Ontario looking into tech bootcamp
TORON TO • The Ontario government is investigating a Toronto-based Web development bootcamp that it believes has been operating as an unregistered school — a violation of the Private Career Colleges Act, 2005 — leaving its founders no choice but to temporarily shut the program down.
But Bitmaker Labs, which offers a nine-week program for budding Web developers with a heavy focus on postemployment, believes it operates much differently from that of the traditional educational institutions the Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities (MTCU) is trying to regulate.
“We never considered ourselves a college or anything like that,” said Matt Gray, one of the co-founders of Bitmaker Labs.
“This is all about giving people skills. No one cares about pieces of paper anymore.”
Bitmaker Labs is just one of many recent programs designed to teach digital skills in a way that eschews the standard classroom philosophy of diplomas and formal evaluation. For example, San Francisco-based Dev Bootcamp, on which the Bitmaker Labs concept is based, is described as an apprenticeship or workshop.
Another Toronto-based program called HackerYou, founded in 2011 by Ladies Learning Code founder Heather Payne and her team, touts its curriculum as hands-on, project-based learning with “no grades, just results.”
But according to a statement issued by the Ministry, program “may meet the definition of vocational program without the institution administering examinations and/or awarding students particular grades or marks or issuing to students degrees, diplomas or certificates at the completion of the program.”
If Bitmaker Labs is found to be in violation of the Act, the MTCU can issue a cease and desist order, which may be used as grounds to refuse an application for official registration — required for the bootcamp to continue operating in its current form — with the possibility of a fine up to $50,000 per founder, and/or up to a year in prison.
“To avoid getting a cease and desist, which would inhibit our ability to ever teach again, we decided to shut down pre-emptively,” Mr. Gray explained, calling the government’s action “incredibly destructive.”
“Even so much as [keeping] our website up constitutes the marketing of an unregistered career college.”
However, the MTCU says that, “No determination has been made regarding the program, no enforcement action has been taken against Bitmaker Labs and the Ministry has not requested that Bitmaker Labs cease offering its program.”
Mr. gray launched Bitmaker Labs with fellow co-founders will richman, Andrew Mayer and CTO Tory Jarmain, earlier this year, with the goal of training students to become socalled full-stack web developers, competent in programming languages such as ruby on rails, JavaScript and more.
The bootcamp charged students $9,000 in tuition, plus HST, and structured a typical day of instruction, exercises, mentorship and coding from 9 a.m. until 6 p.m., Monday to Friday — over 40 hours per week.
Only programs that cost less than $1,000 do not require ministry approval under the Private Career Colleges Act, nor do some programs that are less than 40 hours in total length.
“Some of the legislation is based on an era of diploma and degrees and educational framework,” said education lawyer eric roher, a partner with Borden Ladner gervais, who acknowledged that programs such as the one offered by Bitmaker Labs are a “grey area” and might not necessarily fit within that model.
web developer is one of many vocations with a National Occupational Classification code, or NOC — most of which require instruction to be ap- proved by the ministry.
“The question is whether a new model can be developed with respect to groups that want to set up programs that offer educational services but don’t provide diplomas and degrees, and whether there’s a way of regulating or monitoring that group to ensure that the public is protected,” Mr. roher added.
Meantime, Mr. gray has already begun the process of registering Bitmaker Labs as a private career college — but this process could still take anywhere from six to eight months.
“They did well, and offered a good program, but that doesn’t mean everybody does,” said rick Miner, president of Miner & Miner, a labour market and education consultancy, and former president of Seneca College.
“There were programs that were set up in language, english instruction, that were a total sham, and the government closed down a couple of those.”
“If somebody is asking my son or daughter for $9,000, I would like some assurance their program is being looked at by somebody, their instructors are reasonable, their contacts with industry are reasonably good.”