WEBVTT - When a French Billionaire Built a Free Tech School in the U.S. 0:00:00.520 --> 0:00:03.440 Last year, President Obama was in St. Louis where he 0:00:03.480 --> 0:00:07.640 announced an ambitious government program called Tech Higher. The goal 0:00:07.800 --> 0:00:10.879 was to help local communities train more people for jobs 0:00:10.880 --> 0:00:14.280 and technology. At the time when we all leave digital lives, 0:00:16.360 --> 0:00:18.599 anybody who has the drive and the will to get 0:00:18.640 --> 0:00:20.279 into this field should have a way to do so, 0:00:20.360 --> 0:00:23.520 a pathway to do so. So my administration is committed 0:00:23.560 --> 0:00:27.040 to this initiation, and he introduced a woman called Lashawna Lewis. 0:00:27.600 --> 0:00:31.000 The President says she's exactly the kind of person who 0:00:31.080 --> 0:00:35.239 deserves a chance. Now. The reason Leshada's story is so 0:00:35.360 --> 0:00:41.800 relevant is Lashanna grew up in East St. Louis. She 0:00:41.920 --> 0:00:50.080 had a passion for computers, but because of circumstances constraints, 0:00:50.560 --> 0:00:52.560 she wasn't born with a silver spoon in her mouth, 0:00:53.880 --> 0:00:58.000 um she wasn't able to get a college degree, and 0:00:58.080 --> 0:01:00.080 because she didn't have a college degree, she couldn't and 0:01:00.520 --> 0:01:06.520 get an interview for a touch job despite her coding skills. 0:01:07.000 --> 0:01:09.840 But Lashanna got some help from launch Code, which teaches 0:01:09.920 --> 0:01:13.760 coding and helps place people in related jobs in St. Louis, 0:01:14.200 --> 0:01:21.000 and today she's a system engineer a master card. This 0:01:21.200 --> 0:01:23.520 was a real success story at a time when teaching 0:01:23.600 --> 0:01:26.720 high level computing skills to students has never mattered more. 0:01:27.240 --> 0:01:30.400 The U S Government expects almost two thousand new software 0:01:30.400 --> 0:01:34.080 developer jobs over the next ten years. There are tons 0:01:34.120 --> 0:01:37.480 of coding schools, boot camps here in the Bay Area 0:01:37.520 --> 0:01:40.440 and all over the country. They all want to produce 0:01:40.560 --> 0:01:45.480 more success stories like Lishanna, Summer for profit, Summer nonprofits. 0:01:45.480 --> 0:01:47.640 I feel like I hear about a new one every week. 0:01:48.080 --> 0:01:51.320 One of these schools is especially interesting. It was started 0:01:51.320 --> 0:01:54.520 in Paris by a French billionaire named Xavier Neil, and 0:01:54.560 --> 0:01:56.920 about three years after the launch of that first school, 0:01:57.080 --> 0:01:59.960 he decided to open another branch right here in Silica 0:02:00.000 --> 0:02:03.840 On Valley, the mecca of technology. The school's called a 0:02:03.960 --> 0:02:07.360 called count or School forty two in English, and the 0:02:07.440 --> 0:02:09.160 new branch in the U S is in a town 0:02:09.200 --> 0:02:12.400 called Fremont, the same place where Tesla builds its cars. 0:02:13.240 --> 0:02:16.160 It stands out not because its founder, Xavier or'neil, is 0:02:16.200 --> 0:02:18.480 one of the richest guys in France. Yeah, he's kind 0:02:18.480 --> 0:02:20.840 of like a cross between Steve Jobs and Elon Musk, 0:02:21.320 --> 0:02:24.239 and not because he's a ponytail wearing geek who dropped 0:02:24.280 --> 0:02:27.160 out of school, or even because he first got rich 0:02:27.200 --> 0:02:29.640 by starting a sex chat service and went on to 0:02:29.720 --> 0:02:33.639 build a giant internet and phone company called Iliad. Well, 0:02:33.720 --> 0:02:36.560 all those things are interesting, but the school stands out 0:02:36.600 --> 0:02:39.480 because it offers a rigorous three year education and the 0:02:39.520 --> 0:02:42.920 most highly demanded skill in the modern economy, all for 0:02:43.000 --> 0:02:53.520 the absolutely low price of nothing. Hi, I'm brad Stone, 0:02:53.840 --> 0:02:56.840 and then Sarah McBride, and this week on Decrypted will 0:02:56.880 --> 0:03:00.120 tell you about an education experiment aimed at addressing one 0:03:00.120 --> 0:03:04.000 of the tech industry's most intractable problems by offering