I'm a big fan of Dev Bootcamp and similar startups. Traditional universities are a bad deal for students who are going to university to improve their ability to earn a livelihood - a not-insignificant portion of the 3/4 of Americans youths who now attend college. And it is becoming a worse deal as college costs increase.
Students need a more flexible, more accessible system of higher education. Over the last 50 years, we've attempted to co-opt the traditional university system to fill the higher education needs of the greater population and the experiment is failing.
A lot of our students come from backgrounds in higher education, so I want to be careful not to imply that places like Harvard, Oxford, etc. are for "some people" and others just can't meet their standards, so hey, why not set your sights lower and go to vocational school?
It's more that because we want universities to be everything to everyone, they've lost a sense of purpose. Some universities retain it -- Chicago, MIT, Harvey Mudd, Reed College, etc. -- and have incredibly strong opinions about how to answer "What is an education?"
Most universities can't afford to have a strong opinion, sometimes for legal reasons and sometimes for economic reasons.
By removing those contradictions, I'm hope Dev Bootcamp will help free universities to be universities again, and return to them the luxury of holding a strong opinion about the nature of an education.
Students need a more flexible, more accessible system of higher education. Over the last 50 years, we've attempted to co-opt the traditional university system to fill the higher education needs of the greater population and the experiment is failing.