Career Prep: Self-Directed Learning
Can an education be quick, cheap, Torah-friendly, AND effective?
As I observed in the related post, How to Plan Your Career Preparation, it’s not obvious that a particular college program will end up paying for itself. Bear in mind that the average student at the bottom 50% of all US colleges earns less than $10,000 over the true costs of his education even ten years after first enrolling. And, as we saw, students at some schools can end up taking a loss.
So for many of us, less expensive options that expose us to less risk can be attractive.
In this post, I’ll introduce you to a training category that can offer enormous value and fast results. But there’s a catch.
Where to find learning resources
Over the past decades, the internet has grown into the greatest archive of human knowledge that’s ever existed. For all its problems - and there’s no shortage of those - the online world and the search engines that power it make it easy to access answers to just about any question you can imagine.
Looking for quick instructions for fixing the broken brake light on your car, choosing a great vacation hotel, or bringing your sick cactus plant back to health? Need some in-depth and reliable context for a big investment or renovation you’re planning? The internet is nearly always going to be your first and only resource. And that’s because we’ve come to expect that everything is there. It’s just a matter of finding it.
The internet has proven particularly useful at making high-quality training content available at very low cost or even for free. And nowhere is this more true than in the technology/programming field. If you’re motivated, persistent, and willing to invest some serious time and energy, there are some valuable learning resources just waiting for you out there.
Of course, the self-directed learning model isn’t cost-free. Instead of dedicated guidance counselors helping you through each step of the process, you’ll need to plan and manage your own progress. And instead of a well-trodden path between graduation and your first job, you’ll have to build your own connections.
In other words, you’ll be responsible for your education. But you’ll also be in charge.
Don’t think that this is completely unexplored territory. More and more, big technology companies like Google - desperate to find talented new employees - will eagerly hire coders even without college experience. In fact, Google itself even offers their own free online courses designed teach just the skills they’re looking for.
For the right person, self-directed learning offers a quick and cheap path that’s flexible enough to not get in the way of Torah and family responsibilities.
But you’ll still need to find a program with content that’s good enough to get you the job you’re after. Here are some tools to help with that.
Self-directed learning: what the data says
I should first introduce you to freeCodeCamp, a non-profit dedicated to providing complete online interactive content teaching core, in-demand coding and data skills for free. They also facilitate study groups around the world where students can actually come together to collaborate on their learning. This would be a great way for frum students to build their own “coding bootcamp” environments.
A few years ago, freeCodeCamp surveyed more than 30,000 developers for insights about their learning experiences. What that survey data teaches us about the current technology education world is fascinating.
First, a general observation. The 1,643 US-based freeCodeCamp respondents who reported having outstanding student debt held an average $36,171 of it. That's very close to the latest (November, 2021) national figure of $39,351 reported by Education Data. I think this suggests that the freeCodeCamp data is largely representative of real world conditions.
What do students get in exchange for their investment?
The average annual income of all 3,645 US-based respondents who reported earnings was $41,874.
The 137 of those who had trade, technical, or vocational training earned a bit less: $39,897.
The 1,399 with a bachelors degree (in any field) earned $45,818.
And the 139 who had achieved a professional degree (MBA, MD, JD, etc.) averaged $71,151.
Running up $36k of student debt can make sense if there's a very strong chance the program you're taking will return income at a level that will eventually cover and surpass all of your costs. If your own research doesn't leave you so confident on that score, then you should explore cheaper alternatives.
Are Coding Bootcamps Worth it?
When it comes to coding, one of those cheaper alternatives is one of the many intensive bootcamps that have appeared in recent years. Bootcamp course lengths tend to be measured in months rather than years, so they obviously require a smaller investment. But they're not exactly cheap. Tuition for many bootcamps will cost $10,000 or more and, since they're generally full time. You'll need money for food and housing while you're enrolled.
Does the bootcamp experience translate to higher income? The 3,411 US-based survey respondents who had never attended a bootcamp and reported their previous year's income, earned an average of $42,018.
Surprisingly, the 234 respondents who had attended a bootcamp reported earning only $39,771. In addition, 102 of those bootcamp students who also had never attended college nevertheless reported an average of $22,941 in student debt.
Now I won't claim that this figure is a true and absolute representation of the entire bootcamp world. There are certainly many individuals for whom bootcamps work wonderfully. But 234 is not an insignificant number. This is something to keep in mind.
As I wrote above, freeCodeCamp itself was designed at least in part to replicate the bootcamp experience. They do that through their comprehensive video and text content, interactive coding environments, and even extensive job interview preparation. And, of course, they’re free.
Besides bootcamps, however, there's another category of technology learning resource: online courseware.
Do online courses work?
Some online learning resources (like Khan Academy and freeCodeCamp) are available for free. Others, like the four year college-affiliated Coursera or edX charge for making certificates available at the end of their courses, but their content is usually also available for free through the same official sites.
And the content provided by platforms like Pluralsight can be accessed through monthly subscriptions. The costs of all of these options are significantly less expensive than either colleges or bootcamps.
So how do these resources compare to colleges and bootcamps when it comes to increased income? The chart below lays out some of the numbers from the freeCodeCamp (fCC) survey.
As you can see, income increased by around $6k for the 594 freeCodeCamp students who added Coursera content to their education portfolio. 567 edX students enjoyed nearly $5k extra income. The 1,529 freeCodeCamp students who also used Udemy saw nearly $4k extra. Inexplicably, you stood to lose $3.5k for using Khan Academy resources.
But what about those Pluralsight numbers? Now, I should come clean and confess that I'm a content author for Pluralsight, so I have a horse in this race. But there's no missing the fact that Pluralsight delivered an average income premium of $12k over users accessing only freeCodeCamp. That's a whopping 24% bump.
All of those numbers are just statistical assumptions. They're not hard, reliable predictions of what you'll actually experience, and they're won't apply equally to everyone.
But they are tools that can help you think more productively about how you should be planning your education. Use them to give some thought to your plans and hopes within the context of what may be affordable now...and in ten years. But also try to go past the recruitment hype to see the true underlying value.