Washington Monthly - September/October 2014 - 51

banks (see Amy Binder, "Why Are Harvard Grads Still Flocking
to Wall Street?," page 53). But after graduating, he realized that
a bachelor's degree in American studies from one of the best liberal arts schools in the world still didn't provide much in the way
of an on-ramp to a rewarding career. A self-described "classic lost
and lonely twentysomething," he bounced in and out of several
jobs with "shitty bosses and crazy colleagues" before bowing to
the (for a Yale graduate) inevitable and enrolling at the Wharton School.
Wharton was useful. But he learned most of what seemed
important in the first semester, with the other year and a half
spent partying and angling for jobs. If all the important things
could be taught in a semester, why not save everyone a lot of
money and time?
Schwartz and three colleagues founded General Assembly
in New York in 2011 with a broader purpose, as a community
for entrepreneurs in the city's growing technology sector. There
were a lot of young people who wanted to live in Brooklyn and be
in the cool and exciting startup world, but lacked the actual skills
needed to get that crucial first job. When GA opened up classes
to the public, they were surprised by the demand. Three years
later, the company is teaching classes in eight American cities-the "creative class" hubs of Seattle, San Francisco, Chicago,
Boston, Atlanta, Los Angeles, New York, and D.C.-along with
London, Melbourne, Sydney, and Hong Kong. The company is
privately held and financed by a mix of venture capital firms
and private investors, including Starbucks chairman and CEO
Howard Schultz.
General Assembly isn't the only company to see a market
opportunity. Dev Bootcamp, which was founded in San Francisco, focuses exclusively on web development in the Ruby on
Rails programming language. Like GA, Dev Bootcamp offers
an intensive, seventy- to ninety-hours-a-week, nine-week program designed to turn novices into programmers good enough
to be hired by the legions of Silicon Valley companies looking
for talent. Walk into the Dev Bootcamp space in San Francisco and you'll see an environment that looks a lot like General
Assembly in D.C.: thirty or forty students with laptops on couches, at desks, and in overstuffed chairs, some coding solo, others
in small teams. One Dev Bootcamp student, a recent Duke University graduate, said it was the first time in his life he'd been
asked to truly work hard at education.
Because there's nothing patentable about the boot camp
concept, others have gotten into the game. Even as Dev Bootcamp began opening franchises in Chicago and New York, a raft
of competitors launched, with names like App Academy, Code
Fellows, Fullstack Academy, HackBright Academy (for women
only), Hack Reactor, Launch Academy, and RefactorU. It's a sign
of how fast the sector has evolved that Dev Bootcamp, which
was founded in 2012, now bills itself as "the original coding bootcamp." In June 2014, the company was acquired by Kaplan, the
large for-profit college.
Boot camp tuitions range from $4,000 to nearly $18,000.
Because boot camps are not accredited colleges, students can't
pay for them with Pell Grants or federally guaranteed loans. The

boot camps market themselves as worth the price because they
provide a pipeline to high-paying jobs. Some boot camps offer a
full refund if students don't get a job paying a certain salary in
six months; others charge no tuition and instead take a percentage of their graduate's first-year salary.
Koru, another company working in the space between
young people and their first good job, goes a step further by
combining boot camp-type educational programs with formal links to colleges and employers. Some selective liberal arts
schools, including Vassar, Williams, Bates, Pomona, and Occidental, help subsidize the cost of programs for their recent
graduates that are run in collaboration with employers such as
the camping-supply company REI and the children's clothing
store Zulily. Students who didn't attend sponsoring colleges
can also participate, at a cost of $2,700. Koru grads at Zulily analyze historical data and plan future needs in inventory, help to
decide what products to put on the site, write product descriptions, and coordinate and negotiate with vendors.
For colleges, it's a relatively inexpensive way of assuaging
the fears of parents who are considering the $200,000 price of
an elite liberal arts education and don't want their kids to join
the so-called "boomerang generation" of college students who
return home after graduation. As Koru co-founder Josh Jarrett
said, "It's a lot cheaper than renovating your basement."

he new breed of boot camp entrepreneurs are sensibly going after the low-hanging fruit in the market.
High-tech firms have an insatiable demand for good
web developers, which means Dev Bootcamp and others can
make credible claims of high job placement rates and generous starting salaries. It's no coincidence that General Assembly and others are all opening up shop in the same constellation of cities that are cultural and economic magnets
to young adults. Coding and UX are also fields where students can quickly and easily demonstrate the quality of their
work product, making it easier for them to make the case for
themselves in the market without formal credentials.
The obvious next target for boot camps is the expanding market for professional master's degrees. This is really
a case of one for-profit business competing with another-
master's degrees are market-priced revenue generators for
"nonprofit" colleges and are treated as such. If more employers send the signal that "college degrees are not the primary qualification," there could be a great many more students
who decide that $8,000 for three months of intensive work
is a much better deal than $50,000 for a master's degree of
questionable quality.
It all adds up to an unsettled, dynamic future of education, training, and work, in which traditional graduate
schools compete with a bevy of new organizations built to
give students exactly the skills they need to start a career,
and no more.
Kevin Carey directs the Education Policy Program at the New America
Foundation.
Washington Monthly

Washington Monthly - September/October 2014

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Washington Monthly - September/October 2014