If you ask the school, this is about fixing a skill imbalance in the US. While the country has taken some steps to improve computer education, 42 believes the American educational system "deprives" companies of the programming-savvy people it needs to innovate. You'd ideally get a steady stream of highly motivated coders ready to cross San Francisco Bay and join startups.

It's hard to say how well 42's method works when few if any of its Parisian students have even graduated, but the concept (created by Xavier Niel, who founded the French telecom Free) may not be that far-fetched. As our TechCrunch colleagues point out, some existing students are so determined that they sleep in the hallway -- while that's not exactly healthy, it shows a kind of commitment that you don't always see in college. If you see a sudden surge in young Bay-area tech talent a few years from now, you'll know who to thank.