Also interesting, and related, that the Flat Iron School was fined for almost a half million dollars for fraudulent salary claims and operating without a license [1]
Which says nothing about operating without a license -- which is a large part of the AG's claim. AS far as the false advertising, that is way less of a case than the use of non-licensed teachers and lack of operating license.
Why is it important that teachers are licensed? I work in a teaching college; there is no such thing as a "college professor license" yet I think my colleagues do a very good job teaching. If licensing teachers ensures quality, then our K-12 system should be great. However, as you know the K-!2 system in USA is a joke... yet our college system on average, without any "licensed teachers," is fairly world class.
there is no such thing as a "college professor license"
Our accreditating agency insists that that faculty members have got a degree (actually 18 credit hours at graduate level) in the subject they teach. If you are a foreigner it's a pain in the arse, because you need to produce an equivalency evaluation, even more so when your degree wasn't modular.
It causes complications when you teach an allied subject (say your degree certificate says you are a physicist and teach physical chemistry in the chemistry department) but it's easy to see why the accreditator insists: there was a time when there were too many unqualified people teaching.
The real trouble occurs when the institution mistakes certification for qualification, but that's a different story.
There's a big difference between a private organization (accredited by another private organization) requiring someone have a degree and the government requiring someone have a license.
For practical purposes there's no difference at all, the outcome is the same. Someone puts down a list of requirements, and the school will comply - if they don't there's consequences.
If a school won't comply to licensing requirements they government will levy a fine. If a school fails accreditation students will run away, they rightly think that employers won't take their degree seriously. There also won't be federal student loans.
Sometimes professional bodies approve degrees. There are no consequences at all, except that the more capable students stay away from unrecognized degree programs. At my department they are actually moving away from adjuncts because the professional body requires that courses be taught by full-time lecturers or professors. Leadership has decided that the extra expenses for full-time faculty members with benefits are justified by the improved quality of students.
There is a big difference because when you don't follow the government's rules, you get shutdown. When you don't follow an independent body's rules, you can keep operating you're just not accredited. There are many great non-accredited institutions that teach all manner of skill across this country, including excellent non-accredited colleges.
Things like the No Child Left Behind Act don't necessitate a license, per say, but they do create license-obtaining-like qualifications to be met (for students, teachers, and school districts alike). The Act itself is preventing would-be good teachers from being certified / accepted into school districts to teach so in some sense the "licensing" of a teacher is holding back those teachers who look and go elsewhere to obtain a secure career. Where as in the past teaching was a solid and secure career for one to strive towards, in this day and age it is definitely not the same, at all.
Who is being prevented from teaching? I taught high school with 5 weeks of training (Teach For America). I was provisionally licensed to teach under an emergency certification, which simply required that I be in training concurrently for a permanent certification. Every state is different, of course, but I don't know of a state where this legal framework doesn't exist. Teach For America places teachers in most states under this model.
Five weeks is not enough prep for most teachers. I know many awesome teachers for whom it worked out very well. For me, it didn't. But Teach For America is extremely selective in trying to identify people who will be successful with minimal training. That's what it takes to roughly match the performance of traditionally trained teachers. I don't think we need lower barriers to entry, especially without a similar level of accountability.
Because for every argument against regulation you can provide I bet someone can provide an argument to show you why regulation is not only necessary, but provides a greater good than the lack of it.
Probably a good move all around, WeWork gets the devalued product on the cheap and Flatiron founders exit and the company can say that under new management things will be different
I beg to differ. I find it hardly emboldening to learn that the founders got a sweet exit, or that WeWork gets a toehold in some new market.
When the former students are justly compensated for their dashed hopes and tarnished reputations† -- that I'd consider to be "probably a good move all around."
† "Ah, I see you went to the Flatiron School - heard about all the crazy shit that went down there. Which we won't hold against you. But please understand that you'll have to go through 3x as many Dance Monkey sessions as most of the other candidates, just so we can be doubly sure we aren't taking on any damaged good, you see. Oh you've never played Dance Monkey? It's easy, just come to this whiteboard here. Yeah that's right, the one with the squeaky markers, behind the busted swivel-chair..."
I know it's completely impossible to decouple things like money and economics from education but as someone who obtained a degree with a focus in education and also has over a decade of experience working with young students it really hurts me to know that our youth are starting off, usually, on the wrong foot because adults are always playing politics with education.
