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Flatiron School settles for operating without license, employment/salary claims

317 pointsby anaxag0rasover 7 years ago

32 comments

jefftkover 7 years ago
&quot;Between January and June 2017, Flatiron claimed that 98.5% of its students received employment less than 180 days after graduation and that Flatiron graduates had an average salary of $74,447. However, Flatiron did not disclose clearly and conspicuously that the 98.5% employment rate included not only full time salaried employees but also apprentices, contract employees and self-employed freelance workers, some who were employed for less than twelve weeks. Similarly, Flatiron failed to clearly and conspicuously disclose that its $74,447 average salary claim included full time employed graduates only, which represent only 58% of classroom graduates and 39% of online graduates.&quot;<p>Good to crack down on this.<p>&quot;In order to obtain a SED license, a non-degree granting career school must meet a number of criteria, including using an approved curriculum and employing a licensed director and teachers.&quot;<p>This is worrying. Part of why these bootcamps have been a valuable addition is that they&#x27;ve been able to use their own curricula and train their own teachers.
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dopameanover 7 years ago
Though it may seem obvious to people here (on HN) this is a much bigger problem in the industry than people realize. In many ways these bootcamps are repeating the problems found at trade schools in the past. I taught at one for a year, MakerSquare, and found it to be a rewarding and positive experience however I know people at others, including the company that ended up buying MakerSquare who have had different experiences.<p>When I worked MakerSquare about three years ago they, Hack Reactor, and I think Dev Bootcamp were trying to lead an initiative that would lead to standardized reporting of hiring stats. This was something we were excited about at MakerSquare because our hiring stats were legitimately great at the time and we knew that in many cases this wasn&#x27;t true of our competitors. When Hack Reactor bought the company it was assuring to see that they were finding similar success.<p>One thing that concerns me today, however, is that I still see ads on Facebook and other places for Hack Reactor&#x27;s immersive program that report the exact same stats they were reporting three years ago. I find it very, very hard to believe those numbers are still accurate. In fact I&#x27;d go so far as to say they must be lying. They expanded their program dramatically through acquisition (MakerSquare and others) and then ramping up a very large &quot;remote&quot; program (a program that follows the same curriculum but taught entirely online). When I left MakerSquare (then acquired by Hack Reactor) I was under the impression that career services were not provided for remote students. They must be messing with the numbers somehow.<p>There needs to be more honesty in the industry because I believe there really is a great opportunity to do good.
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k8siover 7 years ago
Funny to look back at this now: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;nyti.ms&#x2F;2vtd04V" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;nyti.ms&#x2F;2vtd04V</a><p>NYT on 24 August 2017: &quot;The Flatiron School in New York may have discovered one path. Founded in 2012, Flatiron has a single campus in downtown Manhattan and its main offering is a 15-week immersive coding program with a $15,000 price tag. More than 95 percent of its 1,000 graduates there have landed coding jobs.&quot;<p><i></i><i>two months later</i><i></i><p>NY AG, 17 October 2017: &quot;However, Flatiron did not disclose clearly and conspicuously that the 98.5% employment rate included not only full time salaried employees but also apprentices, contract employees and self-employed freelance workers, some who were employed for less than twelve weeks. Similarly, Flatiron failed to clearly and conspicuously disclose that its $74,447 average salary claim included full time employed graduates only, which represent only 58% of classroom graduates and 39% of online graduates.&quot;
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finnhover 7 years ago
Duke Law School maintains a 100% post-graduation employment rate by ... paying its otherwise jobless graduates at the exact moment the statistics are counted.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;abovethelaw.com&#x2F;2010&#x2F;06&#x2F;the-secret-to-100-employed-at-graduation-dukes-bridge-to-practice&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;abovethelaw.com&#x2F;2010&#x2F;06&#x2F;the-secret-to-100-employed-a...</a>
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JessRudderover 7 years ago
