California Regulator Seeks To Shut Down 'Learn To Code' Bootcamps 374
cultiv8 writes: "The Bureau for Private Postsecondary Education (BPPE), a unit in the California Department of Consumer Affairs charged with licensing and regulating postsecondary education in California, is arguing that 'learn to code' bootcamps fall under its jurisdiction and are subject to regulation. In mid-January, BPPE sent cease and desist letters to Hackbright Academy, Hack Reactor, App Academy, Zipfian Academy, and others. Unless they comply, these organizations face imminent closure and a hefty $50,000 fine. A BPPE spokesperson said these organizations have two weeks to start coming into compliance."
California (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:California (Score:5, Insightful)
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Hack Reactor claims 99% placement?
If true, maybe this really is an innovative education environment that aggressive regulation should stay away from.
Re:California (Score:4, Informative)
what is the small print
unless its really 99% of their grads are hired for real software jobs which i don't believe they need to be truthful. every school that hypes a placement rate always has some small print that shows the 90% number is a small percentage of sampled students
Re:California (Score:5, Informative)
Re:California (Score:5, Informative)
I'd raise your "misleading" to "bullshit", actually. The article makes it perfectly clear, the summary and headline are garbage.
Re:California (Score:5, Insightful)
This doesn't require any more regulation.
Deceptive advertising is fraud. Don't "regulate" -- prosecute them for fraud if they're committing fraud. If they're not, then leave them the hell alone.
Re:California (Score:5, Insightful)
This doesn't require any more regulation.
It isn't "more regulation", it's "applying the regulations that already exist."
Deceptive advertising is fraud. Don't "regulate" --
Prosecuting for fraud IS regulation. And when statements like this appear:
it isn't fraud (assuming the 99 percent claim is true.) It's YOUR fault if you misread "a job" as meaning "a computer scientist" job. It certainly IS your fault if you think that you can teach someone to be a computer scientist worth a six figure salary in just ten weeks.
And I hate to say this (no I really don't) but any outfit that charges $17000 for a ten week course needs some kind of overview. Even if the first two or three companies doing this are legit, such ridiculous amounts of money are going to draw hucksters like iron filings to buckey cubes. Legit course providers should have no problem with the regulation because it will help keep the less legitimate players out.
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Prosecuting for fraud IS regulation. And when statements like this appear:
You should research the word "enforcement", because it is not the same as "regulation". No, you can't use them interchangeably as you are trying to do.
Re:California (Score:5, Insightful)
Lawsuits and trials are about the most inefficient means of regulation imaginable. I say that as a lawyer. I know a lot of libertarians, have a libertarian bent myself, but I laugh every time I someone suggests that courts are the resolution for problems like this.
Let's just pretend a person took their last $15k and spent it on a fraudulent school. How is that person going to get his money back? You really think the prosecutor is going to prosecute? That's a joke -- the entire court system would need to be 100s of times larger (which is of course paid for by taxes).
OK, so a civil suit. Sure, you get a trial two to three years from the date of filing the case, because several times your scheduled trial date got bumped to make room for rapists' prosecutions and those take precedence. If you try to do it yourself, you'll almost certainly lose. There are outlier pro se litigants, but mostly, they lose.
So you try to hire a lawyer to run the case -- good luck. The costs of discovery will probably cost more than $15k because tracking down all the students and interviewing them, developing hiring statistics, deposing the school officials, building a case -- it's all expensive. The effect is that you won't actually be able to get an attorney unless you pony up thousands, because the case will cost more than you can win -- an attorney isn't going to gamble his own money on a losing proposition. He might offer to do it on an hourly basis if you put $20k or so in their trust account, but at the end of the day, winning will cost you more than you'll win, the attorney will tell you that, and then tell you it doesn't make financial sense for you to hire him. You of course are broke, so this last horrid option isn't even an option.
Finally, let's take the Lotto scenario, you win and get all your money back, and it doesn't cost you dime to get. You aren't getting back all the crap you went through for years -- like living in a homeless shelter and getting your eye poked out because you didn't have enough money for rent. Yeah, there's some tenuous connection to your eye, but if you think that you're getting back everything you lost while waiting for your case to resolve, you're an idiot.
The ONLY way litigation could work as a regulation device, was if the court system was expanded radically -- 100s of times larger, maybe 1000s -- AND both sides provided state paid legal counsel and investigators etc to take costs and fees out of the equation. At that point, you might as well just have reasonable regulation -- it will be cheaper and definitely way more efficient. If you did have such a system where litigation was the main tool -- everyone would be in litigation all the time. It would be like that Farscape episode where 90% of a planet's population were lawyers. You think a little regulation is bad --- makes me laugh. Being in trial your entire life would suck beyond any known measure.