the 0:03:04.040 --> 0:03:07.720 program for free. The goal is to extend opportunities to 0:03:07.760 --> 0:03:10.760 people who have been shut out of high paying, secure 0:03:10.840 --> 0:03:14.880 jobs and technology. We'll also hear the rub how starting 0:03:14.880 --> 0:03:17.800 a free coding school in the US brings a special 0:03:17.840 --> 0:03:21.080 set of challenges that never came up in France. I 0:03:21.120 --> 0:03:23.960 found that out drawing visits to the Silicon Valley branch 0:03:24.000 --> 0:03:27.800 at the school, which just opened in September. You'll also 0:03:27.840 --> 0:03:30.079 hear from me. I'm Marie Moab and I'm our tech 0:03:30.160 --> 0:03:33.200 reporter in Paris. I visited the original branch of school 0:03:33.240 --> 0:03:35.720 for the two and I spoke to its billionaire founder 0:03:35.840 --> 0:03:43.360 Xavian You. So, Marie, let's start with that Xavier Neil 0:03:43.440 --> 0:03:47.040 and why he decided to open the school. Well, Zevinel 0:03:47.120 --> 0:03:50.800 says he wanted to solve two problems. First, businesses need 0:03:50.880 --> 0:03:54.680 more coders. That's a huge challenge here in the US, 0:03:54.880 --> 0:03:57.760 where the tech industry is going faster than almost any 0:03:57.800 --> 0:04:02.120 other sector. The people who make great coders just start 0:04:02.200 --> 0:04:05.680 getting a chance, like people from rough backgrounds or youngsters 0:04:05.720 --> 0:04:09.480 with criminal records. Here's what Davinel told me about why 0:04:09.560 --> 0:04:13.920 he decided to start to school. In our company, we 0:04:13.920 --> 0:04:17.280 we saw that we did not find enough people, enough talent, 0:04:17.680 --> 0:04:21.200 enough people who knew how to cut. And in this 0:04:21.400 --> 0:04:24.640 mind we had we had, we had, and we have 0:04:24.760 --> 0:04:28.599 very good school teaching call inference, but never enough people 0:04:28.640 --> 0:04:31.240 who know how to And at the same time, if 0:04:31.279 --> 0:04:33.880 we were in outside of Peris, in a lot of suburbs, 0:04:33.920 --> 0:04:35.640 you have a lot of people who are very poor. 0:04:36.000 --> 0:04:39.040 And in fact, in France, when you are when you 0:04:39.200 --> 0:04:41.640 were born, when you were born, in your in the 0:04:41.760 --> 0:04:44.599 perfectly at the end, you cannot go to school and 0:04:44.600 --> 0:04:48.760 you stay and your women, you women poor generation after generation. 0:04:48.839 --> 0:04:51.080 And the idea it was to mix these two things 0:04:51.160 --> 0:04:53.520 and to try to have these people coming from the 0:04:53.600 --> 0:04:59.800 poor superbs going to a coding school. I cot aboot 0:04:59.839 --> 0:05:01.880 that and meal on the top floor of the Paris 0:05:01.880 --> 0:05:04.680 headquarters of the Iliad in front of a panoramic view 0:05:04.720 --> 0:05:07.440 of the city. Neil came in wearing a turtleneck, thick 0:05:07.520 --> 0:05:11.240 frame glasses, his usual slicked back, longish hair, and he's 0:05:11.240 --> 0:05:14.360 a friendly type, smiling and he gets quite passionate when 0:05:14.360 --> 0:05:17.440 he talks about forty two. And we should probably explain 0:05:17.560 --> 0:05:21.239 to anyone not the steeped in geekie science fiction where 0:05:21.240 --> 0:05:23.919 the name of the school comes from. It's a reference 0:05:23.920 --> 0:05:26.440 from the book The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and 0:05:26.480 --> 0:05:30.040 it's actually the answer to life's biggest but never explicitly 0:05:30.120 --> 0:05:33.359 stated question forty two. And by the way, when I 0:05:33.440 --> 0:05:37.480 visited the school, I realized it's full of nerdy references 0:05:37.560 --> 0:05:40.680 like that. So Sarah tell me more, what's what's unusual 0:05:40.680 --> 0:05:44.080 about forty two. Well, it's a three year program and 0:05:44.200 --> 0:05:48.360 it's free, but it's not accredited. There's a curriculum and 0:05:48.400 --> 0:05:51.800 tests you have to pass, but no teachers. The students 0:05:51.839 --> 0:06:02.480 teach themselves. When School forty two first opened in France, 0:06:02.680 --> 0:06:05.960 thousands of people applied. Davinil