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How Germany Wastes Billions On Coding Schools

MARCH 2022, IN A ZOOM MEETING:

We see 25 people, most of them with their cameras turned off. An employee from the SuperCodingSchool is giving a presentation.

CODING SCHOOL EMPLOYEE:

Do you have any questions so far?

STUDENT:

Can you turn the 250 € into 300 €?

CODING SCHOOL EMPLOYEE:

No. It's 250 €. But as I said, for both of you.

STUDENT:

So that means that if we recommend someone who gets into an interview we get 20 €. And then, if they start (as a student), 250 €. To sum it up a bit.

CODING SCHOOL EMPLOYEE:

Yes, exactly. Very well summarized.

What you just read is the transcript of a conversation that really happened. I made it at a coding school I used to teach at. (You`ll find the full transcript read by an AI below)

In the following essay I`ll explain what the conversation is about and how Germany wastes billions on coding schools who exploit the system.

We Need A Protagonist

Boris is 47, honest and funny. He grew up in Warna, a middle sized Bulgarian city. When he was 11 years old he lost his father Krasimir, in a drunk driving accident. Soon after, Boris and his mother, Polia, moved to Germany, where he finished school.

After graduating Boris started an apprenticeship as a roofer. He flourished on the job and put his heart and soul into it. Among his friends Boris was soon known as the “bulgarian spider man”.

However, at 28, he fell from a roof and suffered severe injuries that ended his career. Struggling with chronic pain, he registered for welfare at 30 and remained unemployed for years.

Then, one evening while scrolling through Instagram, Boris saw an advertisement from the SuperCodingSchool. In the ad the school promised to teach him everything he needed to know to become a well paid web developer. To top it off, the education was free, and he would get a new MacBook that he could keep after the course.

Boris was happy. He thought about the awesome job he would soon have and how he could support his widow-mother with the money. Then, after taking a deep breath, he clicked on the SuperCodingSchool ad.

The Bootcamp Funnel

The SuperCodingSchool advertisement led Boris to a website where he entered his personal information and answered questions like: “Are you currently unemployed?” And: “Are you registered with the job center (Arbeitsamt)?” Boris marked both questions with yes, then he clicked the big button that said “Apply Now”.

The very next day a woman from the SuperCodingSchool called Boris on his cellphone. The woman said she was very excited about Boris' application. She also said she and her team would help Boris get the necessary education voucher from the job center.

With the help of the SuperCodingSchool team, Boris reached out to his contact person at the job center and the government official granted him a trial month.

Now you might wonder (correctly): “What the hell is a trial month”? The main goal of the trial month was to find out if Boris would be able to finish the web development course. Another goal was to see if he is better suited for another course that the SuperCodingSchool offers.

So during the trial month Boris learned about programming, online marketing and digital sales. At the end he took three tests created and graded by the SuperCodingSchool.

After grading the tests the coding school notified the job center and said: “Boris would be a great fit for our web development course”.

Education Vouchers aka Bildungsgutscheine

To better understand what happened above and how all of this is paid for, we need to zoom out of Boris' story for a moment. Let's take a look at how the government helps unemployed people prepare for new jobs.

The politicians call this “services for integration into work” and they set aside 4.2 billion € to finance it in 2024. But what does it mean?

In plain english the money is spent on further education (1.9 billion €), counseling and integration services.

If an unemployed person wants to receive further education, for example through a private coding school, the government pays for that.

This is done through education vouchers (or Bildungsgutschein in German). Why does everything have to be so complicated? Well, the government cannot give money to the unemployed person directly, because he might spend it on something else. So instead of money the person receives an education voucher. For you and me this voucher is just a piece of paper. But private schools with a government certification can send it back to the state and exchange it for money (I simplified this process a lot).

Today there are countless private companies offering online bootcamps and courses in exchange for education vouchers. Some examples are: ILS, SuperCode, DCI, sgd, careerfoundry, IU, ironhack, euro-fh, Spiced, neue fische, Masterschool and many more.

How I Met Boris

I started working for the SuperCodingSchool in 2021 after one of my private coding students told me about their job openings.

At the time it sounded like a good cause so I wrote an application, got invited to an interview and answered a few questions about web development.

After I signed my contract I was appointed as web development teacher to a class of about 20 students. Boris was one of them.

In a nutshell my work looked like this: I saw Boris and the class twice a week, for 6 hours and taught them everything from HTML over CSS, to JavaScript, React and Express.js.

Coding Schools Are Selling A Dream

As the school year progressed I noticed that Boris couldn't keep up with the class. Of course I wanted to tell him that. But my supervisors didn't let me. They said: “No student should be discouraged from pursuing the educational path he deserves”.

Unfortunately Boris wasn't the only one who had problems keeping up. After a few months it was clear that half of the students in my class would never finish the course successfully. Some of them tried hard and failed. Others didn't try at all and disappeared for hours with their cameras and microphones off. (This happened during corona so I taught my class on zoom).

The people from the SuperCodingSchool didn't care about class attendance either. In a way they even approved of it. Because in the beginning of the year my students were told that they could miss ⅓ of all classes without fearing consequences.  

From an economic perspective the behavior of the school makes sense to me. In 2022 the SuperCodingSchool earned 30.000 € per student per year. So of course the school didn't want anybody to quit.

Instead, they keep selling students the dream of becoming a well paid developer for as long as possible. And while the school earns millions, most students waste a year of their life.

Your Taxes Paid For This

About 9 months after I started teaching at the SuperCodingSchool, a woman from the main office joined me and the class to give a presentation about a student referral program. This is how it works: If a student refers another student to the school both of them get a 250 € Amazon voucher.*

-> Listen to the English transcript read by an AI

-> Listen to the original German transcript read by an AI

At that point I realized that the SuperCodingSchool`s values didnt align with my own and quit my job as a teacher. I didn't want to support a system where coding schools focus on marketing rather than education. A system that exploits the German government and wastes taxes. A system where coding schools become rich by tricking unemployed people on social media.


*As of August 2024 the referral program is open to the public. Now anybody who recommends a new student gets 200 €

What Can We Do About It?

First of all I want to repeat, that this is not just a story about “a bad coding school”. There are countless coding schools and online universities making billions with educational vouchers.

On your next trip through the city or down your instagram feed, keep your eyes open for advertisements by private schools. This will help you get a feeling for how big this industry is.

That's why a possible solution needs to start at the root of the problem: educational vouchers.

The German government could set a success quota, meaning each school needs to get a certain percentage of students who start a course into a job. If the school fails to reach that number, it is not eligible to receive further funding or existing funding is cut.

An example formula to calculate the success quota for a school could look like this:

q = ∑mi /(∑mj + ∑mi)

q = success quota
m = number of months a student took part in class

i =  students who find a job in less than 1 year after the course

j = students who don't find a job in less than 1 year after the course

The formula takes into account the number of months each student attended class. This removes the need for difficult assessment exams.  

In my opinion a success quota would lead to coding schools who care about enrolling students with a talent for programming. It would also lead to exams that students can fail, which in turn would get them expelled.

A success quota might also lead to stricter policies against students skipping classes. But most importantly a success quota would lead to coding schools who strive to get better at educating students and preparing them for the job market.

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Thanks to Maria and Fabian for reading drafts of this.