u/Waefuu wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
That's terrible to hear, but thank you so much!
u/michaelnovati replied ·
I mean HackReactor and Rithm both have their own audited standards and I think that they're both pretty legit. CIRR actually has a lot of loose language in its standard that can be taken advantage of. for example, they specify the evidence needed for start dates but they do not specify any of the evidence needed for salaries. so according to the spec if you just ask someone with their salary is and then they tell you you can use that in the report. I think that could be totally fine, but a lot of people have a perception that lawyers and accountants are reviewing every piece of these forms for every possible thing and that's not the case even though the data is totally reliable.
The spec itself was developed by boot camp founders , marketing people, and a boot camp loan provider and I do think that there is some strategy used there too. make the numbers more marketable. for example, there's only one absolute number in the report which is the number of graduates included, but then every other number is a percentage and the percentages can kind of eat away at each other. so the percentages of people who graduate versus the percentage of people who get a job versus the percentage of people who report salaries it kind of whittles away one two three people at a time from the initial start number which enhances those percentages
For example, if there are people who the boot camp can verify on LinkedIn that they have a job then they count as a placement. but if the person won't respond to any requests and provide any more information, they might not be included in the salary sets even though there are placement on the placement stats. This incentivizes programs to track down high paying people who are ghosting well somewhat ignoring or doing the bare minimum for people who got a random part-time job, but still including that person in the placement numbers.