Re:California (Score:4, Interesting)
Libertarians have lots of good ideas, but regulation by trial is not in that set. For example, I totally agree that the War on [Some] Drugs is beyond idiotic and ridiculously wasteful (and that people should be able to make personal choices about which drugs they use). But even if you subtracted every single drug case out of the system, the system wouldn't be able to cope with the onslaught of litigation that would be required under a "regulation by lawsuit" method.
Secondly, any lawyer whose gone through enough trials will have lost cases he or she thought was a total winner, and won cases categorized as "total dog." A jury trial is a kind of gambling in the most literal sense. You put up your money to cover the costs of building a case, then get a jury pool randomly selected from the community, and then try to weed out the worst potential jurors --- but it sometimes happens that the entire pool from which you get to pick, sucks. When you draw names out of a hat, sometimes you get reasonable people and sometimes you get crazies. Occasionally, every name drawn from that hat is a nut, and you are just looking for the least worst options.
Then even if you win, the cost of trials is immense. It really is a terribly inefficient method of regulation -- it's as good of a last resort as we've been able to dream up, but for everyday stuff, it would be ridiculously expensive. If people lived in a system where day-to-day regulation, the assurance that businesses operate fairly, was done by trial, we'd all be broke from the endless lawsuits -- or more likely, all the little guys would just have to suck it up even more than we have to now.
For what it's worth . . . (Score:5, Informative)
I'm a student at Hack Reactor. I was pretty cynical about that 99% hiring rate number before I started here, but now I tend to believe it's accurate. I say that based on what I've seen from the graduates of the last 2 classes. As far as I can tell, everyone in the class that graduated 10 weeks ago has a job and everyone I've talked to from the group that graduated in December seems to be getting job interviews and having success moving forward in their job search.
The trick isn't in how they do the math. If there's a trick to it, it's that:
* Admissions are pretty competitive. They pick students who are likely to be successful.
* They have chosen the right niche. It's all JavaScript all the time around here. There's a huge shortage of good JavaScript developers in the valley. A lot of companies see value in having someone who knows a bunch about JavaScript and is clearly highly motivated to learn even if they're weaker in data structures or some of the other areas.
* The numbers are small right now. Hack Reactor is only 14 months old. There's only something like 120 HR graduates in the job market.
But, and I'm in the minority around here on this, I also think coding schools should be regulated. CA passed a law to tighten regulation of trade schools in 2009 because there were lots of scams going on- a lot of bogus CNA training programs and cooking schools, etc. That law makes sense.
And if there's a law that regulates trade schools, it seems like it should apply to coding schools just as much as sound engineering programs, barber colleges and cooking schools. Creating loopholes in a good law for one industry that thinks its special seems like a bad idea.
Besides a little regulation will add legitimacy to a young industry and keep scam artists from moving into the space. There will be some compliance costs (paperwork is a hassle!), but I can't see it being much more than that.
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If you're charging someone $15000 for a 10 week course, and promising jobs at companies "like Facebook and Google," you probably need to fall under some sort of regulation and compliance.
If you're charging $15k a head, and you're whining about the undue burden of a "hefty" $50k fine, then you have what, 10 clients?
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If you're charging someone $15000 for a 10 week course, and promising jobs at companies "like Facebook and Google," you probably need to fall under some sort of regulation and compliance.
If you're charging $15k a head, and you're whining about the undue burden of a "hefty" $50k fine, then you have what, 10 clients?
An unregulated school could well be a startup that has cash flow issues due to debt, low exposure, uncertainty, etc. Any extra expense even a fee notoriously regarded as a fine could be a real setback.
Re:California (Score:5, Insightful)
No, if you are promising jobs that you can't actually guarantee, you don't need regulation, you need to be prosecuted for fraud. That simple.
Re: California (Score:5, Informative)
Regulation can prevent harm. Litigation is expensive, time consuming, and a crap shoot with loaded dice since the perpetrator has much deeper pockets. Also see tort reform which gutted your only recourse. Deregulation and tort reform are done for the wealthy to give them impunity.
Re: California (Score:5, Insightful)
This is what drives me crazy about people ranting at how 'sue crazy' america is. Of course we see lot of lawsuits, a significant number of our laws are not enforced until someone starts a civil case. Many things that people assume the police and prosecutors would handle in fact can only be triggered by a private lawsuit, thus if one is wronged the state will not help (much less proactively investigate) on your behalf unless one is willing to invest the capital in bringing a civil case.
