“If Higher Ed Doesn’t Adapt, It Will Be Ripe for Disruption” by Tom Goldenberg

My experience with attending a coding bootcamp was this: I'd been working as a video producer/editor and photojournalist since the mid-2000's, and slugged it out in a tough-to-advance-in industry. Got to the top of the field, seeing my work on network television and on the front page of newspapers you'd know by name, and picked up two Emmy awards... but I was still freelancing, paying for my own gear, my own health insurance, and spending 80% of my time looking for clients vs 20% of my time doing creative work for them.

I wanted a career change, and I enjoyed/had an aptitude for programming - so I decided to attend Dev Bootcamp (DBC) in NYC. I looked at it as "Well, it's the same price as a semester of college, and the same time commitment - and if I want to invest in another bachelor's degree afterwards, I'll have a solid idea on if I'll enjoy/do well with the curriculum."

DBC was a rigorous academic program and covered a lot of ground, provided that you covered the optional reading materials, and tried to build ambitious projects along the way... there were definitely those among my peers who did the bare minimum, and others who pushed themselves.

Not all 'bootcamp' programs are created equal - I've met developers from other accelerated coding courses who could barely create a user-authenticated blog using gems for all of the functionality... and I've met others who - like myself - jumped into stacks way outside of what we knew, taught ourselves what we needed to know, and can generally find high level and standards-based solutions in the docs on our own.

It was a tough hunt for my first job afterwards. I found that a lot of companies don't understand the difference between what a bootcamper should know vs. what a CS student should know: intermediate execution without knowing the 'why' vs. CS theory without knowing above an entry level of the 'how'. After about 5 months of job hunting, I got hired in the industry.

Presently I'm at a startup, building a client/server application using Elixir/Phoenix for the API, and C++/11 and Qt for a cross platform client. I'm making 33% more than I did at the top of my prior field - and enjoying the heck out of coding... and it just took 8 weeks of my own coding self-teaching, 19 weeks at a bootcamp, and about the same in job hunting/interviewing/reviewing offers afterwards.

I have had a hell of a time convincing my son to attend Uni. He just turn 17 and is finishing up High School. When he looks at the first 2 years of what he has to do (mandatory course work) and then the next 2 years of course work that is somewhat related to what he would like to do (Cyber Security Field), it seems like a waste of time and money.

He would much rather work on his SANS Certs and work toward OSCP Certification. Growing up with Linux/Networking and teaching himself to code has created a situation where he feels there is little they can offer him. He looks at the curriculum and wants to cry.

Would love to hear thoughts regarding the boot camp vs. higher ed question. In many cases it's not one or the other, but I'm curious where people think education is headed.