Students paid thousands for a Caltech boot camp that Caltech didn't teach (opens in new tab)

> The university, he learned, had largely outsourced the program to a company called Simplilearn.

> A spokesperson for Caltech, Shayna Chabner, said that the university viewed its online programs as “a way that we can bring value”

Sounds more like Caltech views its online programs as a way to exchange credibility for short-term profits

I had the University of Minnesota's "Coding Bootcamp" reach out to me a couple years ago about possibly teaching a course. I was genuinely excited at the prospect, it's always been something of a dream of mine to teach, so I scheduled a call. I never talk to recruiters but I wanted this.

The call very quickly went down hill and they became visibly angry when they found out I was not a NodeJS expert.

You reached out to me. I never represented myself as such. You likely saw on my credentials on LinkedIn which shows I have been writing JavaScript since the late 90s.

I hadn't entirely given up hope yet and said something a long the lines of "I am sure I could pick it up very quickly, I just haven't had the need so far" and the already visibly annoyed interviewer basically shouts "NO, we need someone who is an expert from day one!"

I apologized for wasting their time. They say that they will contact me if anything changes. I, a grown adult of near 40, went in to the call giddy and left tearing up a little. Good riddance.

I find it very surprising that prestigious colleges are willing to outsource their online courses at the expense of diluting their own brand.

I guess I should not be that surprised, college admins are some of the worst business people on the planet.

This is the problem with “branding” and ranking in the American university system. People believe Caltech is a good school, so they automatically assume it is worth the high price.

Maybe a solution is to be clear if a class or program is taught by an FTE instructor, or if the program is outsourced? There’s nothing wrong with trying new things to make more money (student enrollments are declining), but be clear about who is teaching the course and how they are affiliated with your brand.

What we're seeing is how the profit motive is anathema to higher education. Colleges view their reputation as their brand that can simply cash in on for even more profits. Some colleges are basically hedge funds masquerading as colleges at this point.

What we need is a high-quality, no or low cost state university system (like California and other places used to have) as a balancing force to keep skyrocketing tuition costs in check.

I'd even go so far as to say that state college systems should not an athletics department at all [1]. Or let that aspect be completely privately funded.

Now there's a lot to criticize with the military but the one aspect I'd like to emulate is the idea that you qualify to do a job, you choose to do that job, you get trained to do that job and then you do the job.

We don't need to turn higher education into job factories to do that.

As for these courses, almost all of them in every area is a scam. Any course teaching you to make money (eg in stocks or crypto) is a scam because if someone was capable of making money, they'd do that. They wouldn't tell you how. The course is their income.

This is a little different but still, Caltech is selling their name to profit off of third-party courses.

[1]: https://www.collegevine.com/faq/112712/do-most-college-athle...

I tried to go on Caltech's site to see if there was any indication that this bootcamp was taught by Caltech. After reading the bootcamp page for a few seconds, a chat window popped up on the side asking if I needed any help. So I asked: "is this bootcamp actually taught by caltech?"

The response was: "Hello and welcome to Simplilearn! My name is Priyanshu and Your current Country would be?"

Are any of these bootcamps actually good? Every time I looked into them it seemed like a ridiculously shallow syllabus that would leave you far from being able to do the job they claim. Maybe you could pass HR interview by knowing some keywords and last a month or two before getting fired.

"This is an ugly word, this 'scam.' This is business. And if you wanna be in business, this is what you do." --- Marlon Brando, 'The Freshman' (1990)

Caltech offers certs in Program Management, System Engineering, and a lot of other frobozz not in line with their deservedly Tier A+++ reputation. I work with people who've gone through these courses and 'unimpressed' would be an understatement. Of course, nearby UCLA and USC do this as do schools up and down the coast and eastward. These are Extensions and they bring in cash.

https://ctme.caltech.edu/

Higher education has become too powerful and influential due to unlimited government loan guarantees. They used that to charge insane amounts and hired bloated administrations.

Get the government out of the student loan business and take a lesson from the Germans: promote vocational and technical schooling. Not everyone needs to go to university or get a university education.