Re: California (Score:4, Insightful)
*nods* litigation, while it has a wonderful DIY feel to it, puts the burden of enforcement on people with slim resources. Regulation on the other hand involves a funded group who's full time job involves ensuring entities are obeying the law.
Unfortunately, it also often leads to 'regulatory capture', the phenomenon in which the 'regulated' group actually ends up controlling the regulator in practice. (See the financial industry's recent mess as an example.) The trick to fixing this, however, isn't getting rid of the regulation. It's making sure that those who *enforce* the regulations are rewarded for doing so.
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Re:California (Score:4, Interesting)
If you're charging someone $15000 for a 10 week course
My spouse's employer recently paid that amount for a 2 day SAP course, and I'm pretty sure CA regulators are not going after the company providing the SAP course.
promising jobs at companies "like Facebook and Google,"
I do not see a promise or guarantee of employment anywhere in the article or in a brief search of their websites.
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Re:California (Score:5, Insightful)
If you're charging someone $15000 for a 10 week course, and promising jobs at companies "like Facebook and Google," you probably need to fall under some sort of regulation and compliance.
I'm echoing what's already been said here. But regulation and compliance already exists. Fraud didn't become legal just because. If fraud and similar crimes are not being prosecuted, then it is an enforcement problem not a lack of regulation problem.
Re: California (Score:3)
Wouldn't false advertising or fraud laws already cover that?
Re:Why? (Score:4, Informative)
10th amendment. "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."
Since the US Constitution doesn't prohibit the regulation of education, it is permitted to the states.
Re:Why? (Score:4, Insightful)
You are aware the constitution is not the only piece of legislation the regulates societal affairs, right?
You are apparently unaware that both the US and California state constitutions are not pieces of legislation.
Incidentally, the US Constitution does give the state of California the ability to regulate such "bootcamps" via the Ninth Amendment. The real issue is whether California's constitution does.
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I'd say Article 9 of the California Constitution. With a side of Article 4 and 5.
ARTICLE 9 EDUCATION
SECTION 1. A general diffusion of knowledge and intelligence being
essential to the preservation of the rights and liberties of the
people, the Legislature shall encourage by all suitable means the
promotion of intellectual, scientific, moral, and agricultural
improvement.
So if the Legislature wishes to encourage the promotion of such activity by preventing fraud and dishonesty in such endeavors, it's certainl
Re:California (Score:5, Insightful)
Mod parent up. This is exactly right. All I can say here is thank god it is California.
We already have laws against fraud. There is no good reason that anyone should need a priori permission from the state to teach something to another person. This kind of bureaucratic overreach is the reason we have 8.7% unemployment.
Re:California (Score:5, Insightful)
Strangely, many deep-red states are also struggling with poverty and high unemployment. If "this kind of bureaucratic overreach" was a simple explanation for high unemployment rates, then the problem would solve itself as non-California states became prosperous utopias of full employment. Real-world evidence indicates this isn't the case --- there must be big structural factors besides California's regulations responsible for the nation-wide (not just California and "liberal" states) employment issues.
Re:California (Score:5, Informative)
Strangely, many deep-red states are also struggling with poverty and high unemployment.
Except that is not true [bls.gov]. There are five states with unemployment worse than California, and none are red (they all voted for Obama in 2012).
If "this kind of bureaucratic overreach" was a simple explanation for high unemployment rates ...
Nobody said it was a "simple explanation", but it is certainly part of the problem. In no other state is a business required by law to inform their customers that they may get cancer if they eat the toner powder from the laser printer in the back office.
If a school (or any other businesses) appear to be using fraudulent advertising, then the state attorney general should investigate. But they should not be throwing up hurdles to everyone that wants to start up a business and generate jobs.
Re:California (Score:5, Informative)
Except that is not true [bls.gov]. There are five states with unemployment worse than California, and none are red (they all voted for Obama in 2012).
And other states near the bottom of the list: Tennessee, Kentucky, Mississippi, Georgia. Also, "voted for Obama" is a poor measure for intrusive state regulations --- one of your "bottom 5" states is Nevada, the place that allows brothels and pretty much anything to go (an "anti-California" when it comes to pervasive regulations). In other words, the picture is far less clear than you claim. Your statement was "This kind of bureaucratic overreach is the reason" (emphasis mine), which is demonstrably false. Fine, if you want to walk it back to "one small part of the problem" --- but it was your own words clinging to the simplistic distortion to support your ideology.
