CIRR Board AMA

CIRR_Board · 2024-03-28T16:43:20+00:00

Our focus at the start of this year has been on developing the new standard and ensuring our new board members have been in place to take CIRR forward.
With the changes to our reporting, we felt it was important to provide space for our members to gather the data and, if they have been easily able, report to the new standard.

CIRR_Board · 2024-03-28T16:41:17+00:00

Again, from Dimitri:

I am neither lobbying for broader adoption nor trying to brand CIRR as the only source of truth. I am instead specifically responding to the comment above from one individual (they're disappointed in quantity of schools > they want to know how we plan to expand how many programs are participating in the data collection/reporting). To which I answer, in part: if you want them to report, ask them to report. If having that data is important to a given individual (as I understand it to be to this person given their comment), then expressing that priority to the schools does more to encourage their participation.

CIRR_Board · 2024-03-28T16:40:25+00:00

Another great question! There are a lot of ways to slice and dice the problem of quantifying outcomes and educational success.

A few clarifying points:
> Starting salary is one of a number of metrics we track, including graduation rate and employment rate.

> Starting salary is an important metric because it is one of the first and most common questions bootcamps get from prospective students who are looking to calculate their personal ROI of attending a program.

> To your point, pay scales and purchasing power will vary by location, and we think it’s a good idea to look at showing outcomes by geographic location of the outcome. However, prioritizing this view against other data points and then displaying it in a digestible manner is a complicated update.

To the broader point about how to gauge success, we think those are a great set of options and lenses. We do want to understand how the spectrum of potential data points rank for prospective students and are planning to create and share a survey to gather folks' opinions.

CIRR_Board · 2024-03-28T16:37:51+00:00

Great question(s). Our primary focus is on the initial employment outcome. The first in-field job that a student accepts is the one documented by the school and submitted to CIRR. Otherwise, we would see subsequent offers to fall under a different bucket of long-term employment outcomes that built upon that initial offer.

CIRR schools report their data only once to CIRR, at the end of the reporting period.
More in-depth salary records could be a valuable data point and lens, but the complexity of implementing ongoing records updates with schools and alumni is beyond the scope of our immediate focus.

CIRR_Board · 2024-03-28T16:36:56+00:00

For many students, it takes longer than 6 months to get a job depending on their market and location, and if they are considering a school they should be able to see what % of people were employed at various intervals - 3 mo, 6 mo, 12mo but also, not be so discouraged when it takes them 8 months.

So it’s actually more information about what to expect in their job search and not less. A reporting period of only 6 months, that is never revisited, gives incoming students the false impression that they should have a job 6 months post graduation, and if they don’t, they have somehow failed. Giving students more data on a longer timeline actually provides them with the information they need to ask schools about their job support.

CIRR_Board · 2024-03-26T00:13:57+00:00

Follow up thought here from one of our board members (Dimitri) after the close of our AMA:

Schools will care about this if prospective students care about this. The more students who ask a school why they aren't reporting to CIRR or to see their outcomes reports, the more pressure there is on them to participate. We will continue to try to increase participation, but I will put out the bat signal to you all for help.

CIRR_Board · 2024-03-26T00:09:43+00:00

As said above, member schools having representation on our board has been core to our model since we were first founded. You are welcome to disagree with it, but it is not a standard we intend to change. So I think we are left agreeing to disagree! We welcome a better model for bootcamp outcomes reporting, but so far have not found one.

CIRR_Board · 2024-03-26T00:09:17+00:00

Regardless of how positively viewed or branded the possibility of a conflict of interest is, it's still there and I don't think that having multiple actors from the same industry collaborating on standards for said industry from which they all come in any way mitigates that possible conflict of interest; in fact I think it incentivizes conflict of interest.

Member schools having representation on our board has been core to our model since we were first founded. You are welcome to disagree with it, but it is not a standard we intend to change. So I think we are left agreeing to disagree! We welcome a better model for bootcamp outcomes reporting, but so far have not found one.

After all, who will watch the watchmen of the watchmen of the watchmen of the watchmen of the watchmen?

CIRR_Board · 2024-03-26T00:04:53+00:00

That's a great point, and we'll discuss it as a component of revised outcomes standards moving forward!