picked an up and coming 0:06:06.000 --> 0:06:09.400 neighborhood in the north of Paris called Kishi. It's basically 0:06:09.400 --> 0:06:11.640 being rebuilt from the ground up. It looks like a 0:06:11.680 --> 0:06:15.800 construction site in what used to be a neglected rundown area. 0:06:15.960 --> 0:06:19.040 It's school of cranes and jackhammers all over the sidewalk, 0:06:19.120 --> 0:06:22.479 but it's slowly shaping into a modern district around the 0:06:22.480 --> 0:06:26.599 skyscraper building for Paris's biggest courthouse, and Sarah tell us 0:06:26.600 --> 0:06:29.160 about the school here in the U s well, it's 0:06:29.200 --> 0:06:32.720 pretty much opposite to the school in France. Here it's 0:06:32.720 --> 0:06:35.640 in an office park mere Fremat, a suburban kind of 0:06:35.680 --> 0:06:39.599 place on the southeastern side of Silicon Valley, about forty 0:06:39.600 --> 0:06:42.880 miles from San Francisco. It's in an office park by 0:06:42.880 --> 0:06:46.240 a freeway, past a bunch of strip halls, and at 0:06:46.279 --> 0:06:48.159 first I couldn't even tell if I was in the 0:06:48.240 --> 0:06:52.640 right spot because the parking lot looked so empty. It's 0:06:52.680 --> 0:06:55.039 in a big office building that used to belong to 0:06:55.080 --> 0:06:58.760 another college school. Forty two bought the building, but it's 0:06:58.800 --> 0:07:02.400 hard to tell. It still says de Vry University and 0:07:02.480 --> 0:07:05.200 giant letters on the front. You have to head around 0:07:05.240 --> 0:07:07.040 to the back of the building to find the school. 0:07:07.040 --> 0:07:10.200 Forty two Entrance exactly, and Yell said he founded both 0:07:10.240 --> 0:07:14.000 schools for similar reasons when something struck him about software 0:07:14.000 --> 0:07:17.640 engineers and we don't have a lot of usity influence 0:07:17.760 --> 0:07:20.200 in this kind of job. It's really really white people 0:07:20.600 --> 0:07:23.600 coming from more or less switch families because in the 0:07:23.680 --> 0:07:27.480 US you have exacts same issue and the same problem. 0:07:27.560 --> 0:07:29.680 So exactly, Neil decided to open a branch of his 0:07:29.760 --> 0:07:31.880 French school in the Bay Area, and a lot of 0:07:31.920 --> 0:07:35.480 tech industry people who knew about the school got super excited. 0:07:36.080 --> 0:07:38.160 School forty two put up a video of them on 0:07:38.200 --> 0:07:42.320 its website. Here's Stuart Butterfield, who found it slack. I 0:07:42.360 --> 0:07:45.000 love the concept of forty I like the idea of 0:07:45.160 --> 0:07:49.160 here learning. And Jack Dorsey, who founded Twitter and Square. 0:07:49.440 --> 0:07:52.920 It's really unique. Again, I haven't seen anything else like 0:07:53.000 --> 0:07:56.120 it in the world. And Evan Spiegel, who found its Snapchat. 0:07:56.200 --> 0:07:57.920 I'm excited that it's coming to the US. That was 0:07:57.960 --> 0:07:59.720 my one big complaint when I visited. I was like, 0:07:59.760 --> 0:08:01.640 why is this not in the United States? And they 0:08:01.640 --> 0:08:04.680 were like, well, actually, I think San Francisco. Here's what 0:08:04.840 --> 0:08:07.200 the school in France and the school in the US share. 0:08:07.760 --> 0:08:12.520 They're both open seven they only take students under thirty 0:08:12.640 --> 0:08:16.360 and all work gets done in giant computer labs. In 0:08:16.400 --> 0:08:19.800 the US, the school has exactly one thousand, twenty four 0:08:19.920 --> 0:08:24.440 Mac computers. It's another one of those nerdy references we mentioned, 0:08:25.000 --> 0:08:29.720 because that's how many bites are in a kilobite. Sometimes. Okay, 0:08:29.720 --> 0:08:32.400 but Marie, I'm having a hard time getting my mind 0:08:32.440 --> 0:08:36.000 around one fact we mentioned earlier. There are no teachers 0:08:36.000 --> 0:08:39.320 at the school. Zero teachers. There's no need for them 0:08:39.320 --> 0:08:42.200 because the students teach themselves. Really, of course, they learned 0:08:42.200 --> 0:08:44.880 from a curriculum compiled by the school and they have 0:08:44.960 --> 0:08:47.960 to pass tests to move to the next level. Okay, 0:08:48.280 --> 0:08:50.720 what does it take to get in? First? You have 0:08:50.800 --> 0:08:53.480 to pass a logic test online, It's almost like playing 0:08:53.480 --> 0:08:56.480 a game, and if you pass that, you can come 0:08:56.520 --> 0:09:00.640 to campus for another set of tests during lapicin. Now, 0:09:00.640 --> 0:09:03.240 that's yet another of those inside jokes at the school. 