The issue isn&#x27;t fake employment stats.<p>If you read the AG release, the complaint was that &quot;Flatiron did not disclose clearly and conspicuously&quot; what the 98.5% and $75k numbers consisted of.<p>This information was included, in detail, in each of their job reports. This is from their earliest one from December of 2014:<p>&quot;Of the 225 job seeking graduates with salary information available:<p>a. 162 accepted full-time salaried roles,<p>b. Forty-one accepted paid apprenticeships (An apprenticeship is defined as a paid position of defined duration, usually 8-12 weeks, often paid hourly and on a contract basis. Often an apprenticeship is used to evaluate a candidate for full time salaried status),<p>c. Twelve accepted contractor positions (A contractor position is defined as full-time or voluntary part-time, paid at market rate, and without the expectation that the initial rate is temporary and will be re-evaluated in 3-6 months).<p>d. Ten accepted freelance opportunities.&quot;<p>&quot;7. Initial compensation for the full-time salaried roles ranged as follows:<p>a. Salary range of $40,000-$59,999 – nine individuals,<p>b. Salary range of $60,000-$69,999 – forty-six individuals,<p>c. Salary range of $70,000-$79,999 – forty-four individuals,<p>d. Salary range of $80,000-$89,999 – thirty-eight individuals,<p>e. Salary range of $90,000+ - nineteen &quot;<p>On the web pages that contained the 98.5% and 74k figures, there was a link to download the report with the detailed data. The AG did not think that was clear enough for consumers - likely because the average consumer isn&#x27;t going to download and read the details.<p>There&#x27;s a difference between saying the data wasn&#x27;t clear enough and the data was fraudulent. In this case, they are not disputing the numbers, they were disputing the marketing around those numbers.<p>Full Disclosure: I am a Flatiron alum and I worked at Flatiron for 3 years. I have problems with the top-level management team and would not work for any of them again. None of my reasons are related to their desire and ability to create great outcomes for the students that come through Flatiron School. I would (and have) recommend the immersive programs to people who want to start careers in web development.
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unclesaammover 7 years ago
I know some folks who graduated from Galvanize&#x27;s Data Science program. They were told that historically 90% of graduates find jobs in 6 months. She is 6 months out, and only half of her cohort has a job.
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alehulover 7 years ago
An HN user&#x27;s perspective as a Flatiron student, from <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=11734796" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=11734796</a><p>&gt; One of the things that attracted me to Flatiron School was their audited jobs placement report. Very detailed statistics about how many students graduate, how long it takes them to find jobs, and how much they earn. I&#x27;ve never seen traditional colleges hold themselves to that standard of disclosure.<p>Apparently these phony statistics played a huge role in many student&#x27;s choices to attend.<p>edit: &#x27;illegitimate&#x27; or &#x27;misleading&#x27; would apparently be a better choice than &#x27;phony.&#x27;
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tyingqover 7 years ago
<i>&quot;Under today’s agreement, Flatiron will pay $375,000 in restitution to eligible graduates&quot;</i><p>That&#x27;s better than a fine. Though, it does mention 1000 students total, so perhaps not enough.
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obiefernandezover 7 years ago
I was a hiring manager at a large shop in NYC. During that time I hired and worked with Flatiron School graduates. I know it&#x27;s just anecdotal evidence, but I found them to be extremely competent, driven and bright, even in comparison to my non-bootcamp people, maybe even more so.<p>Jeff Casimir, admittedly somewhat biased, can lay claim to being one of the world&#x27;s top experts on running code bootcamps. He has a great writeup about it here: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;medium.com&#x2F;@turingschool&#x2F;why-i-recommend-flatiron-school-c4695a7894b4" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;medium.com&#x2F;@turingschool&#x2F;why-i-recommend-flatiron-sc...</a><p>I would give Avi and Flatiron School the benefit of the doubt in this case. I don&#x27;t think they were out to do anything malicious or fraudulent.
msl341over 7 years ago
I was a student at Hack Reactor Remote. They were supposed to be one of the best bootcamps. I don&#x27;t know how they do it, but I feel like their stats are completely false. Most of the members in my cohort are still unemployed and they provide little guidance. They might have been good 5 years ago, but it seems times have changed.
