April 2019 Coding Bootcamp News Roundup

Each month, the Course Report team rounds up the most interesting bootcamp industry news that we read and talked about in our office. In April, we were showered with a ton of exciting fundraising and acquisition news, ISAs (income sharing agreements) continued to be a hot topic, and coding bootcamps began getting approved for a new veterans program called VET TEC. We also saw some great diversity initiatives and scholarship opportunities for bootcamps in the US and abroad. Plus, a report from the Christensen Institute looked into bootcamps as disruptors, and two schools are planning to expand the bootcamp model into healthcare – read to the end to find out more.

Bootcamp Acquisitions & Fundraises

2U acquired Trilogy Education, a company which provides curriculum and resources for bootcamps at universities. 2U will pay $400 million in cash and issue $350 million in stock to buy New York-based Trilogy. This news was covered by Bloomberg, Crunchbase, Inside Higher Ed, and EdSurge.
Make School has raised $15 million in series B funding. Make School Co-founder Ashutosh Desai says the school plans to use the new funding to expand to New York City.
Bridgepoint Education, which acquired Fullstack Academy last month, has now acquired an online tutoring company, TutorMe. Bridgepoint has also changed its name to Zovio.
London Data Science bootcamp Cambridge Spark has been awarded $1.4 million to fund a research collaboration with the University of Cambridge. The funding will go towards research and development of the bootcamp’s learning platform.
Galvanize has named a new CEO, Harsh Patel, who founded MakerSquare which was acquired by Hack Reactor, which was then acquired by Galvanize. Congrats, Harsh!

A Planet Money story on NPR looked at the history of ISAs, with a focus on Purdue University.
TechCrunch profiled ISAs and how they might be able to transform the future of education.
2 Forbes contributors also profiled ISAs, looking at what they are and how they work.
A Bloomberg article described ISAs as “college grads selling stakes in themselves”
Business Insider Singapore, Forbes, Bloomberg, Business Times, and SF Chronicle all highlighted Lambda School + income share agreements.
- Tech Next looks at Lambda’s new partnership with a fintech company called Paystack to launch Lambda in Africa.
- Times of India looks at Lambda’s plans to launch in India (CEO Austen Allred says he anticipates that India will be Lambda School’s 2nd largest market by the end of the year).
- And an opinion piece in TechCrunch looks at Lambda School, how educated software engineers need to be, and how those requirements compare to what people learn at college.
Motherboard’s article about Modern Labor focused on their $2000 per month stipend as well as an income share agreement for students.
The Philly Inquirer profiles Leif and PeopleJoy, two companies aiming to help relieve the burden of student debt via income share agreements.
According to EdSurge, there’s a new online marketplace for ISAs called Edly that connects students with individual investors. Holberton is one of the first schools to sign on.
A number of bootcamps and colleges are launching new income share agreements:
- The University of Utah is now offering one, according to the Daily Utah Chronicle.
- Betakit reports that Canadian coding bootcamp HackerYou is one of the first schools to offer ISAs in Canada
- The StarTribune says that online bootcamp Thinkful is launching an ISA and a stipend in the Twin Cities, Atlanta, and Denver.
Inside Higher Ed and Politico report that Diane Auer Jones, principal deputy undersecretary at the Department of Education, said in April that the Trump administration is considering establishing a program to offer income-share agreements.
The Daily at the University of Washington wrote about an ISA bill passed in the Washington state senate, which aims to help 800,000 Washingtonians with a total of $24 billion in student loan debt.

The Future of Coding Education

An opinion piece in The Hill looks at how higher ed needs a rethink in the context of the college admissions scandals. Instead of pushing people towards the “best” colleges, this writer suggests pushing towards career readiness through coding bootcamps.
MarketWatch looks at how students often need further training after college in order to land a job, mentioning coding bootcamps and other short-term training programs.
Entangled and Strada Education did research to find the 4 best educational on-ramps to good jobs for American adults, including employer as payer, which is a trend we see rising in bootcamps; and outcomes-based tuition. They give examples like Kenzie Academy, Lambda School, and Make School.
The Globe and Mail published an excerpt from a book about coding education, called “Coders: The Making of a New Tribe and the Remaking of the World”, by Clive Thompson, which looks at how coding bootcamps appeal to blue-collar workers whose industries were declining.

Bootcamps + University Partnerships

In response to 2U’s acquisition of Trilogy Education, Sydney Johnson of EdSurge looks at why more and more coding bootcamps are expanding to colleges.
A new Trilogy bootcamp is launching in Berlin
From Campus Technology, we learned that the University of Wisconsin is partnering with Thinkful to offer a coding bootcamp through the School of Continuing Education
Education Dive announced that IBM will be partnering with the University of Louisville to launch IBM Skills Academy to offer courses in artificial intelligence (AI), blockchain, cybersecurity, data science and quantum computing for university credit or IBM digital credentials.

The Rise of Data Science Bootcamps

Alyssa Shrorer gives us a nice landscape of Chicago data science bootcamps in Built in Chicago. She looks at Data Science Dojo, Flatiron School, General Assembly, Metis, and Promotable.
Technically Baltimore profiles Ellen Ambrose, a graduate of Data Incubator, a free data science bootcamp in DC, who is now a data scientist at Protenus.
An article in Search Enterprise looks at how many companies are now training data scientists internally, and also mentions 3rd party education organizations, highlighting the Data Incubator’s campus in NYC.