I suppose a root cause of sorts is that for the first time in millennia there is a surplus of ambitious people with the means to pay for education, but a shortage of adequate warm bodies to teach. This in turn means top universities can provide a low quality course taught by outsourced teachers and know it will sell regardless.

I'm not sure how you fix it. There's only so many people who are smart and want to teach. It doesn't help that teaching doesn't pay well, but paying more only sort of helps: there would be a greater supply of teachers, but surely paying more can't make it cheaper.

> The federal government helped kick off the gold rush in 2011. The Education Department, under the Obama administration, loosened its guidance on revenue-sharing relationships between colleges and for-profit companies.

Thanks Obama!

What is the point of having almost $5bn in endowments[0] if the school still has to chase after revenue like this, at the cost of its credibility and reputation?

[0] https://investments.caltech.edu/

Mixed feelings on this. I've taken Extension courses from UCSC and from Stanford, and was never under any illusion that the teachers were affiliated with the schools (although one was). For all of them, they tell you in the course description who the teacher is. There's always a course evaluation at the end.

If Caltech isn't monitoring the content of their courses and the student evals, then they're being negligent, for sure. But I don't see this as a systemic problem, other than maybe lack of disclosure.

Here in Chicago I saw some bootcamps sponsored by University of Chicago and Northwestern University but when you dig deeper they're not actually teaching it. Some third party company.

Students care more about the university's name on the certificate than who is teaching the course.

Is MIT class also taught by outsourced instructor instead of MIT instructor?

I was cold called by one of these programs a while ago that was offered through Columbia University. They wanted around $13,000 for a 4-something week bootcamp. It's honestly disgusting that schools with billion dollar endowments feel the need to prey on people like this.

Always look at the faculty.

I needed some extra money in 2018 after purchasing a new house. I was recruited to be a part time adjunct instructor “on behalf of” Case Western Reserve University. It was entirely operated by Trilogy Education Services. In exchange for allowing Trilogy to slap the university’s name on it, incorporate into the university’s official website and marketing materials, and borrow a room for a couple hours in the evening, they share some of the profit. It’s not clear to me what if any influence, decision making, or oversight the university had over the program, but I suspect little to none. I only talked to Trinity staff, most of which were good people but just cogs in the machine like me.

Students received zero support from the university despite being advertised as an accreditation directly from it. It had been advertised as an intense 6 month alternative to a degree, which is a very wild stretch. In reality, it was a long and kinda brutal (if you were completely new to programming) guided tour of JavaScript-focused “full stack development”. The syllabus was predetermined by Trilogy and was very superficial, rigid, out of date, and focused on quantity of topics rather than quality. Students were largely frustrated how little time we had to ask questions or dig into a concept until being whisked off to another. It also required that the individual had to do most of then learning on their own time without support from myself or the TAs, although I did try to be available via email during the week and had office hours. Trilogy insisted they vetted applicants to make sure only qualified candidates were in classes to ensure a fair and high quality experience for everyone. The reality is the only vetting Trilogy did was that the payments cleared. I spent an inordinate amount of time doing tech support and teaching people how to use computers, which was frustrating for me, other students, and the poor person who was swindled into paying $8k for something over their head. “Graduating” just meant you had to pay, show up and submit something for assignments, the bar being so low that some students received their certificate but had learned virtually nothing. The post graduation professional services, which I was not involved in whatsoever, were the part that students were particularly angry with. Bare minimum, hand wavy, and the job placement was a joke. Graduation day was supposed to showcase the student’s skills and be a meet and greet with employers. The reality is only a couple of actual employers showed up, didn’t hire anyone AFAIK, and most of the “employers” there were grifters, scumbags, or clueless people. There was a lot of “I don’t have a business or any money yet but I have this revolutionary idea for a blockchain app and I’d like you to build it”.

In the beginning, I was pretty into the bootcamp. I enjoyed teaching and there were some really great students and TAs. By the end, I felt really embarrassed and ashamed to be part of something so terribly misrepresented and overpriced.

(As an aside, I was introduced to two professors at a party where someone mentioned I was teaching a CWRU… I carefully corrected them that I was only doing this bootcamp and only part time, not working for the university. The two professors were not happy with me. I learned that I was basically a scab, and which really just capped the whole experience for me)