[shoyer]

No PhD required, but you're expected to pay 14k in tuition. In contrast, Insight pays you.

If you want to pay money for experience, why not get an actual degree from an accredited institution?

A more realistic alternative to Insight is to do a (paid) internship at a tech company. This is the path I took.

[clearspandex]

Often advanced degrees at universities are much more expensive (http://datascience.berkeley.edu/admissions/tuition-and-finan...) than an intensive program such as Zipfian and take much longer. I hope that private education institutions (such as GA, Hackbright, Dev Bootcamp, etc.) can coexist happily with traditional universities, as they each fill a different niche. Universities are in the business of training researchers and professors (and do a great job at that) while alternative educational companies aim to produce industry practitioners (similar to trade schools).

I highly recommend internships and they are wonderful if you can get one. Unfortunately not everyone can be so lucky, either due to lack of experience/technical abilities or an advanced degree (not everyone goes to college). I believe these alternative educational routes are democratizing such industries and many of them offer scholarships and tuition assistance programs.