Please allow me to play devil's advocate to this story. Full disclosure: I very much dislike Jolie O'Dell (epitomized by this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Ek4xXPOtlY), as well as the CEO of Treehouse, Carson (instigated by this: http://ryancarson.com/post/35939367603/you-can-do-it-alone).

I am in no way saying that what Treehouse is trying to do is a bad thing, nor that we shouldn't be providing much better resources for learners, though I don't think such education should be paywalled for monetization. I'm very much pro-Khan Academy, Coursera, StackOverflow, etc. I've spent SO much of my free time in IRC channels teaching people and helping people with their problems and I've never asked for a penny in return, so I have a lot of resentment towards any company that wants to charge for access to basic education (https://teamtreehouse.com/subscribe/plans). I'm very much for proliferation of high quality teaching materials for learners of all ages and all levels, and so I am conflicted somewhat by this story, and I fully expect to get downvoted to hell for this, but I think it's worth considering motives here. Even the best of actions that are used to veil inconsistent or conflicting motives are questionable, and this seems like wolf in sheep's clothing.

>The school I’m most excited about is in San Jose. All the kids are from at-risk homes — they have single parents who are working full time; they’re from minority groups. … Out of 12 [students], we think four or five are going to be job-ready right away. These kids have never coded before, and I’ve talked to them in person, and I’m 99 percent confident we will be able to place them in jobs.

<snip>

>That pilot program, Carson said, went well, and he’s looking forward to the next phase: rolling out Treehouse to many other schools around the country. The program takes six months, and the total cost is just $9 per month, per student.

We jumped straight into a pivot or business expansion into virtual instruction (much the realm of things like KA/Coursera) announcement and talking about how this will help certain kids find jobs. That's great, and I hope it works out, but I'm confused. Are we trying to sell the goal instead of figuring out the logistics? I got the headline, and the summary, so why was discussion about logistics so far separated from the initial announcement of the program? How is this going to be structured? Who pays for this? We're talking about low-income families and at-risk children, so are we expecting them to opt-in to a $54 course? Is it the schools, so it's tax funded? Will it include every student at the school, or just some? If the latter, how is that selection made? If the former, what about people who don't want to pay for it?

Further: as a professional in this space I'd love to review the content and provide feedback, too. Why can't we involve the community at large and reduce the costs? But the biggest question, for me, is if Coursera is doing this with the college space where education is significantly more costly, and for free, what does Treehouse offer that Coursera can't?

>“This isn’t something we’re doing to get money,” Carson said as we concluded our talk. “This will change the world. And yeah, the company will make a lot of money in the process, but that’s a trailing fact.”

But is it, really? Given the target audience, I don't know if this can be considered a "trailing fact." It seems to be so insistent and damaging that it's worth putting in the spotlight. You're going to take money from an audience that is primarily under-privileged in hopes of pulling them up to some glorious $100k/yr salary point in 6 months, or more realistically just set them on that path? How are they going to get the further education necessary to make that transition from High School? The article includes a few anecdotes, which is great, but it's not statistical modeling. What kind of % of these students will be interested and capable of continuing education in this space to reach that goal? Is the idea to pitch the chance at high-salary jobs at under-privileged kids saying "learn this and have your life made?" That feels like a really crappy motivation, to be honest. Making $100k at a big company is definitely achievable for anyone with an aptitude, but there's a lot of work from having never heard about programming to being there.

I'm far from sold on this. I hope this is still very early in the planning stages so it can be evolved into something more workable.