If a school (or any other businesses) appear to be using fraudulent advertising,
Which is what these places appear to be doing, on a wide scale. Thus, the state is placing them under the oversight of the regulatory body with the mandate and expertise to evaluate claims and practices in education. This isn't "throwing up hurdles to everyone that wants to start up a business"; this is putting up hurdles to a very specific class of shady businesses that've raised attention through dubious practices.
Re:California (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:California (Score:4, Insightful)
I think it's also a mistake to consider liberty as the opposite of statism. Just as reducing to a Red/Blue argument ignores how both parties frequently co-operate in bipartisan manners against freedom, so to assuming that liberty is the result of a minimal state ignores all the non-state systems of oppression. Establishing liberty requires critiquing, undermining, and dismantling all hierarchies of coercive power. The state is one --- but, so are, e.g., economic, racial, and gender hierarchies of oppression that can (and quite frequently do) arise in decentralized "free" systems where the strong are given free reign to oppress the weak. Dismantling state apparatus to make room for local feudalism is no step towards liberty. The assumption that the ideal "minimal state" is one that enforces Capitalist/market regulations (enforces contracts/property) is fundamentally flawed, because market systems are themselves unstable towards accumulation and collapse into tyranny. Rather, the need is to establish a minimal state that dismantles and devolves any accumulations of power to as many people as possible.
Re:California (Score:4, Informative)
Actually, the federal government is working hard to prevent companies fleeing to these states like, for example, hassling Boeing for building a giant plant there claiming it's anti-union to poor souls inWashington state.
I'm sure meme oh race to the bottom oh my meme savior of worldviews. Worldviews are schizophrenic, or at least neurotic: they hold logically incompatible philosophies as simultaneously true.
Re: California (Score:3, Informative)
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If I opened a "school" tomorrow that promised to teach programming and charged $15,000 don't you think some government organization should make sure the students are actually going to learn something for their $15,000?
No. Because the government have no business being involved in a contract between you and me. If you do not teach me what you said you would, I sue you for damages. There is already a legal system in place, and the only thing that is achieved by these cease-and-desist letters is that innovative startups are being forced out of business by an overeager beancounter who found something else to do than stare out of the window all day, and allows incumbent "schools" like ITT-tech (where your noodle-recipe will ge
Re: California (Score:3, Informative)
Re: California (Score:4, Interesting)
That is a very steep slippery slope you are standing on. School != "performing surgery" and simply going to school has never given a license to a doctor to perform surgery.
If the Government does not charge for regulation, you may have a point. If they are doing so for the revenue, then it's not protecting the public that they are worried about. This is the problem with most of these types of regulations.
Lastly, if a student signs up to a college that guarantees a job at X company and does not get job at X company they can sue the school. If they promise to teach you C programming and teach you finger painting you can sue them as well. You seem to be concerned about the people wasting time as much as money, and dding overhead to schools won't change that in the slightest.
Consumers are always partially responsible for their decisions. The trickier the scam the less responsible the consumer would be. To be honest, I don't have much sympathy for people that sign up to these schools because they can always choose to do 5 minutes of research on the school before dumping 15,000.00 on them. Most of that is done in loans at insane interest rates, so the student does not lose money. They can recoup court costs in civil court so don't lose money there either. Further, what better way of educating people about the ole saying "if something looks too good to be true it probably is".
This is not the same as tricking some poor ole lady out of her life savings. These "students" are trying to take shortcuts and getting suckered because they want shortcuts. It should take a whole 60 seconds to validate a schools accreditation, and another 4 minutes looking in Google to find people complaining about the scam schools.
If they charge $15,000 for a ten week course... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:If they charge $15,000 for a ten week course... (Score:5, Insightful)
Why? Is there a specific price point at which regulation should be automatic?
On what do you base your premise that regulation is both necessary and positive?
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On what do you base your premise that regulation is both necessary and positive?
Experience. History. Fraud.
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"Is there a specific price point at which regulation should be automatic?"
Any financial transaction. This is fairly standard.
Re:If they charge $15,000 for a ten week course... (Score:5, Insightful)
"Is there a specific price point at which regulation should be automatic?"
Any financial transaction. This is fairly standard.
Why? Should garage sales be regulated? Why does the government need to be involved in every facet of your life?
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"Is there a specific price point at which regulation should be automatic?"
Any financial transaction. This is fairly standard.
Why? Should garage sales be regulated?
Depends on the circumstances - if you're having a garage sale maybe 2-3 times a year, it seems like a waste of resources.
However, if your primary source of income is "garage sales," and you're holding one every weekend if not every day (we call that "running a flea market" 'round these parts), then yea, you're a business and need to be regulated.