The way we define success. The ways we measure knowledge and success in students. The entire system from education on upward needs a good long looking at. Under our current way of doing things (I can only speak for the US) we've realized that throwing money at a problem is not the only solution but so long as delivering "results" is the metric by which grants and money is given to school districts we will always run into people stopping at nothing to meet the qualifications for such endowments.
I have no love for Flat Iron since ...well, they rejected me a few years ago when I started my code journey.
However, I think this fine is somewhat bullshit. Flatiron did release all of the relevant job figures in an accurate way, even if the marketing headline was, indeed, misleading.
What is the benefit for students of the school being licensed? What does that process bring to the table? I'm sure justifies the existence of some bureaucrats, but it's my understanding that truly terrible GI Bill scam schools are licensed.
Personally, as a bootcamp grad (not from Flatiron), I wouldn't necessarily call the fine bullshit. If you scream the manipulated numbers and stick the details of the manipulation somewhere where very few people are likely to ever look, I kinda think you should get smacked down. The problem I have is that that same standard isn't applied to lots of other areas of education, including some (like the utter scam that is T3 and most T2 law schools) that are doing way, way more damage to way, way more people than every coding bootcamp in the country put together.
I have friends who went to a T3 law school in the Midwest. The total cost of attendance is estimated at $62,500. The bar passage rate is around 74% (#157 nationally). On the marketing site reporting their stats, they tell prospective students that "nearly 75% [of] class of 2016 students [are] employed, pursuing further education, or not seeking employment", but when you actually dig into their ABA disclosure numbers (tucked away on a subsite, clearly obscured), you can see that only 73 of 127 grads are employed in full time, long term positions that require a JD. Since the reason most people go to law school is to get into those kinds of positions, it is more accurate to describe the employment rate as "around 54%". And from knowing some of the people graduating, I can tell you that the salary at those positions isn't great. Average starting salaries hover in the $50-55k range (self-reported, so...with a huge caveat). Given a price of $187,500, that level of bar passage, employment rate, and salary is criminal.
That's a real scam, and it's replicated all over the country in hundreds of terrible law schools, and most of them have the imprimatur of a legitimate educational enterprise via their associated universities and the tacit or explicit support of large chunks of society. And it's only now, after two decades of the problem getting worse and worse, that states are starting to crack down on the worst offenders (while the ordinary every-day criminals, like the school in the previous paragraph, are allowed to go unchecked). I would appreciate if the scrutiny being applied to bootcamps (which I think is necessary and important) was applied equally to other potentially-scammy educational enterprises, no matter how long-running the con is.
Good comment. I recommend law school transparency for anyone navigating admissions. They have excellent display tools for the stats, including the real employment rate, and real debt costs including cost of attendance.
It’s truly a horrifying scam at the lower ends, and eventually something will give.
Actually, I'd be interested in what is required of a school and its founders who want this license. There may be more to it than meets the immediate assumption. For example, are there any requirements for its CEO in terms of other pending lawsuits/levies/fines regarding other business they might be into? If so, I might want to look into its leadership... So, it isn't the literal license that should be concerning. It is what that license requires of those who seek it. Of course there are all sorts of crap institutions that provide little value for their graduates who ARE licensed. A license doesn't tell you if a school is effective. Shoot-- if that were the case, then why not hire CS grads who have degrees without putting them through a ridiculous battery of tests before handing them a piddling little jobs in web dev? We should all be more rigorous in what we accept as good mentorship in a time when we so need it, when so many are unemployed or underemployed. As to teaching licenses-- please. The coding bootcamps are hiring grads to boost their outcomes. That's what is happening at all of these places. And most of these grads are not skilled enough at the subject matter to guide anyone else (some of them are, of course). Certainly many of them have virtually no teaching experience. That said, the whole teaching license thing is not really working. For example, teachers with PHDs in their subject can't work in a public school without a teaching license for NYS. They CAN, however, teach at the very tippy top private schools in Manhattan like Dalton, Horace Mann, St. Ann's, Ramaz, and the rest-- because those schools really must seek the very best teachers who are expert in their respective fields if they expect the wealthy to pay them $40-60,000 in tuition for their kids' high school experience. The wealthy 1% who have really buying power differ from the typical code school student in that they can stand to pay whatever it costs to hire the best teachers for the job, whereas the code school student is looking desperately for a way into this kind of broken labor market. They don't have the power because they are desperate and it is this desperation that is preyed upon. ANd that isn't ok.
