
A free, teacher-less university in France is schooling thousands of programmers - adenadel
https://qz.com/1054412/a-french-billionaires-free-teacher-less-university-is-designing-thousands-of-future-proof-employees/
======
rmah
"64,000 took a basic online logic test to qualify for entry. More than 20,000
passed, but the school only accepted the top 3,000 due to space constraints.
Those 3,000 compete in pools of 1,000 for a month to see who best completes
the digital projects; the top third of performers are then admitted."

So the admittance rate is 1 in 64 or 1.56%. That is insanely selective. This
is not bringing education to the masses, this is cheeping out on instructors
because the students are smart enough to learn on their own.

~~~
lelabo_42
I believe it was only like this the first year, where the selection were
pretty tough and the list of candidates was insanely large. Here, most
computer sciences degree are in private schools. You have to take generic
engineer studies oriented in computer sciences otherwise. Some are great but I
found people with a private degree focus in computer sciences more skilled in
general when I worked with them.

------
forkLding
Sounds like hackathons turned into a school, although I did learn a lot thru
hackathons, it is easy to burn out with several in a month

------
nyc111
> “We don’t teach anything,” says Nicolas Sadirac, head of École 42. “The
> students create what they need all the time.”

This is amazing! Bravo! I've been saying for years that "there is no learning
where there is teaching" and here's someone applied the idea. Thanks for
posting this!

------
lelabo_42
This school was not the first, before that Nicolas Sadirac already created a
private school with the same principles, Epitech.

He replicated the model with others, tweaking it to make it public, and it got
a lot more coverage.

But these schools system is great (as an alumni of Epitech).

~~~
herogreen
But Epitech is not free, right ?

~~~
lelabo_42
No, as most private school in France. The tution fees are pretty high, that is
the main cons with this school. However, you have the opportunity to do many
internship (like nearly 2.5 years during the 5 years of study available) to
decrease the loan you may have.

------
herogreen
I wonder why they chose to place the school in Paris (very expensive city) and
went for expensive Apple computers.