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ron22over 7 years ago
Not sure I understand the misleading salary&#x2F;job type part.<p>Flatirons full jobs report for 2017 is here: Online: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;cdn2.hubspot.net&#x2F;hubfs&#x2F;69751&#x2F;2017%20Online%20Outcomes%20Report.pdf" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;cdn2.hubspot.net&#x2F;hubfs&#x2F;69751&#x2F;2017%20Online%20Outcome...</a><p>Onsite: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;cdn2.hubspot.net&#x2F;hubfs&#x2F;69751&#x2F;NYCJobsReport%20July%202017%20-%20Full.pdf?t=1508207199598" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;cdn2.hubspot.net&#x2F;hubfs&#x2F;69751&#x2F;NYCJobsReport%20July%20...</a><p>Looks like these reports were made before the fine. Inside these reports, salary and job type are broken down and clearly stated.<p>Were these reports altered after the fact?
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nradovover 7 years ago
Why are students willing to pay so much to for-profit coding boot camps? In many areas you can learn the same skills from community colleges and university extensions for far lower tuition. For example in the Bay Area the UCSC Extension has a good reputation and offers several certificate programs in software development.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ucsc-extension.edu&#x2F;certificate-program&#x2F;software-development" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ucsc-extension.edu&#x2F;certificate-program&#x2F;software-...</a>
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eqmviiover 7 years ago
The shady employment outcome reporting issue mirrors a problem that has plagued law schools for years.<p>In the worst cases, all 200 or so U.S. law schools would boast about high percentages of students landing 6-figure starting salaries. In reality, schools often only disclosed statistics based on students who completed enrollment surveys.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.lawschooltransparency.com" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.lawschooltransparency.com</a> came about as a resource to try to correct the record, but surely a lot of young people got swept up in the marketing only to discover the real outlook was much more grim.
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lr4444lrover 7 years ago
I&#x27;m not the biggest job-hopper, but I&#x27;ve worked at 3 companies in the last 5 years in the NYC area, and have never once worked with, known anyone who&#x27;s once worked with, or knew a hiring manager who would even consider someone whose only significant background in software was a coding bootcamp. For those who&#x27;ve experienced it, are they hired out of desperation into firms that need manpower and have enough more senior devs. to get them up to working competency or what?
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Dtraneover 7 years ago
Disclaimer: Former Flatiron School student here. I&#x27;m seeing a lot of comments (and the title) about fake employment stats. There is nowhere in the article that alleges this. FS clearly publishes their jobs report and make it extremely accessible from the homepage of their website. The AG does not dispute any numbers in this jobs report.<p>The main allegations, aside from the SED license, are that they did not clearly state their methods of arriving at these numbers on their marketing materials. While that&#x27;s true, I have faith that someone who has been thinking seriously about a career change enough to apply to a costly educational program such as Flatiron School would do their research.<p>Based on my experience, I don&#x27;t find the numbers they report to be surprising. I&#x27;m personally more than a year into my first job (was hired almost immediately out of FS at almost exactly their &#x27;average salary&#x27;) and many if not most of my classmates have a similar experience. Flatiron, like any school, has students who put in the extra effort and students who expect to be successful when they&#x27;re done just because they showed up every day. Those students tended to struggle throughout the course, and many needed to take internships before landing a full-time gig.<p>When I first looked into Flatiron, I checked the jobs report. When I saw that 52% of grads landed a full-time job, my thought was not &#x27;oh good this school gets me a job.&#x27; It was &#x27;I know with relative certainty that I will learn enough to be useful in a full-time junior dev role if I continue to work my ass off.&#x27;
throwaway-2942over 7 years ago
It&#x27;s no surprise that DevBootcamp and Iron Yard, who recently closed, are not on the list of schools participating in CIRR (www.cirr.org&#x2F;about). Also no surprise that Flatiron is also not in CIRR. Basically, any bootcamp not in CIRR is shady imho.<p>Full disclosure: I graduated from Hack Reactor in Austin, and got a job 2.5 months after graduation at a very reputable company in town. We also have 3 other HR grads, and a 30-ish person engineering team. This shit works. It&#x27;s a shame schools like Flatiron drag the industry name down.<p>Pardon the throwaway to not identify myself from my actual account, which has lots of identify-able info.
josh_carterPDXover 7 years ago
This is what has always concerned me. A lot of bootcamps are popping up making it hard to figure out which ones are legitimate. On top of that, as a military vet, I have worked hard to figure out how to get the G.I. Bill to be used with these bootcamps. Today, not many qualify because of a number of variables, but mostly include how the curriculum is dynamic.<p>Flatiron is one of the better orgs with a pretty good reputation. It&#x27;s tough to read that they&#x27;ve fallen short for their students. It causes a lot of anxiety for those trying to utilize these schools to learn coding.
