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VA_Network_Nerd2420 karma

We've hired some amazing faculty and staff to build the best computer science education, hiring from top tech companies like Google and Apple and top universities like MIT and Stanford.

How are you funded? Where does the money come from?

If you aren't taking tuition up-front how are you funding day-to-day operations?
My concern is if you will be around for students to complete their educations before you go belly-up (which I don't hope happens at all, just a concern).
You built a brand new college in one of the most expensive cities in the US, if not the world and you're doing it with a highly nebulous business model.
Are you structured as a For-Profit institution?

You mention that you have some quantity of scholarships even for international applicants.
There are only a few handfuls of US universities who offer scholarships to internationals, and they tend to be highly well-funded.
How can you afford that? Is your business model to become an H1B processing plant?

It's not my intention to attack your institution, but it feels almost purpose-built to serve as a perfect H1B factory.
No up-front tuition. Accelerated classes. Scholarships. Right smack in the heart of SanFran/SV.
The only thing missing is an Accelerated Masters Degree program.

An alternative provider like Make School could partner with an established University and create a new program offering degrees without going through a 3-5 year accreditation process.

Your language here is unclear and your language on this from your website seems conflicting with your statements.

If I understand, WASC Senior College and University Commission (WSCUC) has issued you a temporary/contingent/experimental accreditation so that you can operate NOW as if you were a fully accredited institution, while you work through some kind of an incubation / probationary / period under the guidance and assistance of Dominican University.

You can't issue your own diplomas yet, and graduates are awarded degrees from Dominican until you achieve full Accreditation status.

Achieving full Accreditation is not, I assume, a sure-thing, is it? You have some hoops to jump through and competencies to display mastery of to WSCUC to receive their formal, blessing, right?

Which is why I find this language misleading:

Make School is the first in the country to pursue accreditation under a new policy called the “Incubation Policy”created by the WASC Senior College and University Commission (WSCUC), the regional accreditor covering California.

But you aren't really Accredited yet, right? You've been granted an experimental incubation permit to operate as if you were accredited. Right?

I don't think any of this invalidates your ability to deliver an education, I'm just not sure you are stating the facts of the situation clearly. Or, I must admit, it's also possible I misunderstand.

~2 year Bachelor instead of 4 years

Ahh yes. "Accelerated Coursework". University of Phoenix made a big deal of this too.

A 4-year degree in 2 years. There are ONLY two ways to accomplish this:

  1. You work the student HARD. Aggressive course loads, intensive volumes of homework, and an increased risk of poor retention, student stress & drop-out rates, and low consumer satisfaction.
  2. You eliminate content from classes & coursework from the curriculum and simply teach less content, but call it the same degree.

Which approach does your institution associate with?

Please don't say that you've revolutionized education with an exciting and unique approach to the learning process.

Instructors have personal relationships with students: instructors and students get to know each other on an informal basis as mentors instead of just being instructors

You feel this is sufficiently sustainable to promote as a feature of the institution?

Project based: As opposed to strictly focusing on taking tests and theory of computer science, you actually build real projects. You leave the school with 5-6 portfolio projects of software you can show employers. We hear "it's not what you know, it's what you can do." Make School is the embodiment of that Mantra

What you are kind of describing is a trade school or boot camp. Is this a glorified boot camp? or is this a college education?

I understand the degree is an Applied Science degree, so I respect and understand that there will be less depth, and that's not a bad thing.

But what I fear is that one possible interpretation of what you are saying here is that you don;t teach how software works, you just teach how to pound out syntax.

And there are totally a whole lot of jobs in the US for people to pound out syntax. They exist, they are hiring and that pay pretty well.

But they are mostly filled with contract employees from domestic and foreign sources. Which kind of brings be back to that H1B factory concept again. (sorry)

Community: at 200 students, we create a really tight nit community, rich with peer learning and support. Students are constantly supporting each other and nearly 1/2 of all senior students are peer mentors!

200 students... each earning I dunno 100k per graduate, and each kicking back what, 10-15% of their salaries to repay their education over 5-10 years?

200 students X $15,000 = Thats $3 Million in revenues per graduating class. That doesn't actually feel like a lot of money in SanFran. Even with 5 or 8 graduated classes under your belt.

Are you adequately funded? Where is the money coming from?
Will you exist 10 years from today?
Will my diploma still be relevant 10 years from now?

Seniors are working in teams to build software for actual organizations.