Of course, this is all ignoring the fact that garage sales are already regulated in most places, by way of permit requirements.
Why does the government need to be involved in every facet of your life?
Control, duh. In the case of private
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Control, duh. In the case of private citizens, I highly disagree with the practice, as it limits liberty; however, in reference to businesses, the government should be up their asses 24/7/365 - there's a damn good reason the Constitution doesn't give any rights to corporations.
The only entity that the US Constitution gives rights to is the US Government, by design.
Re:If they charge $15,000 for a ten week course... (Score:5, Funny)
" Should garage sales be regulated?"
House sales are regulated, I don't see why garages should be any different.
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Why? Should garage sales be regulated?
Garage sales are regulated.
For traffic control, zoning violations and other reasons.
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Flea markets? ANY cash transaction? (Score:5, Insightful)
Any financial transaction. This is fairly standard.
If I beat you every day your whole life, it's "fairly standard" but does not make it right.
There's lots of transactions that are not really regulated, especially cash ones...
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Having said that I do agree that if they are making promises of 99% placement, they really should be forced to prove it otherwise its no different than snake oil
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There are price levels where the risk of fraud and abuse may outweigh the costs of enforcement and compliance. People who travel to other countries cannot carry more than $10000 in cash without reporting it. The risk is money laundering and drug running.
Regulating everything or regulating nothing always leads to huge Type I/Type II errors. Reasonable people can disagree on the appropriate level of compromise.
Re:If they charge $15,000 for a ten week course... (Score:5, Insightful)
So should every technical training course for firewalls, networking, VMWare, etc. be regulated similarly? Those are $5k+ a week.
Re:If they charge $15,000 for a ten week course... (Score:4, Interesting)
Yes. However those courses, while insanely expensive and not worth the cost IMO, do provide what they promise- a certain level of knowledge on the topic, so the vast majority are ok. The bootcamps promise that at the end of camp that you're ready for employment as a professional programmer and that a certain amount of their graduates (usually very high) receive jobs as a programmer within a short time of graduation. These are both false claims, and regulation should clamp down on them.
Caveat emptor (Score:2)
Those bootcamps promising/guaranteeing certain performance can all be sued for fraud if they fail to live up to those promises/guarantees. For all the rest...caveat emptor.
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Doesn't that depend on what the course is worth? Programming is a relatively well paid profession, particularly in the US. It is conceivable that a good ten-week course could pay for itself almost immediately if a student could then expect to secure a better position with a significantly higher salary as a result of their improved skill and understanding.
For contrast, in the UK university fees are highly controversial but can be up to £9,000 (almost US$15,000 today) per year. However, reputable profes
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Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:“Our primary goal is not to collect a fin (Score:4, Interesting)
"We don't want money. They need to bow down and acknowledge us as Lord."
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The headline and summary are about shutting them down. The article says both sides are working towards compliance.
I was going to post the same quote, but not to show my badge of uninformed cynicism like you. Since this was created by California law, much as someone thinks it unnecessary, it is state law. And working for compliance instead of shuttering these camps is a good thing.
California has piles of referendum votes, so if they think regulation is not needed they can get this stricken.
Meanwhile, this is
Compliance (Score:3, Insightful)
The Alternative Is Worse (Score:4, Insightful)
There's actually a pretty good reason there are accredation standards in education. People are paying a lot of money. It's hard for someone to know (without actually taking the course) if the course is valuable or worthless. There are plenty of shysters out there who couldn't care less if you learn - they're just out for your money, and provide as little education as they can get away with ('For Profit" online universities are, IMO, more scam than educators).
Whether it's a government or a private body, setting clear expectations on curriculum standards and certifying compliance with them is a highly useful service to keep students from getting victimized. Which means "compliance" with someone else's idea of what a reasonable student needs is not only not anathema, it can be a Very Good Thing.
Being free to dupe people into paying a lot of money for a worthless service isn't exactly in character with a "free society" in any but the most extreme laisse faire ideologies.
Re:Compliance (Score:5, Insightful)
I dunno, but compliance is not necessarily a bad thing.
I want all of my electrical and electronic devices to comply with appropriate standards and regulations so they all work together and are safe to use.
I want vehicles and buildings to comply with the myriad of safety regulations.
I want my food and food preparation/handling facilities to comply with best practices.
I don't know what the BPPE requires with respect to compliance (article does not say in what way these places are not in compliance), but maybe I want that too.
=Smidge=
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I don't know what the BPPE requires with respect to compliance (article does not say in what way these places are not in compliance), but maybe I want that too. =Smidge=
I fully agree. While at first it sounds like a typical bureaucratic money grab, I'd like to see what laws they're violating before further rushing to judgement.