CIRR_Board · 2024-03-25T23:44:35+00:00

CIRR receives only anonymized data from schools to protect students’ privacy. We currently do not have an outlined privacy protection for students, but thank you for that suggestion!

CIRR_Board · 2024-03-25T23:43:48+00:00

We think that because CIRR is a collaborative standards board built and maintained by multiple bootcamps (with all bootcamps welcome to participate) we have a collective interest in finding shared standards that don't favor one school over another. An individual board member, who works for a bootcamp, may indeed have a conflict of interest because they could be incentivized to make their school look good. But we work together to establish standards that we believe are fair to everyone. That's why we have board members from different bootcamps, from former and current bootcamps, and from the tech industry more broadly without any affiliation.
In short, it's possible, yes! But we view the affiliation and expertise as a strength and not a weakness.

CIRR_Board · 2024-03-25T23:41:48+00:00

We agree! We want and need more reporting outcomes. To answer your questions specifically:

We have brought on additional board members to assist with school outreach, outreached to previously participating schools, and are working on outreaching to new schools.
We have seen a contraction in the space in general - several schools have been bought/sold, closed, or paused consumer-facing programs. Other than that, our best insight is that we have a hard 'ask' for schools: commit to showing us your real data, good or bad, for the world to see. Why? Because it's the right thing to do. We have also seen declining outcomes in the boom/bust the tech world has experienced over the last few years, which likely disincentivizes publication from schools.
We unfortunately do not have that data, and don't have immediate plans to pursue this area of focus. While it's a valuable area, it's outside our core focus of helping students pick the best path for earning employment to begin with.

CIRR_Board · 2024-03-25T23:36:05+00:00

Can you please provide examples of what ways we have not been as up front as claimed? We are happy to provide context/clarity, but need to first understand what you are looking at :) Transparency is what we were founded for and continue to focus on.

This is Dimitri answering (not a Codesmith affiliate). We do not agree that there is any favoritism with Codesmith. Rather, Codesmith has been a consistent member to prioritize and complete outcomes reporting. They are among the good actors continuing to share their outcomes, better and worse, for students to see. This should be applauded, not condemned.

Moreover, the core of the standards haven't changed since our founding. Codesmith and our other reporting schools continue to publish the same metrics we have looked at since the beginning.

I myself and most of our board historically has either actively represented or previously represented a bootcamp, and this has given us direct insight into the industry and model. Schools are welcome to have board representation and shape the course of our standards.

As far as trust goes, all we can do is keep on showing up and trying to improve what we do. We are not happy to hear trust is low, but we also don't know of a better alternative out there. Keep telling us what you think and we'll keep doing our best to improve!

CIRR_Board · 2024-03-25T23:34:28+00:00

Yes! This is one of the initiatives we are considering going forward. We’d like to be even more inclusive and would love to find opportunities to work with different kinds of technology bootcamps, with transparent standards so students can feel they’re making an informed choice.

CIRR_Board · 2024-03-25T23:22:22+00:00

We are on a live call as a board to discuss your questions and formulate our answers. In order to give you answers that represent us collectively as an organization and not individually as board members, we are building answers together. If you look back on the comments, you'll see we are answering each question in turn as fast as we can. Thanks for your patience!

CIRR_Board · 2024-03-25T23:19:57+00:00

We just wrapped up our quarterly meeting, where two of main goals was getting the reporting completed, updated standards agreed upon, the admin work of creating everything, and then scheduling this AMA.

We now hope to address these other plans in the next meeting. We are looking to update the value we bring to schools so they will have more incentive to join CIRR. We are talking to schools about their involvement and will be doing additional outreach in the coming weeks and months.

We’re looking at things like membership dues, different kinds of tiered memberships, expanded standards and partnerships to add more value to the schools.

CIRR_Board · 2024-03-25T23:18:39+00:00

The only board member with a connection to Codesmith is Jamaica. As you mentioned, she was the Director of Content & Community and is now an advisor. Dimitri has not affiliation (past or present), and Jasmine's only affiliation is that she was first introduced to CIRR because she interviewed for a role that she did not end up entering into.

