SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — California consumer protection
officials are threatening to close a number of fast-paced, fast-growing
computer coding boot camps that train people to work in the technology
industry, saying they failed to get licensed as private schools before
they started accepting students.
The Bureau for Private
Postsecondary Education issued citation letters this month to at least
six computer-programming academies in the San Francisco Bay Area,
according to Dev Bootcamp co-founder Shereef Bishay, whose 2-year-old,
nine-week program is the oldest of the group. The letters order the
schools to immediately stop enrolling students and to issue refunds to
past students until they receive approval to operate.
The schools
could be fined $50,000 if they fail to comply, according to the orders,
which first were reported by the online news site Venture Beat.
Bishay
said his company is eager to satisfy the state and already has
submitted a lengthy application outlining the $12,000-a-session boot
camp’s curriculum, completion rate, testing methods and other details.
But with 60 people now taking classes and hundreds more signed up
through mid-summer, suspending the program while awaiting word from the
postsecondary education bureau is unfeasible, he said.
"A big
problem for us is it’s such a huge life commitment. Our students, they
quit jobs, they rearrange their lives around this, so shutting down
would be catastrophic," he said. "Our businesses might survive it, but
it would definitely be catastrophic for the students."
California
Department of Consumer Affairs spokesman Russ Heimerich said that as
educational institutions that charge "a fairly hefty chunk of money" and
are not operated by religious organizations or accredited by another
agency, the coding boot camps clearly fall under the regulatory
authority of the Bureau for Private Postsecondary Education, which
oversees about 1,400 career schools and for-profit colleges.
"We
did discover that these organizations existed, we looked into it, we
found that, yeah, based on what they are doing and how they are doing
it, they are not exempt from the law," Heimerich said.
He added,
however, that the stern language in the cease-and-desist letters was
designed primarily to get the operators’ attention and that it was
unlikely the bureau would be moving to shut them down as long as they
made a good-faith effort to come into compliance.
"We are trying
to get them to become licensed," Heimerich said, adding that the agency
has not received any complaints about the boot camps and learned about
them from a staff investigator who saw them mentioned on a technology
blog. "So if they are doing that, they fall to the bottom or close to
the bottom of our enforcement priorities because there are many more
serious threats to student consumers."
The bureau assesses schools
it regulates $1 per student, money that goes into a fund that helps
reimburse students who paid to attend a school that is shuttered by the
state or goes out of business. If their operating applications are
approved, the boot camps would not have to immediately pay the
assessment because the fund currently has the $2.5 million balance
authorized under California law, he said.
Bishay said he and his
competitors met Wednesday to talk about how to deal with the state’s
threat and agreed to welcome state oversight. When Dev Bootcamp was
launched, he thought of it as an apprenticeship program, not an
educational enterprise, and there are aspects of his business, which
receives no government funding or student financial aid, that do not fit
neatly within state regulations.
For example, the state also
requires schools to seek approval for every change in their curricula, a
potential problem in an industry where change happens quickly. The
bureau also requires instructors at private academies to hold bachelor’s
degrees and three years’ teaching experience. One of his best
instructors, an experienced engineer, has neither, Bishay said.
"If
you are getting a 95 percent job placement rate, do you really care if
the teacher has a diploma?" he said. "It hurts us to even have the
question be out there unresolved."
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