data to figure out effectiveness.

I'm still trying to figure out the logistics of buying 3 small kit homes,
placing them on the school grounds, and then hiring 3 new PhDs on a 3 year
contract so they can get teaching experience, then cycling in a new set of
PhDs. They probably won't be STEM, but you have to start somewhere.

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WalterBright
The public school I attended used trailers for overflow classrooms. Simple,
cheap and effective.

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protomyth
Yeah, we'll skip that as I would want them to blend with the rest and I'm
pretty sure it needs to look a bit more permanent to convince people to live
in them for 3 years.

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pmorici
I don't see how these boot camps are substantially different than so called
"for profit colleges".

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shagie
Scrolling down to the partnerships, you find things like:

> Institution: SUNY Empire State College (Saratoga Springs, New York)

> Non-traditional provider: The Flatiron School

> Quality assurance entity: American National Standards Institute (ANSI)

and

> Institution: Northeastern University (Boston, Massachusetts)

> Non-traditional provider: General Electric

> Quality assurance entity: American Council on Education (ACE)

The traditional education institutions are very respected. The non-traditional
are also well respected already, just out of reach for the low income students
(aside, Flatiron school was the only one to release an audited report of job
placement earlier this year - [http://www.ibtimes.com/code-boot-camps-fail-
obama-unaudited-...](http://www.ibtimes.com/code-boot-camps-fail-obama-
unaudited-stats-cast-doubt-success-rates-2301188) ). And lastly, there's that
quality assurance entity like ANSI which places like the university of phoenix
and the fly by night boot camps would shy away from.

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OliverJones
GE is in mixed company here; the other partners don't have nearly GE's deep
pockets or long history.

I read this proposal and think of the poor / underserved people I know through
working in the homework / dropin center at the local public housing project
here in MA. A job at the GE turbine plant in Lynn would be a dream come true,
and a ticket out of housing (absent layoffs or offshoring).

These folks can study online; we have the beginnings of a nice mesh network,
and donors for computers. So the pattern might work.

A determining factor would be support for the students. Underserved people
need encouragement and occasional bureaucratic intervention ("fix that
registrar's mistake, please!") to get things done. They typically don't have
family members capable of coaching them in such things.

But, Northeastern U? Seriously? That's a fine institution with a long history
of experiential education. But it's expensive, and many of their students have
deep resources (== helicopter parents) making sure they succeed. The young
people I work with would be culturally outcompeted at such an institution. I'd
much rather have a program like this at a community college. GE certainly
could participate.

It's good these programs have independent quality measurement. Hopefully
they'll measure the qualitative cultural stuff as well as doing stats on test
scores.

Loans worry me. People shouldn't become debt slaves, especially to pay for
experimental programs. I hope there's accountability, in the form of
compulsory debt forgiveness, in case the programs don't meet expectations.
That accountability needs to lie upon the .edu, the partner org, the QA org,
and the government lending agency.

All that being said, it's good to try new things.

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wprapido
some more corporate handouts

