u/Efficiu wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
How are you defining bias exactly? Thousands of student reviews, both named and anonymous, is one of the most efficient ways to learn the truth about any institution. I relied heavily on Course Report and Switchup early on to weigh different school offerings through their stu
u/michaelnovati replied · · edited ★ FEATURED
First, SwitchUp's "data" intake form hasn't been updated since 2020 according to [archive.org](https://archive.org) ([https://web.archive.org/web/\*/https://www.switchup.org/write-review](https://web.archive.org/web/*/https://www.switchup.org/write-review)) and still promises a chance to win a $500 / $100 gift card for submitting a review. Who got those and when and how do you have a chance to win them? The Additional Survey they rely on for data hasn't been updated since 2020/2021: [https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/YMTFNWK](https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/YMTFNWK). Their latest major report is from 2018: [https://www.switchup.org/rankings/coding-bootcamp-survey](https://www.switchup.org/rankings/coding-bootcamp-survey)
I never once criticized the validity of the content on these sites. I'm saying the sites themselves are biased... you mention VC funding repeatedly... both of these sites only exist if the bootcamps they review exist. And those bootcamps are VC funded. Almost every last one of them from HR, to Codesmith, to Rithm to BloomTech, to Springboard, to NuCamp, to Flatiron, etc... has taken some amount of outside funding from investors/been acquired by companies with investors/etc... VC !== bad all of the time.
Second, I can explain why Formation does not participate in CIRR as a school. We would consider participating as a supporting company to help improve CIRR. I've read through the entire standards doc several times, which is also how I know about many loopholes programs use. Galvanize's G.R.A.D. standards are arguable equally sophisticated as CIRRs. Before you say well Galvanize coming up with it's own standards is bias... CIRR is just an entity legally bound to represent the interests of it's bootcamp members and isn't much different.
Formation has 1. No concept of graduation/passing/ending etc... making the entire premise does not apply. This is not in a wordsmithing kind of way, we just don't have any kind of "ending" or length of time, or materials you cover until you "end". You start, you keep getting new material just for you indefinitely, then you get a job and leave and it "ends". 2. Since we have no concept of finishing Formation or graduating, all of the outcomes metrics have no starting point to measure from. We could measure them from your START date, but that's not how CIRR works, not does it allow for fair comparison to other programs. 3. Each Fellow has a unique experience. Each person covers different topics and spends time in different areas. So while CIRR supports non-fixed length programs, we don't have a fixed program, again making the whole premise not work.
I'm not defending BloomTech at all. I have really strong feelings about how Austen grew the company that are extremely negative, they are just personal feelings I don't talk about because people here want objective and useful information