To be fair, as far as bootcamp statistics goes, Flatiron is among the most fair and honest. You should see some of the other stuff bootcamps get away with.
if you dig even further, like into Enbar's claims on Quora, you'd see that they were highly misleading. if you dig even further, you'd realize that they were vague about who got what- to say nothing of ageism.
To detail: I think these code schools should be transparent about the race, gender, age, prior experience, previous degrees/where they were obtained, family connection to industry, and their relationships with hiring partners for those who get each job. That would be impressive transparency. There is a reason why this kind of transparency isn't available, but it should be. I'm not sure that hooking up with WeWork is going to head in that direction of radical transparency. I fear that it will just contribute to the further ossification of current closed circles of job entry and keep it even more "in the family" than it already is, while not expanding that family and appearing really "exciting" and bursting with possibility for cross pollination. But appearances seem to be everything.
This is just laughable. Now, I have no love for any coding bootcamps - in my view they are only effective in separating fools and fool's money. So far every coding bootcamp that I know of is just the Agile version of ITT Tech.
That being said, NY AG is a political hack. He is not doing that well so he needs to get some wins he can flaunt and going after bootcamps is much easier than doing after finance companies or real estate schemes.
Interestingly, and funny you should mention real estate... the Enbars are also very deep into NYC real estate. (Adam Enbar is the CEO of the Flatiron School) And you are right- the real estate situation in NYC is a disaster for rental tenants. It seems like De Blasio and the AG support real change, but when it comes down to it, tenants can't afford to defend themselves against the tycoons who own property even when the tycoons are in the wrong. So, the for-profit schools are an easier target in that they involve a lot less of the wealth of NYC than real estate feeding into politics but the schools are somewhat similar in that they too oppress those who seek a "fair" way into the economy with certain protections offered by the state.
> It seems like De Blasio and the AG support real change,
If AG supported the real change, he would have used the effectively an unlimited legal muscle his office has to go after the "in the wrong" real estate tycoons.
Absolutely he should! De Blasio did sign off on some "conceptually" important legislation protecting tenants from landlord harassment. He even followed through in some egregious cases--a small but important conceptual step. But affordable housing that is safe for tenants to actually live in remains elusive because the penalties for predatory landlords aren't high enough and because a landmark case involving reciprocal financial responsibility on the prevailing party in housing court made it more precarious for tenants to pursue legal relief. (the case decided that no party thoroughly prevailed, so the landlord didn't have to pay legal costs for the tenant to defend their rights, even though the tenant effectively "won" the case- they came out with a net loss-- and now this case is legal precedent, and a powerful deterrent to tenants who fight for their rights in court)
But in this topic in NYC and in the US in general, there is a real lack of effective, job-getting education, as you of course already know. And then these for-profit ed institutions claim to be solving this problem. I'm not sure oversight can be the way forward here. There is just too much political interdependency here. Perhaps the way forward is for people to speak out about their experience with bold honesty. This is difficult for students to do at these schools, and therein lies the dilemma, because they don't want devalue this $$$ education before it even helps them. What many realize later is that this idea of "culture fit" in every sense of the word will bar many of them for the field. This is why people need to start speaking out about diversity in tech. Well, it has started, but we need a deluge of truth here. We need real reporting on this false idea of a skills gap that isn't real if it doesn't admit members of certain groups unless they are the next Wozniak on crack.
As a Director of a coding bootcamp operating out of a co-working facility, this looks exciting for WeWork. We had considered WeWork for a campus now that there are two planned in Houston. It's still an option for us moving forward (heh, or maybe not with this news?) but cost and timing has stopped us from pulling the trigger up until now.
TBH, a vast majority of our students find their employment with companies outside of the co-working space. It's value to our students and school has had more to do with offering a collaborative and exciting environment to the students as well as affording our school more flexibility regarding classroom spaces/sizes and basically allowing us to keep costs down versus building out our own space. The service layer of a co-working building (cleaning, kitchen, IT, and so on) are invaluable for smaller organizations like ours.
It will be interesting to see if WeWork uses this as an added service for it's members - in which case, it will need to be very flexible in it's curriculum to match it's course to the needs of members across a huge number of facilities. Or, if it keep more of the Flatiron approach and attracts students outside of WeWork - and how that works with things like fees, parking costs, membership, and if they meet member hiring needs.