Is that legal? How are the students being compensated? Are they 1099 contact employees to those employers? Who pays the taxes?

Is that a revenue stream for the institution? Providing cheap labor?

Some collaborating companies run by graduates of YC or alumni. We also have industry review our curriculum, working engineers come in and mentor, and we teach students how to reach out to mentors in industry.

These are the same bullet points Full Sail University likes to tout and highlight.

We look for work ethic, professionalism, and passion for making/creating. Our community tends to be quite varied and our latest actually skews more towards little to no prior coding experience at the time they applied.

We don't require SAT/ACT score, but we will take a look at your your transcripts. That being said, unless there's scary stuff in there it's not really what we go by. We’re more interested in the projects you worked on, what you learned, and how you’d be excited to apply those learnings while at Make School.

Concretely speaking, we require a written application, transcripts, then we invite you for a phone interview, and if you don't have much prior experience we ask you to complete an online programming class/challenge called Ramp.

It feels like your admissions criteria is off the hook with fluffiness, abstractness, non-specifics and frankly, things desperate applicants want to hear.
Who are you catering to? What actually is your target audience of students?

University of Phoenix makes a big deal about not needing test scores too.
So does Full Sail.

We don't publish an acceptance rate.

Why not?

Will you collect & provide a Common Data Set so Guidance Counselors & Admissions Consultants can properly compare your institution to your peers & contemporaries?

VA_Network_Nerd74 karma

Response 1 of 2:

Apologies for the lack of inline formatting. Will revise formatting in the morning.

No need to apologize. I appreciate you taking the time to respond.

The campus is a cooperation betweeen two entities, Dominican University (non-profit) and Make School PBC (a public benefit corporation, a type of for profit). The funding was raised by the Make School PBC side.

Thank you for the clarification. You are a For-Profit institution.
That doesn't make you evil. But, that does color some of your operational practices, and your customers (the students) should be aware of that reality.

We don’t offer scholarships to international students. We offer ISAs which allow students to fund tuition by committing to a % of post-grad payback, which essentially means we also expect we will get paid back by international students given that they can work for several years in the US under OPT/CPT before needing an H1-B.

Thank you for the clarification.
Does your operational model influence your decision to accept applicants from countries where you have higher confidence of being able to get your money back?

Are you more or less likely to accept an applicant from China, for example?
If a Chinese applicant is accepted, completes your education, works for a year or two, then runs home to China, there is no real likelihood that you will ever get your money.
Does this influence your admissions practices?

Not really sure how we benefit by becoming an H1-B processing plant (we will still of course recruit international students) given our tuition model and the nature of the H1-B lottery.

Oh, it certainly wouldn't benefit you. It would benefit your investors. As a For-Profit institution, with a high operational cost structure you are pretty exposed to external influence.

If Alphabet tells you to admit more cheap labor from the Philippines, and help them get an accelerated degree, and helps you create an Accelerated Masters program they get a legitimate-looking talent pipeline.

Make School PBC itself has not been accredited. The program itself - the Bachelors of Applied Computer Science offered by Make School at Dominican - is accredited, not provisionally, and with no max duration.

Based on this, it's clear my understanding was incomplete at best and incorrect at worst. So thank you for the correction.

But I think the reality that your Accreditation circumvented the normal process and exists under this new Incubator mechanism should continue to be highlighted. Your website does a reasonable job of this.

We didn’t cut content.

I'm gonna be honest: I don't believe you, and I don't believe you can back that up with evidence or fact. I sincerely invite you to please prove me wrong.

The College of William and Mary is our nation's second oldest institution of higher learning.

W&M offers undergraduate, Masters and Doctorate degrees in Education.

From W&M's website:

https://www.wm.edu/about/administration/provost/documents/credit-hour-policy.pdf

Federal Definition of the Credit Hour (from USDOE): For purposes of the application of this policy and in accord with federal regulations, a credit hour is an amount of work represented in intended learning outcomes and verified by evidence of student achievement that is an institutionally established equivalency that reasonably approximates

  1. Not less than one hour of classroom or direct faculty instruction and a minimum of two hours out of class student work each week for approximately fifteen weeks for one semester or trimester hour of credit, or ten to twelve weeks for one quarter hour of credit, or the equivalent amount of work over a different amount of time, or
  2. At least an equivalent amount of work as required outlined in item 1 above for other academic activities as established by the institution including laboratory work, internships, practica, studio work, and other academic work leading to the award of credit hours.

