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<\/figure>\n\n\n\nBack in October 2016,<\/strong> James Aylor was scraping by, delivering pizza in Kansas City, having dropped out of college, abandoning his dream of teaching viola. \u201cThe voice in my head said, \u2018You have no career. No future,\u2019 \u201d he says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Then a friend mentioned he had heard about a new, tuition-free coding school 1,800 miles away in Fremont, Calif. Named 42, it required no computer skills or even a high school diploma, and dorm rooms were free. \u201cI said, \u2018Yeah, whatever, ha ha, free,\u2019 \u201d recalls Aylor, now 30. Still, he decided he had \u201cabsolutely nothing to lose.\u201d He sold his car and bought a plane ticket west.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When I meet Aylor a little more than two years later, he is in northern Paris, strolling through the lobby of the original 42 school, of which Fremont is an offshoot. The radical educational experiment is geared to solving the tech industry\u2019s chronic shortage of skilled programmers. With his pizza gig a distant memory, Aylor says he is now juggling potential jobs, weighing whether to join a company when he graduates this summer or launch a startup. \u201cThere are so many possibilities,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Back in 2013, I visited 42 for Fortune<\/em> as its first batch of students was moving in\u2014literally: Many had arrived in Paris with no money, rolling out sleeping bags in 42\u2019s factory-style campus. Takeout cartons and beer bottles littered the rooms. Standing amid the tumult, 42\u2019s founder, billionaire telecom exec Xavier Niel\u2014one of the richest people in France\u2014was thrilled. \u201cWe\u2019ll have some impact,\u201d he told me then.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Niel\u2019s brazen idea drew from his own experience. With no college degree, he taught himself coding and created programs (including a sex-chat app he sold for about $50 million) on France\u2019s pre-Internet Minitel service. He went on to found the publicly traded group Iliad, parent of the low-cost telecom company Free, and in 2017 opened the giant tech incubator Station F in eastern Paris. Niel, now 51, says he was increasingly convinced that France\u2019s traditional education (\u201cthe worst!\u201d he says) boxed kids into preordained tracks, leaving them bored and uninspired; he felt the effects in his own companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The 42 school, which Niel built with $78 million of his own money, tries to shatter those conventions. It has no fees, teachers, or classrooms. Students work their own hours. If they need help, they ask each other or figure it out themselves. In keeping with the rebel spirit, the school\u2019s name refers to the counterculture classic The Hitchhiker\u2019s Guide to the Galaxy<\/em>, which says \u201cthe answer to everything\u201d is 42; the first building had a pirate\u2019s flag outside. About 1,800 students are admitted each year between the two campuses, chosen from about 3,000 who are accepted into 42\u2019s grueling monthlong boot camp called Piscine, French for \u201cswimming pool.\u201d Those 3,000 are picked from the initial 40,000 people who take 42\u2019s online logic test every year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The pirate\u2019s flag has gone, and there are only a few sleeping bags in the corridors. The walls display an impressive art collection, and President Emmanuel Macron, a cheerleader for the French tech industry, is a frequent visitor. Yet 42 still has the feel of a messy startup, with dozens of people at monitors and a stack of skateboards in the lobby.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Xavier Niel<\/p>\n\n\n\n Xavier Niel<\/strong> (born 25 August 1967) is a French billionaire<\/a> businessman, active in the telecommunications and technology industry, and best known as founder and majority shareholder of the French Internet service provider<\/a> and mobile operator<\/a> Iliad<\/a> trading under the Free<\/a> brand (France’s second-largest ISP, and third mobile operator).[3]<\/a><\/sup> He is also co-owner of the newspaper Le Monde<\/a><\/em>,[4]<\/a><\/sup> and co-owner of the rights of the song “My Way<\/a>“[5]<\/a><\/sup> and owner of Monaco Telecom<\/a>, Salt Mobile SA<\/a> and Eir<\/a>.[6]<\/a><\/sup> He is chairman and chief strategy officer for Iliad,[7]<\/a><\/sup> but also a board member of KKR<\/a> and Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield<\/a>.[8]<\/a><\/sup>[9]<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n As of August 2021, his net worth is estimated at US$10.5 billion.[10]<\/a><\/sup> From Wikipedia <\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n But how much impact has 42 had, nearly six years in?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Niel is convinced that 42 has proved his point: that programmers need only two things to succeed\u2014a grasp of logic and driving ambition. \u201cYou don\u2019t need to know anything to be able to code. You don\u2019t need to be good at math,\u201d he says, sitting atop Iliad\u2019s headquarters, with a sweeping view of Paris. \u201cYou can take anyone in the street, and\u201d\u2014 he snaps his fingers\u2014\u201cthey can become the best coder in the world.\u201d About 40% of the students have not graduated from high school. \u201cThe idea was you don\u2019t choose people by seeing if they can do something,\u201d Niel says. \u201cYou completely forget what they did before.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Indeed, 42 boasts impressive success stories.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Jasmine Anteunis, 26, joined 42\u2019s first intake after quitting fine-arts school at 21. Two years later, she created an artificial intelligence chatbot, Recast.AI<\/a>, with two fellow 42 students. They sold last year to software giant SAP. Are you rich? I ask. \u201cAh, yes,\u201d she says, blushing. One of Anteunis\u2019s classmates, Balthazar Gronon, 25, left Paris in February for San Francisco, where he launched a blockchain company called Ashlar\u2014in a sharp break from his original plan to be an economist, he says. And Niel says even old-style French companies like banks and fashion houses are now recruiting 42 students.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But in California, 42 has struggled for credibility since opening in 2016. It fills only about one-third of its capacity of 3,000 students. (To attract a greater number, the school now offers more frequent Piscine boot camps.) Niel, famous in France as a visionary entrepreneur, is unknown in the U.S. And ironically, a major hurdle for 42 appears to be that it is free\u2014despite Americans being crippled by student debt. Says Niel, \u201cWhen you are tuition-free, people think it is a fraud.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n A version of this article appears in the April 2019 issue of Fortune with the headline \u201cIs 42 the Answer?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n
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