amigoingtodieover 7 years ago
Does anyone have a recommendation for a good bootcamp?<p>I have an employee (graphic design) that has shown an aptitude in web development, but I do not have the time to devote to mentoring him.<p>I can afford to send him to a bootcamp, but stories like this make me hesitant.<p>Also, I have a front-end guy and a CS intern, who both could benefit from a SQL bootcamp (as another poster mentioned, team development, source control, and SQL do not seem to be emphasized in the CS curriculum). Is there such a thing?<p>I am only interested in on-site, immersive experiences for all of them.
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milliondollarover 7 years ago
What are best options for low cost self study version of these bootcamps? I&#x27;m basically retired at 44, live outside of a city, and have time and motivation but need serious instruction. I don&#x27;t need the employment finding part of this - but really like the structured &quot;real world&quot; focused curriculum vs some of the more academic offerings I&#x27;ve seen online.
dominotwover 7 years ago
&gt;Reinvent your career at tech’s most trusted bootcamp<p>If this is &quot;most trusted&quot; , i wonder what shady stuff is going on in other bootcamps.
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jthreeover 7 years ago
I wrote a pretty detailed breakdown of why this doesn’t actually mean what you think it means: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;medium.com&#x2F;@turingschool&#x2F;why-i-recommend-flatiron-school-c4695a7894b4" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;medium.com&#x2F;@turingschool&#x2F;why-i-recommend-flatiron-sc...</a>
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alphonsegastonover 7 years ago
A while back, Zed Shaw was claiming to have some bootcamp takedown in the works based on dirt from students and insiders. But then nothing ever came of it. Not sure if he was afraid of getting sued or it was just posturing.
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jaclazover 7 years ago
A side note&#x2F;question.<p>How did they (both the school&#x2F;bootcamp and the General Attorney) verify the data?<p>I mean, I go to the bootcamp and give them US$ 15,000 for the course (whether this is a fair amount or not is a distinct matter).<p>I learn something, get a diploma&#x2F;certificate whatever and that&#x27;s it, reciprocal obligation are fulfilled, it&#x27;s not like we became friends or something like that.<p>I then find a job in the field.<p>Why would I:<p>1) tell them that I found a job in the field (or outside the field for what it matters)?<p>2) tell them how much I make on that job?
KeepItWeirdover 7 years ago
How is this an example of how the private industry needs to take over on education? This is the opposite. Proof that you can&#x27;t let commercial interests override public interests.
EGregover 7 years ago
Online schools like Treehouse don&#x27;t have to worry about local regulations, or pay for a building.<p>Why hasn&#x27;t capitalism made flipping the classroom a reality?
justanmanover 7 years ago
I&#x27;d like to see standardized employment stats from traditional universities.
weatherlightover 7 years ago
The Dean&#x27;s letter to the students after the recent settlement<p>Hi Joseph,<p>On Friday the New York Attorney General announced a settlement with Flatiron School. In the press release, they discussed our licensure and our student outcomes. Everyone at Flatiron School and our community has felt this deeply and we wanted to speak to you directly.<p>Regarding our license - we’ve been working with the NY State licensing agency for nearly four years. We were licensed in our Brooklyn location. We also sent in an application for our Manhattan location. It was only when we reached out about an extension for the Manhattan location a year later that we found out that the application was never processed. We immediately filed the appropriate paperwork and have since been licensed by NY State.<p>The second issue was about our student outcomes. We present data on our website in aggregate, such as our 98.5% employment rate for graduates. The Attorney General felt a link labeled “Download our Outcomes Report” next to “98.5% employment rate” taking you to the full breakdown of jobs was not “Clear and Conspicuous”. We understand that in our efforts to be transparent, we exposed ourselves to a new level of scrutiny and we will live up to that in the future. Here’s an example from our settlement:<p>The NYAG finds that Flatiron’s claim that 98.5% of its graduates are employed in the software engineering field within 180 days of graduating, does not clearly and conspicuously disclose that “employed” includes not only full time salaried positions, but also paid apprentices, contract employees and self-employed&#x2F;freelance employees. This information was available by clicking on the “Download Our Outcomes Report” link and entering an email address in order to download a multi-page report that contains graduation and employment rate information. The NYAG finds that labeling the link “Download Our Outcomes Report” did not sufficiently convey that it contains information relevant to the employment calculation.