Hacker crackdown: licensing education innovation.

• Author: Hertig, Alyssa
• Position: Citings - Brief article

IN JANUARY, the California Bureau for Private Postsecondary Education (BPPE) gave Silicon Valley coding boot camps an unsettling ultimatum: Get licensed or shut down and pay a $30,000 fine. They were granted two weeks notice.

These "hacker camps" usually cost somewhere between $10,000 and $20,000 for students and typically last nine to 12 weeks. They boast high graduate hiring rates. Hack Reactor claims 399 percent success rate; App Academy says its hiring pickup is 98 percent. The coding schools offer a shorter and cheaper avenue to expert programming than your typical college program, and quickly channel recruits into well-paid employment.

The schools seem willing to comply with regulations. But there are concerns that the formulaic regulations are ill suited for the fast-paced, constantly evolving technology realm. The California Code...