0:09:03.520 --> 0:09:06.320 Pisin is the French word for swimming pool, and when 0:09:06.320 --> 0:09:09.120 you talk to the students, they'll tell you definitely get 0:09:09.120 --> 0:09:11.760 thrown in at the deep end. If you make it 0:09:11.800 --> 0:09:15.520 through the piecine, then you can come join the program. 0:09:15.520 --> 0:09:18.640 It's three years and it's free and in the US, 0:09:18.720 --> 0:09:21.400 there's a free dorm too, but you still need to 0:09:21.400 --> 0:09:23.760 pay living expenses. And how does that compare to the 0:09:23.840 --> 0:09:27.199 deal offered by other coding schools. Well, in the US, 0:09:27.280 --> 0:09:31.199 coding schools may cost around fifteen thousand dollars for about 0:09:31.320 --> 0:09:34.960 three months, So coding school's pricey here, but it's short. 0:09:35.440 --> 0:09:37.920 On the other hand, school forty two takes three years, 0:09:38.160 --> 0:09:40.680 so in times spend, it's almost like going to college, 0:09:40.880 --> 0:09:42.839 and you learn a lot more than in a twelve 0:09:42.880 --> 0:09:46.240 week boot camp. But that's three years when you could 0:09:46.240 --> 0:09:49.000 be holding down a job and earning a salary. So 0:09:49.040 --> 0:09:51.920 Sarah's avior, Neil isn't making any money on tuition. Is 0:09:51.960 --> 0:09:57.000 this purely a philanthropic endeavor? Yeah, purely philanthropic. He gets 0:09:57.040 --> 0:09:59.760 a little boost to his personal brand from it, but 0:10:00.400 --> 0:10:02.600 he's not getting any money. He came from a rough 0:10:02.640 --> 0:10:05.160 background himself. I think he just wants to give a 0:10:05.160 --> 0:10:08.240 little back. Okay, So the big question is it working? 0:10:08.920 --> 0:10:11.520 Of course, because Neil likes to boast about how some 0:10:11.600 --> 0:10:15.960 outrageous numbers something like twenty thousand companies have offered internships 0:10:16.040 --> 0:10:19.520 for equal forty two students before they even graduated, and 0:10:19.520 --> 0:10:22.400 when the school launched one consulting firm said it will 0:10:22.480 --> 0:10:26.200 hire everyone who graduates. Now the first crop of graduates 0:10:26.200 --> 0:10:28.600 are actually out and so far it is looking pretty 0:10:28.600 --> 0:10:31.040 good for them. Some of landed jobs at Uber and 0:10:31.120 --> 0:10:34.120 at banks Associate Janal for example, and of course because 0:10:34.400 --> 0:10:37.400 Neil himself is looking to hire at Iliad Marie. What 0:10:37.440 --> 0:10:41.120 are the students like? They really look like your average teenager. 0:10:41.200 --> 0:10:43.920 They're in their early twenties, one in ten or women, 0:10:44.240 --> 0:10:46.040 so when you walk into the school you mostly just 0:10:46.080 --> 0:10:48.200 see a bunch of guys and T shirts and hoodies 0:10:48.240 --> 0:10:51.360 with their headphones on, their eyes glued to their computer screen. 0:10:51.760 --> 0:10:54.680 School forty two doesn't track statistics about family incomes, so 0:10:54.720 --> 0:10:57.000 it's hard to tell. But when you talk to the students, 0:10:57.280 --> 0:11:00.400 many will tell you about tough backgrounds and previous jobs 0:11:00.440 --> 0:11:03.840 delivering pizza for example. Generally university was out of the 0:11:03.920 --> 0:11:07.800 question and most never even graduated from high school. That's 0:11:07.920 --> 0:11:11.200 way different to School forty two and Fremat they're the 0:11:11.240 --> 0:11:13.680 students are a couple of years older than in France. 0:11:13.880 --> 0:11:16.720 There are more women, and when you talk to them 0:11:16.840 --> 0:11:20.000 you hear that many of college degrees, Lots of them 0:11:20.000 --> 0:11:23.320 were well along in different careers before switching gears and 0:11:23.360 --> 0:11:27.560 trying coding. So where were you working before here? I 0:11:27.600 --> 0:11:32.199 was working for Macy's as a as a merchandiser. It's 0:11:32.200 --> 0:11:36.720 a dramatic shift. Yeah. I went to the University of Cincinnati. 