Back of Napkin Costs
We live in an age of almost infinite resources for learning whatever you want, whenever you want. This, however comes with some drawbacks.
What are the upfront costs of going to university vs going to a coding bootcamp vs going solo? Let’s do a quick back of the napkin calculation.
4 years tuition at a good public institution + living expenses: ~$40,000 x 4 = $160,000
4 years tuition at a good private university + living expenses: ~$75,000 x 4 = $300,000
Coding bootcamp: ~$10-20,000 (we’ll split the difference and say $15,000 here)
Udacity Nanodegree: ~$1356 (assuming you pay upfront and complete in 4 months)
Self Learning MOOCS etc: $0-??? (can probably assume somewhere around the cost of the Udacity Nanodegree if you end up paying for certificates)
As you can see, being self taught is a bargain… in theory. There are many hidden opportunity costs, and intangibles that go along with some of these things.
In this series of posts I’ll try to list out all of the pros and cons that you may come across.
In my next post I’ll be tackling university education as a path.