Curious where he'd draw the line (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: Curious where he'd draw the line (Score:5, Insightful)
I think that it's probably about advertising: They're claiming 99% job placement, waving around the idea of six figure salaries, for $17k and 10 weeks. I'm not sure where you draw the line, but having tried to help counsel some lower income people who were looking at nursing schools, this is way the hell over the line.
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Nursing schools are a good example, as there is a surplus of nurses in many area due to older nurses staying in the job market.
Commercial shools exist to fill classes and make money, any other outcomes are secondary.
Re: Curious where he'd draw the line (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, and the spirit of those laws is encapsulated in the regulation of postsecondary education. These bootcamps are trying to skirt the regulations designed to prevent fraud in the education market. They're being asked to comply with the anti-fraud regulations.
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Well, these coding courses are aimed at creating careers - the "students" are trying to make this their job. People going to any of your examples are not - they may be developing skills, but the camps are for hobbies, not careers.
That seems like a significant enough difference to me.
No Accredited Credential, No Regulatory Authority (Score:4, Interesting)
If these places are not offering a recognized credential of completion (such as a degree or certificate recognized by the prevailing accreditation bodies), then they are not an educational institution subject to state regulation. Instead, they fall under Federal Dept. of Ed Work Training facilities.
Federal Law is settled on this, and there are at least 100 cases that I can find that set this precedent.
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Ok, I'm gonna go ahead and disagree with you there. Would you care to cite any of these "100 cases" for us laypeople?
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I only checked out http://www.hackbrightacademy.c... [hackbrightacademy.com] but they don't appear to offer any kind of certification. Just 10 weeks of training for women that ends with a "Career Day".
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Federal law normally preempts state law, in cases where both jurisdictions have an interest. However, the courts have generally allowed states to provide more specific regulations so long as they meet the requirements of the federal law. Two examples.
Consider minimum wage laws. The US Government requires a minimum wage of $7.25 an hour. Many states and jurisdictions require a higher wage, and are fully allowed to do so, because whatever rate they set above $7.25 meets the requirements of the federal mi
All the cyberlibertarian rage... wrong questions.. (Score:3, Insightful)
So, what does compliance involve? That's the first question we should be asking.
If your local libertarian hot dog stand guy rages at you about maybe being shut down because the health department is on his back, instead of saying "fuck guvment", maybe you should figure out if it's something as simple as them having hygiene standards for how he cooks, and some small fee for a license. I mean, maybe there is something unreasonable or crazy, and there are some industries that corrupt government and do rent-seeking in order to limit competition, but these details matter.
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Your hot dog stand may SEEM to have been doing just fine, but if you don't give a but to us hot dog stands have a mysterious way of causing terrible accidents to youse owners. So cough it up.
Re:All the cyberlibertarian rage... wrong question (Score:5, Interesting)
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I had the same question and started clicking around. I came up with this:
http://www.bppe.ca.gov/lawsreg... [ca.gov]
Just browsing through the dense wall of legalese, it seems largely related to being clear (and documented) in purpose and intent, having structured hierarchy of responsibility, good record keeping practices, providing appropriate resources (access to staff, libraries/labs, equipment etc), having clearly defined financial policies in place, making sure your faculty is competent and up to date on their su
Postsecondary Education? Description fits the bill (Score:5, Insightful)
ED-209 (Score:2)
You have 15 seconds to comply. [youtu.be] You are in direct violation of penal code 113, section 9...
No little-girl cupcakes and no education? (Score:2)
Sometimes I am annoyed that the word "too" exists. Change the spelling so that the different meaning stands out. Not like context wouldn't play a role there. But in cases like these, I think there aren't enough "o"s in "Too much" or "Too far" or "Too stupid."
Apply uniformly (Score:2)
There are a number of training classes and "bootcamps" for various things which are based in California. Cisco Certified Internetworking Expert certification bootcamps and various others come to mind. Those bootcamps (and many others) can be many thousands of dollars.. So the question becomes, at what point do you start considering regulation for a group? When the amount of money they collect is over $X? Or when the duration of the course is over X weeks? If they are going to regulate courses at all, these
Remember MCSE Bootcamps? (Score:5, Insightful)
Back in the late 90s / early 2000s, training companies were making tons and tons of money funneling people with zero computer experience through MCSE certification bootcamps. Basically, they would do the entire set of certification exams in 2 weeks, and not all of them were 100% honest to students about their chances of passing or even getting a job once they were done. These bootcamps still exist, but from what I've experienced, they're only for people who actually know the material and just need to update their skills quickly. The earlier iterations of these were definitely certification mills though. I went to one around 2001 because I wanted to update my certs. The class was split -- some of us were there to just do a quick skills upgrade, and others had obviously been suckered in by a dishonest recruiter. To get these folks to pass, instructors would give them copied exam questions to study and pay for these students' extra chances to pass the exams. The school would then be able to tout their super-high pass rate for the exams. And these weren't cheap either -- some were $7K or $8K in 1990s dollars. Even when you factor the cost of a hotel stay, meals and an instructor, the profit margin is huge.