0:11:36.760 --> 0:11:38.360 I was there for three years. I was trying to 0:11:38.360 --> 0:11:40.920 get a pharmacy degree, but I never actually went to 0:11:41.000 --> 0:11:47.120 pharmacy school. I was just in uh pre pharmacy. And 0:11:47.160 --> 0:11:51.079 then there's this student, Sonia chib. She was formerly an 0:11:51.120 --> 0:11:55.680 investment banker. I'm going to attact from sub university and 0:11:55.800 --> 0:12:00.880 a starting asset management field and I'll move to investment banking. 0:12:00.920 --> 0:12:03.520 When I was as he stunts in the money market 0:12:03.800 --> 0:12:07.240 short money market, and after that I was in charge 0:12:07.240 --> 0:12:12.439 of control the position and derivative Sasania is smart and eager, 0:12:13.040 --> 0:12:15.880 but she's not the profile of the typical student you'd 0:12:15.880 --> 0:12:19.680 imagine would benefit from a free coding school. And she's 0:12:19.720 --> 0:12:22.560 not really the kind exacting you says he'd most like 0:12:22.679 --> 0:12:25.240 to attract. Here's the kind of person, he says, he 0:12:25.280 --> 0:12:29.000 wants people coming from the diversity, poor people. If this 0:12:29.080 --> 0:12:31.920 is a kind of people who are looking for but Tosnia, 0:12:32.160 --> 0:12:37.079 her presence is desirable, maybe even vital. It's not just 0:12:37.559 --> 0:12:41.120 give a chance two people who don't who can't come 0:12:41.160 --> 0:12:45.320 in the traditional school. No, it's to to to to 0:12:45.480 --> 0:12:49.240 mix people. I'm here to meet other people and to 0:12:49.360 --> 0:12:53.520 try to uh to exchange my idea with them, and 0:12:53.800 --> 0:12:57.600 maybe something's good will happen with there's people. I'm not 0:12:57.720 --> 0:13:01.400 here to stay in my corner alone. No, and when 0:13:01.400 --> 0:13:04.360 you put it like that, actually exactly nearly agrees with her. 0:13:04.880 --> 0:13:06.760 If you are coming from the witch famili and your 0:13:07.080 --> 0:13:10.360 your parents is even your parents have not to pay 0:13:10.400 --> 0:13:14.000 you a great school? Were the po that the great idea? 0:13:14.040 --> 0:13:17.880 It's twenty it's to try to mix people into having 0:13:17.880 --> 0:13:20.199 these school. People who can have thought to have to 0:13:20.200 --> 0:13:22.520 to go to in the big university. And it's at 0:13:22.559 --> 0:13:24.240 the same time people who cannot have thought to go 0:13:24.320 --> 0:13:31.520 any well, and to mix them. Of course, this is 0:13:31.520 --> 0:13:34.920 a hard problem at all kinds of universities and workplaces 0:13:34.920 --> 0:13:37.600 that work to recruit diverse groups. The different groups don't 0:13:37.600 --> 0:13:40.320 always interact as much as hope for, and to be 0:13:40.360 --> 0:13:44.360 fair to Sonia, she's not exactly stealing places from hordes 0:13:44.360 --> 0:13:48.120 of underprivileged applicants. School forty two says it's been a 0:13:48.240 --> 0:13:50.839 challenge getting word out to the people they want to reach. 0:13:51.600 --> 0:13:54.880 Brittany Beer is the chief operating officer of school forty 0:13:54.920 --> 0:13:58.040 two and Freemont. I definitely think that there could be 0:13:58.880 --> 0:14:02.400 something that is going on right now that some communities 0:14:02.440 --> 0:14:04.640 don't necessarily know that this opportunity is out there, or 0:14:04.679 --> 0:14:07.520 that it's actually available to them. This is actually a 0:14:07.559 --> 0:14:10.520 big problem in the US. A lot of universities say 0:14:10.600 --> 0:14:12.960 they have a tough time finding the diverse group of 0:14:12.960 --> 0:14:16.079 students they want. Critics, of course, say they aren't trying 0:14:16.120 --> 0:14:18.959 hard enough, or they should start earlier when students are younger. 0:14:20.000 --> 0:14:22.600 Brittany said forty two relied a lot on media to 0:14:22.640 --> 0:14:26.960 get the word out and also online discussions places like Reddit. 