[cuttooth]

I'm fine with a program like HS existing if people want to join it, but I'll have no respect for them until they treat both genders equally in terms of the tuition assistance.

Note that I'm all for women joining the program, but I'd presume people with the time to commit to the program are a) not working, and b) don't have much money, so it's completely unfair to exclude men to receive assistance just because they happen to be of the majority who are interested the field.

[antics]

To be clear, there is no "tuition" and therefore no "tuition assistance". The living stipends are provided by external companies, like etsy, and they are provided as an outreach effort.

Now. On a purely practical note, HS is a business, and the core objective is to deliver excellent batch dynamics. The responsibility is to attendees and attendees only -- how are they delivering an experience that makes the time (and, indirectly, money) commitment of the students worth it? The issue of "fairness" does not enter the conversation because this is not a charity. Or, more straightforwardly, their responsibility is not to people who did not get in.

Now, ok, you might argue that you are not convinced that having a roughly-equal gender ratio is beneficial to the batch as a whole, but I am in the current batch and I'm telling you it makes a huge difference. If you don't believe me, let's chat over email or skype.

[xinn]

Do you think a lower standard is required of female applicants in the application process than of male applicants?

[antics]

Absolutely not. I have been quite impressed with each and every female participant. It is incredibly obvious that no one in the batch was a pity case. But even if you don't believe this anecdotal evidence, consider that the ratio is worse this time around than any other batch. Since the facilitators are acutely aware of the batch balance (and other statistics), it clear to me that this decision was deliberate, and that it reflects a very strong male applicant pool this time around.

As for my speculation, given the rejection statistics, I'm guessing the HS facilitators could have chosen to admit many more females before this would have even been an issue that should have borne consideration.

[nicholasjbs]

Male and female applicants are judged by exactly the same standards. From our blog post when we first offerred grants:

"We're not going to lower the bar for female applicants. It frustrates us a little that we feel the need to say that, and we think it underlines the sexism (intentional and not) that so pervades the programming world.

But we want to say that now, so people don't have to waste time asking or debating the point. Women will be judged on the exact same scale as men. We think to do otherwise would be insulting and counterproductive. We care a lot about getting more women into Hacker School, but we won't do it at the expense of the quality of the batch."

From: https://www.hackerschool.com/blog/1-summer-2012-applications...

[nicholasjbs]

To clarify, we don't have any "tuition assistance," since we don't charge anyone tuition. Hacker School is entirely free for everyone.

(We do have a limited number grants for living expenses, which other companies pay for, that are currently only available for women.)

[bgilroy26]

The money is an extra, it's added on. It's not as though they thought about paying for everybody and then took it away for men, that would be silly.

[ankitml]

The tuition assistance is precisely for this reason that majority interested are men. The assistance is supposed to increase the interest among women.