by davi on 12/22/14, 3:25 PM with 37 comments
by ssharp on 12/22/14, 4:19 PM
Besides that, I don't get this:
"Part of it is that the cost of delivering that education are very reasonable."
He then preaches about how higher ed's cost structures are terrible. But when you look at the cost per week of education, Flatiron is over 3x higher than a 4-year college. That doesn't suggest to me that higher ed's costs structures are all that ridiculous compared to Flatiron.
Overall, I get the impression that Flatiron is providing a valuable educational program to its students. However, if you really want to impress me or inspire others, show me how this model can be successfully applied to careers outside of software engineering.
It would seem a better argument would be made for time spent rather than dollars spent.
by coffeemug on 12/22/14, 5:24 PM
The bigger problem is that high school seniors don't understand basic economics of supply and demand. The job market is becoming polarized -- top people in their fields are doing better than ever, and the market doesn't really need anything else (with software engineering currently being an anomaly). So I'd say it isn't worth going to college (from an ROI perspective) if you aren't positioned to be in the top 10% of your field. This used to not be the case, but the world is very rapidly going in this direction and I'm not sure if there is a solution to this problem, any more than there was a solution to manual labor jobs disappearing post industrial revolution.
> EDIT: When you always add and never subtract, you get cost structures that are not sustainable.
That's brilliant.
by gkop on 12/22/14, 5:41 PM
Saron Yitbarek - University of Maryland College Park B.A. English, B.S. Psychology 2007 – 2011 [1]
Justin Belmont - Tufts University BA, English 1999 – 2003 Columbia University in the City of New York MFA, Nonfiction Writing 2005 – 2008 [2]
Danny Olinsky University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill - Kenan-Flagler Business School BSBA, Business Administration; Entrepreneurship [3]
[0] http://flatironschool.com/web#block7 [1] https://www.linkedin.com/in/saronyitbarek [2] https://www.linkedin.com/in/justinbelmont [3] https://www.linkedin.com/in/dannyolinsky
by lexap on 12/22/14, 4:56 PM
That said, I thought Flatiron was an exceptional investment, much higher ROI on my salary than college, but also served a fundamentally different purpose and role in my education than college.
by wooyi on 12/22/14, 5:11 PM
If you pick a program that has high salary/demand, you will have better ROI. Even if you spend lots of money on it, you will be able to pay it back. That is ROI. (Not just cost by itself)
Here is a list of top ranking salary schools. They are almost all dominated by Ivies, tech/engineering (and interestingly, Military) schools.
http://www.payscale.com/college-salary-report-2014/full-list...
by mcguire on 12/22/14, 5:57 PM
Wow. It's a good thing that whole "software engineering" thing isn't a profession or anything. I wish this had been available 25 years ago, before I wasted 4 years and roughly 9000 hours (4 years, 2 semesters per year, 15 weeks per semester, 15 class hours per week = 1800 class hours; by their class+lab+deployment numbers, a 5/1 ratio) getting a bachelors.
Plus, even if I had decided to stick to the BA, on their schedule I could have packed all that into a little over 2 years, instead of 4.
by wallflower on 12/22/14, 6:05 PM
I know programmers with 15+ years of experience who are doing the same thing year after year. After a while, the years of experience for that type of programmer are meaningless. Also, either the company or their peer group restricts their ability to learn new things. Many of them with families and (now) college tuition bills to pay don't mind this restriction on learning. There are many more 9-5 programmers than the people who live and breathe on the bleeding edge.
The reality is that while there are only a couple superb programmers at the level of Linus Torvalds, Bill Joy, Thomas Knoll in the world's history - there are many orders of magnitude more programmers who might not change the world but help keep the increasingly technological world running. There is room for many more programmers and we don't need to restrict the industry to the narrow intake funnel of 4 year CS degree.
by jdudek on 12/23/14, 12:23 PM
by thirdstation on 12/22/14, 6:48 PM
That might be a good test of demand for junior Ruby/Rails/Javascript developers, in addition to how good Flatiron is at preparing them.
by barry-cotter on 12/22/14, 5:12 PM
I don't know anything about the Flatiron school but I discussed App Academy with a graduate of the first New York class. They made it sound like the excellent results were all selection effect rather than treatment. A lead mentor who was never there and two assistants who had finished the previous San Francisco cycle. Some of the people doing the course had more programming experience than these teachers. It is very likely that the graduation rate reflects selectivity as much as good teaching and curriculum.