0:14:27.720 --> 0:14:29.640 I asked a bunch of the students how they found 0:14:29.640 --> 0:14:32.800 out about the school. I learned about forty two through 0:14:32.840 --> 0:14:36.720 a Reddit post that I followed to the application. I 0:14:37.080 --> 0:14:40.160 found it on Facebook and it was interesting, So I 0:14:40.200 --> 0:14:44.760 talked a good about my parents and they I am um. Actually, 0:14:44.760 --> 0:14:48.520 one day I was reading on Forbes magazine and I 0:14:48.600 --> 0:14:52.960 actually saw an ad for forty two and figured that, Hey, 0:14:53.000 --> 0:14:55.240 this looks interesting. I should give this a shot, so 0:14:55.800 --> 0:15:04.080 I did. The problem is the people who most benefit 0:15:04.120 --> 0:15:06.800 from forty two might not be reading those articles or 0:15:07.000 --> 0:15:10.560 checking those websites. So is forty two doing anything to 0:15:10.600 --> 0:15:12.800 reach out to community groups to try to get more 0:15:12.880 --> 0:15:16.400 candidates from less privileged backgrounds to apply. They are, They're 0:15:16.400 --> 0:15:19.600 talking to a number of community groups, and Brittany thinks 0:15:19.680 --> 0:15:22.880 things will improve naturally over time as more people learn 0:15:22.920 --> 0:15:26.160 about the school and spread the word. So far, there's 0:15:26.200 --> 0:15:29.240 a definite contrast though. In France, when the school announced 0:15:29.240 --> 0:15:32.840 it was opening, it drew seventy thousand initial applicants, whereas 0:15:32.840 --> 0:15:35.200 in the US it was just a few thousand. And 0:15:35.240 --> 0:15:38.400 that's partly because because you knew the founder doesn't have 0:15:38.520 --> 0:15:41.200 quite the reputation in the US that he does in France. 0:15:42.040 --> 0:15:47.160 Here's Brittany again. In France, when you say examunion, everybody 0:15:47.160 --> 0:15:50.040 knows him because he's the one that's making your cell 0:15:50.080 --> 0:15:54.000 phone plans, who's much cheaper than other individuals. So everybody 0:15:54.000 --> 0:15:59.480 has heard of, uh, this individual and knows also of 0:15:59.560 --> 0:16:04.320 forty two of the school. Yeah, I would say that 0:16:04.400 --> 0:16:07.640 he could be a version of Mark Zuckerberg in front. 0:16:11.840 --> 0:16:14.600 Zavin Neale is definitely a household name in France for 0:16:14.640 --> 0:16:16.800 a lot of youngsters. He's a symbol of how one 0:16:16.840 --> 0:16:20.000 guy can go from total outsider to lunching with the 0:16:20.040 --> 0:16:23.280 president and running a ten billion dollar company. But he's 0:16:23.320 --> 0:16:25.960 also a geek who can talk about coding, and that's 0:16:25.960 --> 0:16:29.120 helped him stand out from your average businessman. But Sarah, 0:16:29.200 --> 0:16:31.120 is it just that nobody has heard of Xavier Neil 0:16:31.160 --> 0:16:34.480 in the US or are there other challenges? Yeah, there 0:16:34.480 --> 0:16:38.640 are a few challenges. For example, the school here isn't accredited, 0:16:39.240 --> 0:16:42.640 so students can't get student loans or even deferrals on 0:16:42.760 --> 0:16:46.320 loans they already have. And that's important because a lot 0:16:46.360 --> 0:16:49.480 of US students have already been to at least some college. 0:16:50.080 --> 0:16:53.320 I met a woman called Kimberly Arvin. She chopped out 0:16:53.320 --> 0:16:56.520 of an annas thesiology program in southern California to go 0:16:56.560 --> 0:17:00.240 to school forty two, but not before she racked up 0:17:00.280 --> 0:17:03.160 some pretty big bucks in student loans. She won't be 0:17:03.200 --> 0:17:05.399 able to start paying them off until she gets a 0:17:05.440 --> 0:17:10.760 paid internship next year, so whatever collection notices come, you'll 0:17:10.760 --> 0:17:13.359 just ignore until you have a little bit of an income. 