Code Bootcamp Fined $375K Over Employment Claims and Licensing Issues (arstechnica.com) 61
An anonymous reader quotes Ars Technica:
[O]ne of the most prominent institutions, New York's Flatiron School, will be shelling out $375,000 to settle charges brought by New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman's office. The AG said the school operated for a period without the proper educational license, and it improperly marketed both its job placement rates and the salaries of its graduates. New York regulators didn't find any inaccuracies in Flatiron's "outcomes report," a document the company is proud of. However, the Attorney General's office found that certain statements made on Flatiron's website didn't constitute "clear and conspicuous" disclosure.
For instance, Flatiron claimed that 98.5 percent of graduates were employed within 180 days of graduation. However, only by carefully reading the outcomes report would one find that the rate included not just full-time employees, but apprentices, contract workers, and freelancers. Some of the freelancers worked for less than 12 weeks. The school also reported an average salary of $74,447 but didn't mention on its website that the average salary claim only applied to graduates who achieved full-time employment. That group comprised only 58 percent of classroom graduates and 39 percent of those who took online courses.
The school's courses last 12 to 16 weeks, and cost between $12,000 and $15,000, according to a statement from the attorney general's office [PDF]. (Or $1,500 a month for an onine coding class). Eligible graduate can claim their share of the $375,000 by filing a complaint within the next thee months.
For instance, Flatiron claimed that 98.5 percent of graduates were employed within 180 days of graduation. However, only by carefully reading the outcomes report would one find that the rate included not just full-time employees, but apprentices, contract workers, and freelancers. Some of the freelancers worked for less than 12 weeks. The school also reported an average salary of $74,447 but didn't mention on its website that the average salary claim only applied to graduates who achieved full-time employment. That group comprised only 58 percent of classroom graduates and 39 percent of those who took online courses.
The school's courses last 12 to 16 weeks, and cost between $12,000 and $15,000, according to a statement from the attorney general's office [PDF]. (Or $1,500 a month for an onine coding class). Eligible graduate can claim their share of the $375,000 by filing a complaint within the next thee months.
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If they happen to have a relative who's a retiring crane operator and inherit the job. Otherwise, no.
Sounds like... (Score:3)
...Trump 'university'.
Taking advantage of the desperate (Score:3)
When you're unemployed, you get desperate. And desperate people often will let their guard down in their desperation. You also quickly discover that there is a whole industry of trade schools, bootcamps, etc. happy to exploit that desperation with all kinds of bullshit promises.
I had the misfortune of being unemployed for a while not too long ago. And while I found few real jobs available (most job postings are complete BS, for those who don't know), I found no shortage of schools promising to GET me a job. They trade on success stories of people who went through their course and had great job offers thrown at them as soon as they graduated. Of course, most of those success stories are complete BS too, but when you're desperate you really WANT to believe that you've finally found your answer. I came very close to letting myself get taken advantage of more than a few times, in sheer desperation. And I'm normally a pretty hardcore skeptic in normal circumstances.
In short, if it were up to me I wouldn't just fine schools like this. I would send their administrators to prison for a long, long time. They've done one of the lowest of the low things a human can do--exploit the weakest and most vulnerable of their fellow men for a quick buck.
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Oh yeah, certifications. I forgot about that racket. Same deal:
"Employers LOVE our certification. Just get it and they'll be throwing job offers at you."
"Well, then I'm sure you'll be happy to provide me with a refund if I get your certification and somehow don't find a job, right?"
"Well....uh...no."
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Yep. I've worked in the industry for decades, from tiny companies to the largest ones, and have never once been asked what "certifications" I have. Nobody cares. They might just barely care what your univ degree involved, but even that fades after a while and it really just matters how you do on their interview, and what your prior job experience was.
The other way around, I've been involved in doing interviews of candidates, and "certifications" have never been asked about or discussed in the post-interv
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Feeling a little guilty are we?
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Would you mind checking on the color of the sky in your world for me?
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Fraud is a reason.
Making fraudulent claims is fraud.
Go fuck yourself, corporatist bootlicker.
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And this is why there needs to be basic income. Nobody's life should hang on a thin string that is the education and employment market.
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This is why there needs to be strict immigration enforcement. I'm to believe that employers would conspire to bust unions, limit women's wages, dodge taxes, evade regulation, and a host of other issues, but they WOULDN'T conspire to replace their domestic workers with cheap, compliant foreigners?
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For profit trade schools, credit repair, debt consolidation and other scams that prey on the poor and down on their luck almost make me believe, or want to believe, in a literal Hell.
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And let's not forget the referral fees.
If you meet one of those "graduates", they're incentivized to lie to you so they get a couple thousands of dollars as a referral fee.
This is one of the reasons you will see more positive reviews on Yelp than negative, some of those graduates still hold out the hope that they may still be able to recoup some of their money if they refer enough students. If they post a damning review on youtube or on yelp under their real name, they run the risk that they'll be blacklist
nnn (Score:1)
death to the 3Rs (Score:2)
This is precisely the reason K12 needs to drop calculus and mandate instead statistical reasoning.
And there should be an entire test along the way where every question involves reading some promotional brochure, preferably sourced from the certification industry (if the documents remain identifiable, even better—perhaps supplied by those entities convicted of fraudulent representation, as part of their penance).
Time for the old 3Rs to step aside, in favour of factual, figurative, and fraudulent—
Preying on the desperate and unlucky (Score:2)
This happened at the height of the last Dotcom Bubble, except the bootcamps were for MCSE or Java/Solaris certification. Now that everything's code and in the cloud, the people running the schools are just changing the advertisement a little bit.
The thing that sucks is that just like ITT Tech, U of Phoenix and other for profit schools, these places live on student loans and GI Bill education grants. Back in the early 2000s I went to one of these bootcamps because a consulting company I worked for at the tim