Now it seems that the focus is less on system admin skills and more on "web coding" like these schools are offering classes in. Seems like a perfect hook -- young students who use their iPhone or Android mobile constantly get sold the dream that they too can be the next great app writer and make millions. And it really does seem doable -- with all the web frameworks out there, there's very little a "coder" has to know about what's actually going on under the hood to make something that works. Problem is that paper MCSEs didn't work out so well when they got on the job, so I doubt these classes will help mint genius developers either. My boot camp class back in the day had a former bus driver and someone who was fresh out of the army in an unrelated field.
Libertarians will say it's OK for businesses to take advantage of people, but I think education is a little bit different. Selling someone thousands of dollars in classes and telling them they're equivalent to CS graduates just isn't honest, and these schools profit off peoples' naivete and sell them dreams. The state gets to regulate educational institutions, so it makes sense that they're taking a look at them. And what if it was something simple like needing to publish student outcomes or pass rates? The libertarian free market would be all excited then, because the bad ones might be weeded out if students could be bothered to do research on statistics available from regulation.
It took ages to weed the paper MCSEs out of the workforce, and it's still not 100% complete. Every time I meet an "IT professional" who has no troubleshooting ability, I think back to these bootcamps.
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Libertarians will say it's OK for businesses to take advantage of people, but I think education is a little bit different.
I do not think it's OK for businesses to take advantage of people, and think that the people who engage in the kinds of practices you're talking about should be prosecuted for fraud:
1. Students are defrauded, because they're told that passing these courses will get them good jobs. They're not infrequently induced to go into debt to pay for them based on these fraudulent claims.
2. Whoever employs the "graduates" is defrauded, because they believed that they would be getting someone certifiably competent when
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Libertarians will NEVER say it's OK for businesses to take advantage of people. In What it Means to be a Libertarian, Charles Murray clearly states, "...the libertarian ethic is simple but stark ... thou shalt not deceive or defraud." Fraud and deceit are not accepted by Libertarians.
Libertarianism promotes freedom from the majority of government regulation but NOT anarchy. In a Libertarian state there would be strong and effective civil courts to protect the consumers against institutions that aren't "100%
Re:Remember MCSE Bootcamps? (Score:4, Insightful)
Libertarianism promotes freedom from the majority of government regulation but NOT anarchy. In a Libertarian state there would be strong and effective civil courts to protect the consumers against institutions that aren't "100% honest to students about their chances of passing or even getting a job once they were done."
The main problem with a Libertarian ideal state is that it implicitly argues that all deterrence against fraud and other injuries to the public must be in the form of after-the-fact damage control via the courts (in which case the question of "How much justice can you afford?" frequently comes up) instead of by proactive government action.
The purpose of regulation like this is to prevent people from being injured in the first place, because while they *might* be able to recover damages in court, and it *might* even break even financially, the opportunity costs are forever gone for those people. Worse, damage control is almost always more expensive than prevention, and some forms of damage simply can never be made up by the courts, as with birth defects caused by thalidomide or from Love Canal. It's better to prevent harm than to clean it up after.
Courts simply do not work as a one size fits all means of deterring bad behavior.
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Not only that, it would make it so that the poor guy trying to find a job to support his family has to sue the company that took
Quick Fix.. (Score:2, Insightful)
Here's a quick fix.. Move OUT of that bat-shit insane state.. Then let those insane asylum inmates running that state try to shut you down.. These coding academies are pretty much web-based anyway, so all they have *in* California are the offices.. Those could quickly be moved out to say, Texas or Nevada, with little or no impact on the company.. I was born and raised in California, but the wife and I got out of there in the mid-90s, and moved to Nevada. Unfortunantly, we still have relatives there, so I ha
Time for an IT / Tech apprenticeship system (Score:4, Insightful)
Time for an IT / Tech apprenticeship system that can be a good way to train people while at least keeping from being an outright cash cow with all kinds of marking BS about jobs that you will get and why you should pay 50K+ to go to classes hear.