0:17:13.760 --> 0:17:15.560 I would say forty two is worth it at this 0:17:15.640 --> 0:17:19.840 current moment. Yeah. One thing she said makes it worthwhile 0:17:20.560 --> 0:17:24.960 the free tuition at forty two, and another student, Devin McLaughlin, 0:17:25.520 --> 0:17:28.320 told me that because of the free dorm, he's been 0:17:28.359 --> 0:17:32.080 able to keep expenses to a minimum. It's very strange 0:17:32.119 --> 0:17:35.639 to revisit dorm life much later down the line, but 0:17:35.760 --> 0:17:38.480 it's it's fairly easy because you don't have to pay 0:17:38.520 --> 0:17:42.200 for living space, the price of food is managed, and 0:17:42.640 --> 0:17:47.760 anything else is not optional exactly, but minimal. When you 0:17:47.800 --> 0:17:50.600 ask Vino though, the founder of forty two, he'll tell 0:17:50.640 --> 0:17:54.240 you free education isn't always a selling point. In the US. 0:17:54.480 --> 0:17:57.120 We have a special particular in shoeing z in you guys, 0:17:57.119 --> 0:18:00.760 which is that when it's sweet, when you have notation people, 0:18:01.320 --> 0:18:04.359 the things you have always something behind it. We didn't 0:18:04.400 --> 0:18:06.679 have this thing in France, but in the US. Okay, 0:18:06.880 --> 0:18:09.880 well you have a tweak. What's what's behind and there's 0:18:09.920 --> 0:18:13.480 nothing behind it? Brittany Beer, the CEO in the US, 0:18:13.600 --> 0:18:17.240 said the same thing. Is it really free? What's the catch? Is? 0:18:17.359 --> 0:18:21.159 Quite often what I always hear, uh and is this 0:18:21.320 --> 0:18:24.320 for real? Most individuals think that this is actually a scam. 0:18:24.400 --> 0:18:26.400 We had one student he showed up and we found 0:18:26.440 --> 0:18:28.600 him wandering around in the parking lot with a suitcase, 0:18:29.040 --> 0:18:31.560 and we asked him what he was doing, and he said, well, 0:18:31.880 --> 0:18:33.920 I just got off a plane from Florida. I wasn't 0:18:34.000 --> 0:18:35.720 quite sure that the building was actually even going to 0:18:35.760 --> 0:18:37.919 even exist. I thought this was kind of a scam, 0:18:37.920 --> 0:18:40.639 but I figured, hey, what's a plane ticket. Might as 0:18:40.640 --> 0:18:43.960 well find out and see what it's like. That student, 0:18:44.119 --> 0:18:48.919 Adam Rivo says, that's pretty much exactly what happened. I 0:18:49.000 --> 0:18:51.720 was very skeptical and did not think it was legitimate, 0:18:51.920 --> 0:18:55.080 And part of his suspicion was the price tag. You 0:18:55.160 --> 0:19:00.320 see free education, and people of course judged that being 0:19:00.600 --> 0:19:05.119 very poor. There's actually mixed evidence on that point. Unlike 0:19:05.160 --> 0:19:08.440 parts of Europe, free higher education in the US is rare. 0:19:09.160 --> 0:19:12.440 What comes closest to it in the US has community colleges, 0:19:12.520 --> 0:19:15.560 which are usually less expensive, right, but those aren't exactly 0:19:15.600 --> 0:19:20.720 considered prestigious. President Obama has suggested making community colleges completely free, 0:19:21.080 --> 0:19:23.040 but some of the people critical of the plan said 0:19:23.080 --> 0:19:26.800 it would devalue the education they were providing. Still, the 0:19:26.840 --> 0:19:30.200 students at School forty two say that free definitely doesn't 0:19:30.200 --> 0:19:34.480 mean easy or low quality. Here's Adam again, I've never 0:19:35.040 --> 0:19:38.359 been a part of something that works so incredibly well. 0:19:39.119 --> 0:19:42.879 That's despite getting hit by some pretty tough standards. Adam 0:19:42.920 --> 0:19:45.600 found that out on the first test, I didn't do 0:19:45.640 --> 0:19:47.320 so hot. There's a lot of work to do and 0:19:47.320 --> 0:19:49.600 I just didn't prepare myself properly. So the next one 0:19:49.920 --> 0:19:52.720 too much better. So we can't blame the teacher because 0:19:52.720 --> 0:19:55.840 at School forty two there are no teachers. The policy 0:19:55.840 --> 0:19:59.760 stems from researcher dating back decades on something called peer learning. 