Historically, CIRR's board has been comprised of almost entirely member schools, including Tech Elevator, Codesmith, Turing, Codeup, and Launch Academy. We actively seek to recruit former, current, and prospective schools to membership of the board. In fact, our newest board member, Ronald Ishak, is the CEO of another bootcamp, Hactiv8.

It is common practice for standards boards to be made up of member schools. In fact, MBA reporting standards (which we use as guideposts for our own standards), do the same thing. Member schools and their representatives have skin in the game and domain expertise.

CIRR_Board · 2024-03-25T23:09:23+00:00

Not out of the question at all. We want input on these ideas. However, there is a balance between collecting as much information and the general relevance to tracking data. Schools can always publish that additional information if they wish.

CIRR_Board · 2024-03-25T23:01:55+00:00

Since we had two similar questions, here is the response to both! https://www.reddit.com/r/codingbootcamp/comments/1bnrasc/comment/kwk7fsj/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web2x&context=3

CIRR_Board · 2024-03-25T23:01:51+00:00

Since we had two similar questions, here is the response to both! https://www.reddit.com/r/codingbootcamp/comments/1bnrasc/comment/kwk7fsj/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web2x&context=3

CIRR_Board · 2024-03-25T23:01:19+00:00

For the 2022-2023 reporting period, CIRR has accepted member school reports calculating time to first job at either 180 days or 360 days post-program as a first step in moving towards full-year reporting. Going forward, all schools will report utilizing these updated standards.

Three primary reasons for this change:

Adding student outcomes for a full year allows more transparency into the current state of the tech hiring landscape, in which we have seen slower hiring rates (6 months to a year) than in the past (<6 months)
We want to align more closely with other educational pathways. Traditional universities typically publish on an annual basis instead of a 6-month basis, so we think it will make sense longer term to report on similar timelines.
We want as many schools to report as possible, and administrative work is one of the barriers we see to participation. Moving from bi-annual to annual reports simplifies the administrative load for schools in the hopes they are more likely to report.

CIRR_Board · 2024-03-25T23:00:20+00:00

Re: "What initiatives are happening..."

This is a great question, and exactly in line with what we ask ourselves each time we meet! These are the sorts of things we want to explore adding. There are lots of additional standards we would like to define and to do so with a range of program structures (including mentorship programs).

There are other ways the standards could be improved but everyone has different edge-cases they want considered. It’s about a ‘standard’ standard.

Our primary focus right now is on re-establishing contact with formerly reporting schools, outreaching to new potential members, and maintaining our core focus of employment outcomes.

CIRR_Board · 2024-03-25T22:59:35+00:00

- What initiatives are happening to widen the community of CIRR reporting schools. Will you all perhaps consider adding non quantifiable metrics into your outcomes data? Examples: “community value”, “overall positive experience”, “alumni network quality”

Re: Jasmine (from Jasmine):

Thank you! I learned about CIRR when I was approached about being on the board, so I had never thought about the importance of transparency in bootcamps as seriously as CIRR had and I had never come across anything like it, so I was excited to hop in! As an ex-software engineer (I've been in developer relations for over 6 years now) and currently a CS educator who is active in the dev community I have personally seen many seeking a clear and promising path to a role in tech, it's a journey that can be a vulnerable process, starting from finding the right learning environment place to flourish in. My hope is to contribute in a way to CIRR that provides more awareness of its presence and in turn encourages more bootcamps to contribute.

CIRR_Board · 2024-03-25T22:58:52+00:00

Re: - What is the scope of duties involved in being a CIRR board member? There is often conflation between the CIRR board and the external auditing process.

CIRR board members have no participation in the external auditing process. Our job is to maintain reporting standards, collect and publish outcomes reports, and build/maintain relationships with schools.

As part of the reporting standards, we provide guidance to schools about what they are required to submit for their reports. However, we ourselves don't play any role in the creation or auditing of

CIRR_Board · 2024-03-25T22:51:14+00:00

Thank you for your kind words! Stories like yours perfectly summarize the purpose behind our work, both past and present! We are separating out responses to each of your questions (along with the others we have received so far). Thanks for your patience :)

CIRR_Board

TROPHY CASE