Steve Wozniak's "Woz U" Institute faces a backlash, a former student calls it a "$ 13,000 e-book"

A year ago, Apple's co-founder, Steve Wozniak, supported a new online learning institute aimed at training users in coding and other digital skills. Called "Woz U", the subscription-based platform is now facing a retreat of participants who cite a lack of quality in the courses and experience offered.

CBS News spoke to a student, Bill Duerr, who said he was expecting the quality of the $ 13,200 program (which lasts 33 weeks), but has faced persistent problems. Duerr said the system was full of problems, such as upcoming pre-recorded and outdated live lectures, unskilled mentors, frustrations with typos in coding, and sometimes instructors who were completely absent for some classes.

Duerr compared Woz U to a "$ 13,000 e-book".

"I think it's a $ 13,000 e-book," Duerr said. While it was supposed to be a program written by one of the greatest technological minds of all time, "it's broken, it does not work in places, there are often hyperlinks to Microsoft documents , to Wikipedia, "he said.

"When you do code and you follow, and there is a typo, and you get an error, you have no idea why you got the error," he said. Duerr said. "And you're like how can anyone – someone's not corrected that? Someone did not make sure it worked?"

Besides Duerr, CBS News interviewed more than two dozen current and former students and employees of Woz U, all referring to similar complaints. One of the employees was Tim Mionske, a "registration advisor" who sold Woz U to potential students. Even when he began to have doubts about Woz U and its validity, the company focused on achieving as many sales as possible.

CBS News Mionske asked when he regretted spending time with Woz U and he felt compelled to do something that was not going well.

"I regret the aspect of where they spend that money, it's like throwing the dice, but on the contrary, I have to support my family."

"In that case, do you feel compelled to do something wrong?" Dokoupil asked.

"Sometimes I did it," Mionske replied.

Wozniak replied to Internal business in an email, saying that he had not seen the CBS News report and that it is "not involved in any aspect of the operations" of Woz U, and as such could not answer any questions. Woz U President Chris Coleman said in a statement that the company was aware of certain errors in the course content and that it had implemented a quality control system to detect them. He denied the pressures on the students to register and claimed that Wozniak was reviewing the entire Woz U. program.

In the initial announcement of Woz U, the platform had been introduced as a way to quickly and cheaply integrate people into the job market. At launch and shortly thereafter, programs trained users in computer support, software development, data science, mobile application development and cybersecurity. Woz U is an online learning course with an app and a website, but the institute announced last year the opening of physical campuses in more than 30 cities in the United States and around the world.