0:20:00.240 --> 0:20:03.280 Pure learning shows that students learn much better when they 0:20:03.280 --> 0:20:07.080 have to explain the material themselves. Lots of universities use 0:20:07.160 --> 0:20:09.480 it here and there, so does another coding school in 0:20:09.480 --> 0:20:12.160 San Francisco that in weighs a similar to forty two, 0:20:12.320 --> 0:20:15.399 called the Whole Burden School, but School forty two takes 0:20:15.440 --> 0:20:18.920 the idea to extremes. Yeah, I saw them doing that. 0:20:19.080 --> 0:20:21.200 The students have to do all their work sitting together 0:20:21.240 --> 0:20:25.040 in the computer lab. They hold study sessions before tests, 0:20:25.040 --> 0:20:28.800 but sometimes that doesn't go so well. At one study session, 0:20:29.119 --> 0:20:32.680 a student gave a long, complicated solution to a problem 0:20:32.720 --> 0:20:36.000 and another student was complaining, was waving his phone around 0:20:36.040 --> 0:20:38.720 showing his screen, and what he said was a much 0:20:38.720 --> 0:20:43.320 more elegant answer. Nothing's perfect. Nothing's perfect, that's Mason young 0:20:43.440 --> 0:20:46.080 who helped organize the study session. All we can do 0:20:46.359 --> 0:20:52.199 is h examine it, learn from the mistakes, let it go, 0:20:52.240 --> 0:20:56.000 and move on. You could say the same about the 0:20:56.000 --> 0:20:59.400 school itself. It will be interesting to watch what happens 0:20:59.440 --> 0:21:01.880 to the people coming out of this program. Will they 0:21:01.880 --> 0:21:05.359 get those coveted engineering jobs with the top Internet companies. 0:21:06.280 --> 0:21:08.960 One challenge is that many of the big Silicon Valley 0:21:08.960 --> 0:21:13.040 companies where forty two students say they'd like to work Facebook, Google, 0:21:13.520 --> 0:21:16.280 those companies generally won't hire out of coding schools. Yes, 0:21:16.359 --> 0:21:19.240 they're very traditional. They still like good old fashioned college 0:21:19.240 --> 0:21:22.960 grads or engineers with lots of experience. We'll get to 0:21:22.960 --> 0:21:25.560 find out in a few months because those companies will 0:21:25.600 --> 0:21:28.240 have their first chance to actually test the chops of 0:21:28.280 --> 0:21:31.400 the students at the school. In the spring of two 0:21:31.400 --> 0:21:35.159 thousand seventeen, the first group of US students starts applying 0:21:35.200 --> 0:21:43.280 for internships. So, Sarah, if this podcasting thing doesn't work 0:21:43.320 --> 0:21:46.000 out for us, would you ever consider going to a 0:21:46.080 --> 0:21:49.119 coding school or even a school late school forty two? 0:21:49.760 --> 0:21:52.439 You know what I actually thought about that took the 0:21:52.520 --> 0:21:56.159 test and realized I personally have zero actions. How do 0:21:56.200 --> 0:21:58.720 you do in the test. I don't know, but I 0:21:58.760 --> 0:22:02.800 could tell things were not going well. I still haven't 0:22:02.800 --> 0:22:04.880 done part two of the test, which is when i'd 0:22:04.880 --> 0:22:10.240 get my results. But uh, given what I know now, 0:22:10.400 --> 0:22:12.680 if I really wanted to be a coder, I would 0:22:12.720 --> 0:22:15.680 still go to coding school. It's just a lot more 0:22:15.760 --> 0:22:19.280 work than I'd realized before I started doing the reporting 0:22:19.320 --> 0:22:21.919 for this story. I talked to one guy who sent 0:22:22.000 --> 0:22:26.359 out resumes before he got a job. It's not just 0:22:26.480 --> 0:22:29.199 going to this school, it's all the work afterwards, And 0:22:29.320 --> 0:22:31.959 what you're really getting is just a little taste for coding. 0:22:32.320 --> 0:22:34.600 You still have to do a ton of work to 0:22:34.680 --> 0:22:37.520 land a job and be able to not get fired 0:22:37.560 --> 0:22:39.280 in that job. Well, as you point out in the 0:22:39.320 --> 0:22:43.400 accompanying print story on coding schools which people should check 0:22:43.400 --> 0:22:46.119 out on Bloomberg dot com, slash tech, the jury is 0:22:46.160 --> 0:22:50.320 still out on some of these programs, right. I mean, uh, companies, 0:22:50.359 --> 0:22:52.919 the big companies in Slicon Valley don't always quite know. 0:22:53.080 --> 0:22:55.919 They're not quite confident in in in the kind of 0:22:55.920 --> 0:22:59.120 graduates they're getting. Here's the problem. When they first came out, 0:22:59.440 --> 0:23:02.280 everyone wanted to hire coders, and I think quite a 0:23:02.280 --> 0:23:04.880