[brookside]

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.

[trowawee]

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.

[graeme]

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.

[brooklyn_ashey]

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.