Anybody know how "Galvanize" is doing in NYC? They have a similar model, and from what I've heard-- they had to fire 11% of their employees nationwide to "adjust". I also heard that they aren't getting enough numbers in their classes in NYC to warrant hiring real full-time faculty-- I think they just have two instructors and some contract help. (I knew someone who applied to be a teacher there, semi-recently.)
I've worked with Flatiron grads and the ones I've worked with were significantly higher caliber than typical bootcamp grads. Here's why:
- They all had high powered professional careers before deciding to attend Flatiron. In a sense, the deck is already stacked in favor of these kinds of people succeeding, because they are generally successful in the things they pursue.
- The project phase of the boot camp is set up to show off skills to potential hiring managers. I have attended these and have been impressed by the big picture view of the grads. They understood the project, the tech stack involved, the product level objectives, etc. Again, this is partly because of the high quality students going through, but I found that many of them had a very mature outlook on their projects.
- The founders and core team at the Flatiron School are all very passionate about teaching and creating a system that embraces well rounded learning and not just whatever hot buzzword will get someone an interview. In working with Flatiron you get the impression that unlike most boot camps it will still be there in a few decades.
Obviously anecdotal, but I've had similar experiences. Granted I haven't really worked with any _other_ bootcamp grads, but we have a handful of junior developers who've attended Flatiron and they're all really great. They're way better than a lot of so-called "senior level" developers I worked with elsewhere (cough financial industry cough). I've been extremely surprised and happy with all of them.
And probably some heavy handed sales tactics. Recruiters are already some of the most obnoxiously aggressive sales people... why make them your landlord?
To be fair; that doesn't mean that recruiting has to operate under the same status quo. It could end up that way, but it could also open up the doors to a friendlier way of recruiting.
Interesting piece of history - General Assembly (a well known coding bootcamp) - used to be a shared workspace company. So there is some interesting relationship between the two types of businesses ( as one previously pivoted to the other, and now this acquisition).
A little extra history; Avi Flombaum started teaching at General Assembly (when GA was still a co-working space, and provided an event space etc that accommodated education programs) prior to founding Flatiron School. The following year GA closed down their co-working space to focus on education.
A lot of the code schools are struggling due to the expense of desirable real estate, I could see how WeWork and a bootcamp may have a combined advantage here.
I spent a few weeks working out of a coworking space about a year ago.
As I was sitting there typing away, it dawned on me that the place reminded of a college library, but better with coffee/snack being allowed.
I can't think of a better place to learn how to code than a coworking place. With so much energy of people working away, you will be energized to work/learn and not waste time youtubing. And you have other coders you can ask for help. Wasn't that the promise of bootcamp anyways? Keeping out the distractions?
Hopefully WeWork won't try to keep the old Flat Iron School way of charging $1500/month training. Instead they should grant anyone who uses WeWork facility the added bonus of (free or with a minor fee) attending Flat Iron School coding classes.
Maybe ask a locally based dev to offer service as a tutor to Flat Iron School attendees in return for reduced/free private office space. Students can come into the enclosed office hour during set hours. I can see even some devs volunteering for this as a way to network with future hires.
Asking someone to pay the $1500/mon for coding training while still having to find a place to study (starbucks sucks for this purpose) is not feasible. But asking someone to pay $450 a month for a dedicated desk (with 24/7 access) and grant the option of attending a bootcamp with a little bit extra fee? I think that's a very good option. Try the service for 1-2 months, and if not working you can quit. Without being burdened with big debt. And you have experienced devs and other students in the office locally that you can network with.
i think this is the best possible outcome for Flatiron and frankly a scoop for them versus some of the other bootcamps out there (i went to another). so congrats are due to them and whoever wrangled that deal.
There's a broader question of whether the industry is consolidating after the high profile closures this year. Can and should bootcamps survive long term as independent entities? Is the influence of VC money forcing bootcamps to have bigger ambitions than they "naturally" should have (vis a vis other trade schools which are typically small and local?)
Well, I think pretty much any and all acquisitions make sense for WeWork. Arguably the most over-valued company in the world IMO. When that happens - diversify or wave hands faster. Acquisitions do both.
[1] https://ag.ny.gov/press-release/ag-schneiderman-announces-37...