<p>We&#x27;re proud of all of you and have shared your success on our website to inspire others. Ultimately, we know that the concerns of our students and community are about the truth of our outcome data. We want to restate, unequivocally, that our reports are accurate and have not been falsified. In fact, the Attorney General explicitly agreed that we can continue using all of our historical reports and you can find them on our website today.<p>That’s really it. We understand how it’s been easy for these important details to become lost in the public discussion around this settlement. We’re most sorry for the way this affects our community of students and alumni. Learning to code is hard enough and thinking of the distraction this causes breaks our hearts.<p>I encourage any alumni reading this to focus on what matters - themselves, their code, their work, and their community. We are going to do everything in our power to make sure this does not blemish your journey. We hope you still feel proud that your journey began at Flatiron School, we still feel it a privilege to have been part of your lives. We will continue teaching passionate people how to code and helping them find the jobs they love. We are excited about the future of the school.<p>If you have any questions about this, please do reach out. We always love to hear from our alumni.<p>Learn, Love, Code &#x2F;&#x2F; &lt;3<p>Avi Flombaum and Adam Enbar
inusanover 7 years ago
Extemely shady leadership team that treats staff poorly because they think they know it all. Plus they hire a lot of the grass to work on their internal product so it further skews the job claim.
jli75over 7 years ago
Now it&#x27;s acquired by WeWork.
s73ver_over 7 years ago
It upsets me that they didn&#x27;t finger the person ultimately responsible for this, and single them out.
Rbatistaover 7 years ago
its getting real
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adamzernerover 7 years ago
Back in 2014, coding bootcamps were advertising rates in the 90s. See <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.quora.com&#x2F;What-are-the-job-placement-rates-at-various-coding-bootcamps" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.quora.com&#x2F;What-are-the-job-placement-rates-at-va...</a>. From that post, this is what the director of admissions at Fullstack Academy claims are the job placement rates of some popular bootcamps:<p>- Fullstack Academy: 97%<p>- Hack Reactor: 99%<p>- App Academy: 98%<p>- Dev Bootcamp: 90%<p>- Flatiron School: 98%<p>(He edited his post to take this down literally as I write my comment. Ie. after this article exploded on Hacker News. See the logs for proof: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.quora.com&#x2F;What-are-the-job-placement-rates-at-various-coding-bootcamps&#x2F;answer&#x2F;Huntly-Mayo-Malasky&#x2F;log" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.quora.com&#x2F;What-are-the-job-placement-rates-at-va...</a>. Here is his original post: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.dropbox.com&#x2F;s&#x2F;jsek2oum4lioeja&#x2F;Screen%20Shot%202017-10-17%20at%2010.55.29%20AM.png?dl=0" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.dropbox.com&#x2F;s&#x2F;jsek2oum4lioeja&#x2F;Screen%20Shot%2020...</a>)<p>The Quora post doesn&#x27;t mention it, but I assume these numbers refer to job placement rate within three months. I attended Fullstack Academy back in 2014 and recall being told these numbers by Fullstack, and by all of those other bootcamps (I applied to them too). And I recall all of them referring to job placement rate within three months.<p>I believe there is plenty of evidence that all of this is true. There are plenty of press articles, such as <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.businessinsider.com&#x2F;4-traits-that-make-developers-desirable-by-employers-2015-7" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.businessinsider.com&#x2F;4-traits-that-make-developers...</a> corroborating it. And there are thousands of applicants and students who probably remember being told about job placement rates in the upper 90s.<p>Now take a look at the data from CIRR. Below I list the percentage of graduates who are hired as full time employees within 90 days of graduating:<p>- Fullstack Academy (New York City): 30.4%<p>- Hack Reactor (New York): 43.6%<p>See for yourself: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;cirr.org&#x2F;data" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;cirr.org&#x2F;data</a>.<p>I can only conclude that back when we were all told that the numbers were in the upper 90s, we were either lied to, or intentionally mislead. Credit to them for pushing for transparency with CIRR, but shame on them for lying&#x2F;intentionally misleading us all for a very, very long time.
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