One Year of ‘College’ With No Degree, But No Debt And a Job at the End

New schools tout themselves as alternatives to college in the digital age, but they lack the traditional benefits of a postsecondary education

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As a high-school senior in Hampton, Va., Aidan Cary applied last year to prestigious universities like Dartmouth, Vanderbilt and the University of Virginia.

Then he clicked on the website for a one-year-old school called MissionU and quickly decided that’s where he wanted to go.

Mr. Cary, 19 years old, is enrolled in a one-year, data-science...