So, W&M, in accordance with Federal Guidelines says that one College Credit = 1 hour of instruction + 2 hours of homework per week.

It's a Federal Guideline - not a law. W&M could deviate from it if they wanted to, and if they thought they could deliver the correct quality of education in less time.
They don't seem to feel they can, so they don't generally deviate from that guideline.
I'm completely sure there are a dozen or so specific courses that probably don't meet those guidelines at W&M.
But I'm equally confident that there are just as many courses that exceed the hell out of those guidelines too.

(Organic Chemistry is coming for your soul.)

You are issuing a 4 year degree after requiring only 2 years of education.

So, where the standard US course load is 15 credit hours per semester, you have to double that.

Are your students receiving 30 hours of classroom instruction plus 60 hours of homework per week?

That's 90 hours of work. There are only (247) 168 hours in a 7-day week. Minus (87) 56 hours to sleep leaves 22 un-allocated hours in a 7-day week for student free-time.

I think you said elsewhere that students are enduring about a 50-hour work week, which is about half of what USDOE guidelines suggest for a 30 credit-hour load.

A 15 credit hour workload is 15-hours in-class plus roughly 30 hours of home work/study. That's 45 hours, which is very close to the 50-hours of work you say your students put in per week.

If we reflect back to my statement in that there are only two ways to deliver an Accelerated Degree:

  1. Work the students HARD with intensive workloads.
  2. Teach less content, and just skip some stuff.

Based on the information provided, I suspect your educational curriculum is taking shortcuts and teaching less content.

Full Sail University does this too (teaches less content). Their graduates are notorious for having difficulty being hired into advanced roles since they are simply less-educated than their peers.

Please don't say you've revolutionized education and found a magical way to streamline the learning process.

  1. Crushing workloads.
  2. We teach less stuff.

Pick one and own it.

We offer a full complement of general education courses. This is not a trade school or boot camp. It’s not a traditional university either though.

Cool. Do you provide a degree roadmap similar to this:

https://csd.cmu.edu/academic/undergraduate/bachelors-curriculum-admitted-2018

Our students often compete for jobs that are otherwise being filled by grads from top 10 CS programs. Our students are able to land jobs where depth of understanding is tested for and expected.

I find that to be somewhat difficult to accept, and delightfully difficult to validate, with the exception of one explanation:

If I graduate from a Top-10 CS university, I know damned well what I am worth.
Top-10 graduates are well recruited. Competition for their skills and abilities are strong.

They don't have to accept low-ball offers unless they choose to, and each individual has their own reasons to potentially choose to do so.

A Carnegie Mellon graduate is going to ask for a strong salary. They are worth it, and in fairness, they probably have student loans to deal with.
They made an investment in their education and need to see that return on investment.

Your graduates didn't really make an investment in their education.
The Make School made an investment in their education.

Your graduates are likely more willing to accept a lower offer, because they have somewhat less pressure to see an ROI.

Secondly, your graduates have undergraduates in Applied Computer Science. That is not a deep, hard-core degree.
It's a perfectly valid & adequate education for a whole lot of entry level jobs.

But Uber isn't going to ask your graduates to DESIGN a self-driving car.
They are going to ask your graduates to pound out some code to CONTRIBUTE to the project of a self-driving car.

So, to say your graduates "Our students often compete for jobs that are otherwise being filled by grads from top 10 CS programs" feels a bit overstated in my opinion.

You didn’t do the revenue math correctly. 5 years of payback at 20% of salary is more revenue than you calculated. It is sustainable.

You are right, I failed to see your other comment where you said your ISA requires 20%. I was wrong about that.

But, I think your marketing materials and presentation of information is incomplete.

Graduates earn up to $100k. You take 20%. Graduate now has $80k to work with in SanFran / SV.

http://podshare.com/

PodShare made national news not too long ago for providing an affordable housing option in the Silicon Valley area, by providing a "pod" which is a bed to sleep in, plus access to shared living space for $1,500 a month. And this is considered a good deal in that employment area.

Suffice to say that $100k of salary isn't really all that much money in the San Francisco / SV area.

It isn't really a university's responsibility to spell out their graduate's lifetime earnings potential, but traditional universities don't make headlines and major bullet points of their graduates initial salaries either. Yes, good universities DO provide access to employment outcomes for their graduates, but you usually have to go digging for that data. You're setting that data up in the front as a selling point for your institution, so it deserves greater scrutiny as a result, IMO.