Missing the point (Score:4, Informative)
94930. Deposit of Fees, Adjustment of Fees, Reserve Balance
(a) All fees collected pursuant to this article, including any interest on those fees, shall be deposited in the Private Postsecondary Education Administration Fund, and shall be available, upon appropriation by the Legislature, for expenditure by the bureau for the administration of this chapter.
(b) If the bureau determines by regulation that the adjustment of the fees established by this article is consistent with the intent of this chapter, the bureau may adjust the fees. However, the bureau shall not maintain a reserve balance in the Private Postsecondary Education Administration Fund in an amount that is greater than the amount necessary to fund six months of authorized operating expenses of the bureau in any fiscal year.
94930.5. Fee Schedule
An institution shall remit to the bureau for deposit in the Private Postsecondary Education Administration Fund the following fees, in accordance with the following schedule:
(a) The following fees shall be remitted by an institution submitting an application for an approval to operate, if applicable:
(1) Application fee for an approval to operate: five thousand dollars ($5,000).
(2) Application fee for the approval to operate a new branch of the institution: three thousand dollars ($3,000).
(3) Application fee for an approval to operate by means of accreditation: seven hundred fifty dollars ($750).
(b) The following fees shall be remitted by an institution seeking a renewal of its approval to operate, if applicable:
(1) Renewal fee for the main campus of the institution: three thousand five hundred dollars ($3,500).
(2) Renewal fee for a branch of the institution: three thousand dollars ($3,000).
(3) Renewal fee for an institution that is approved to operate by means of accreditation: five hundred dollars ($500).
(c) The following fees shall apply to an institution seeking authorization of a substantive change to its approval to operate, if applicable:
(1) Processing fee for authorization of a substantive change to an approval to operate: five hundred dollars ($500).
(2) Processing fee in connection with a substantive change to an approval to operate by means of accreditation: two hundred fifty dollars ($250).
(d) (1) In addition to any fees paid to the bureau pursuant to subdivisions (a) to (c), inclusive, each institution that is approved to operate pursuant to this chapter shall remit both of the following:
(A) An annual institutional fee, in an amount equal to three-quarters of 1 percent of the institution's annual revenues derived from students in California, but not exceeding a total of twenty-five thousand dollars ($25,000) annually.
(B) An annual branch fee of one thousand dollars ($1,000) for each branch or campus of the institution operating in California.
(2) The amount of the annual fees pursuant to paragraph (1) shall be proportional to the bureau's cost of regulating the institution under this chapter.
(e) If the bureau determines that the annual cost of providing oversight and review of an institution, as required by this chapter, is less than the amount of any fees required to be paid by that institution pursuant to this article, the bureau may decrease the fees applicable to that institution to an amount that is proportional to the bureau's costs associated with that institution.
94931. Late Payment
(a) A fee that is not paid on or before the 30th calendar day after the due date for the payment of the fee shall be subject to a 25 percent late payment penalty fee.
(b) A fee that is not paid on or before the 90th calendar day after the due date for payment of the fee shall be subject to a 35 percent late paymen
Exemptions (Score:3)
Exemptions to the CPPEA 2009 [ca.gov]. Notice the big one: schools charging a tuition of $2500 or less. That should outright exempt a lot of places once they file the right paperwork. The target of these regulations isn't the small places or pay-as-you-go classes. It's places like Silver State Helicopters that take in large tuition payments and then evaporate without delivering classes. That's why the regulations are light on teacher qualifications and heavy on the financial aspects of the schools and their owners including things like the required tuition recovery funds.
Lovely (Score:3)
Ah, California ... clearly with your thriving economy and bright future, even more regulation is what you need.
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My ME cost (my former company) about $36k, and while it was in Systems Engineering, from a highly ranked engineering school, it didn't teach me specifics about systems engineer, more the process and how to think about development. If these bootcamps really do saturate your mind with a thorough understanding of how to code, from start to finish, and a person is able to process and retain all that data, I think they're worth it. $15k worth of education that could, under the right circumstances net you a muc
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I know what kind of developers bootcamp programs produce in 12 to 16 weeks. About 25% of them are useful as developers. 50% are useful as QA. And 25% are useful for converting O2 to CO2.
Re:Let Us Control You! (Score:5, Insightful)
I know what kind of developers bootcamp programs produce in 12 to 16 weeks. About 25% of them are useful as developers. 50% are useful as QA. And 25% are useful for converting O2 to CO2.
Sooo. About the same ratio as a Masters in CS?
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Re:Big $$$ (Score:4, Interesting)
Maybe if colleges could teach software development there wouldn't be a need for these code bootcamps.