August 11, 2016

I was very disappointed with Angus Reid’s poll regarding guaranteed income:

The Angus Reid Institute described the guaranteed income idea to respondents as follows:

Those who made less than the threshold through employment earnings would be paid the difference by the federal government, while those who made more than the threshold would receive no additional funding. This payment would typically replace most or all other forms of government assistance, such as welfare and employment insurance.

ARI then asked respondents whether they would support or oppose such a program if the threshold were set at each of three different levels: $10,000, $20,000, or $30,000 per adult per year. Roughly one-third of the total sample (approximately 500 respondents) each weighed in on one of the three options.

So in other words, all income below the threshold is subject to a 100% effective marginal tax rate. There is absolutely no incentive to pick up another shift or to get a slightly better job, because every single cent you make from this will be taxed away from you. Nobody in their right mind would support Angus Reid’s version of the concept.

More encouraging was news of alternative technical schools:

The Flatiron School’s 12-week course costs $15,000, but earns students no degree and no certificate. What it does get them, at an overwhelming rate, is a well-paying job. Nearly everyone graduates, and more than nine in 10 land a job within six months at places like Alphabet Inc. ’s Google and Kickstarter. Average starting salary: $74,447.

Employers are increasingly hiring graduates of the Flatiron model—short, intensely focused curricula that are constantly retailored to meet company needs. Success, its backers say, could help fuel a revolution in how the U.S. invests in higher education, pushing more institutions toward teaching distinct aptitudes and away from granting broad degrees.
…
Google, which has hired workers from Flatiron and other academies, recently studied the efficacy of coding camps. The company found that while the camps have shown promise, most of their graduates weren’t prepared for software engineering without additional training or prior experience, Maggie Johnson, Google’s director of education and university relations, said in an email.

“In a broader sense, most of our hires have [computer science] degrees because we prefer to hire generalists who can work on any type of product or service. Bootcamp alumni tend to be more specialized,” Ms. Johnson added.
…
Flatiron said it accepts only 6% of applicants, making it almost as selective as Harvard. The typical coding-boot camp student was 31 years old and had nearly eight years of work experience and a bachelor’s degree, according to Course Report, an industry group.

The Google evaluation of the programme sounds reasonable to me. I suspect that the graduates of this programme are basically what I call teeny-bopper programmers … you can give them small jobs and they’ll execute competently, but they won’t really understand why they are being told to do something in a particular way and you certainly can’t give them design responsibilities because you’ll just get spaghetti-code. But hey, we were all teeny-boppers once!

I’m amazed that a for-profit technical school has an acceptance rate of only 6%. I wonder how long it will be before some MBA in the president’s office points out that profit could be doubled with a 12% acceptance rate!

But it’s nice to know you can still educate people nowadays without having an Athletic Centre, beautiful accommodation and two-star dining halls, all paid for with ridiculous amounts of student debt!