Bootcamps Fueling Diversity in Tech

Tech Cabal looks at the discrepancies between women and men in tech in Africa, how much access boys and girls have to technology in developing countries, and highlights initiatives to get more girls and women into tech, mentioning that 21% of Andela’s developers are women.
And on a related note, CIO East Africa looks at how the International Telecommunication Union celebrated Girls in ICT day on April 25 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
According to the Times of India, TalentSprint is partnering with Google to launch a 1-year, experiential coding bootcamp program for women in India.
The Australian government is spending AU$3.4 million to encourage more women to enter STEM careers.
And back in the US, Wyncode is partnering with The TechHire Center at YWCA Greater Miami-Dade to run coding bootcamps for women who have dealt with domestic violence.
Impact Alpha profiles Laboratoria, a bootcamp for women in Latin America which, since it launched in 2014 has trained 1000 women, and has increased those women’s income by three to five times compared to what they were earning before.
Prime Digital Academy in Kansas City is offering 10 scholarships to students from communities which are underrepresented in tech. The scholarships are worth a total of $20,000.
And Grand Circus is doing their Facebook Bootcamp for the third year in a row. Funded by Facebook, they’re offering 25 scholarships to the bootcamps in Detroit and Grand Rapids.

Veterans Who Code

The Providence Journal gives us an update on the new VET TEC program from the Dept of Veterans Affairs, an initiative to help veterans enroll in nontraditional programs teaching high-tech skills. The program applies specifically to classes in one of five areas:
VET TEC is also now available at Code Platoon and at Denver coding bootcamp Skill Distillery.
STL Today published a profile of Claim Academy and its recent VA approval and plans to open bootcamp campuses on some military bases next year.

Is Bootcamp for You?

Tech Republic put together a cheat sheet for how to become a software developer which explains the demand for software developers, the types of roles software developers might work in, examples of salaries, and how to launch a career.
Tech Pluto looks at what languages people should look for when choosing a coding bootcamp.
In an episode of CNBC video series, Get to Work with Suzy Welch, Suzy looks at how people can figure out if learning to code is the right choice for them, and when people should go to coding bootcamp.

Tech Jobs after Coding Bootcamp

KVUE ABC interviews Lauren Bauml, the campus director at Flatiron School’s new Austin campus, about the sort of jobs you can land after bootcamp in Austin.
Houston Innovation Map looks at software developer salaries across Texas
My San Antonio looks at Nebraska’s major tech worker shortage, and how 100 students want to go to code school but can’t afford it. The governor and business leaders are now calling for more funding for scholarships.
WBRC looks at how many tech jobs there are in Birmingham, AL, and mentions that coding bootcamps provide good opportunities.
SF Chronicle profiles companies offering “Returnships” to people who have been out of work for 1 to 2 years, and focuses on a woman who did a bootcamp in 2016 and her struggle to get back into the workforce.
Lighthouse Labs co-founder Jeremy Shaki wrote an opinion piece for The Globe and Mail about how he is seeing skilled tech workers move out of cities as house prices creep up, so companies in major cities are getting more limited access to top talent. He says companies and workers should embrace remote work.
American Inno looks at the education industry’s response to the Amazon HQ2 in Washington DC, including Flatiron School, Virginia Tech, the University of Virginia and George Mason University.
Holberton School co-founder Sylvain Kalache looks at how in demand site reliability engineers or SREs are, what sort of salaries they can earn, and why CS degrees don’t seem to teach the right skills for people to become an SRE.

Student Success Stories

NBC profiled a man with autism who learned to code at 4Geeks Academy in Miami.
The Jewish Standard highlights Flatiron students who won a Hackathon for women, which was held on a Sunday so orthodox Jewish women could attend.
GamesIndustry.biz profiles Fereshteh Forough and Code to Inspire, a bootcamp for women in Afghanistan, specifically mentioning some of the awesome games that students are building at bootcamp.
Computer Weekly profiles a graduate of Flatiron School’s London campus, Billie Simmons, who explains her experience at bootcamp, and her job as a technical associate at Barclays TechStars, a fintech accelerator.

Bootcamp Updates: New Campuses + Courses

According to the Post and Courier, almost 2,000 people have signed up for free coursework in South Carolina from SC Codes. The foundation of the courses is borrowed from The Iron Yard, which closed in 2017.
The World Economic Forum included Kuwaiti coding bootcamp Coded in its list of “10 Startups helping to change the Arab World”
According to Irish Tech News, a new coding school in Dublin called the Talent Garden Innovation School has opened to teach Artificial Intelligence, Data, UX Design, Digital Sales & Marketing and Digital Transformation.
Metropolitan Community College is launching a 9-month part-time code school called MCC Code School in Omaha, Nebraska.
And in the Vanderbilt Hustler, we learned that a Dev Bootcamp grad and a fellow Vanderbilt alum are launching a new bootcamp in Nashville called Codebug over the summer. This summer, there are classes from May 6-17 and June 17-28.
According to Caribbean Business.com, a 10-week Coding bootcamp is launching in San Juan in the Caribbean. Codetrotters Academy is offering scholarships to their upcoming summer cohort - applications close on May 10.
According to TechCrunch, Le Wagon is launching a part-time coding bootcamp, to cater to people who want to study while working full time. Le Wagon has 34 campuses across 22 countries.
The governor of Alaska, Mike Dunleavy, says he wants to “pay any school district in Alaska to hold 12-week computer coding training sessions for children and adults”
Stat News looks at whether the coding bootcamp model could work for the biotech industry.
The Economist dives into a claim from Lambda School that they will launch a nursing bootcamp.

NEW BOOTCAMPS ON COURSE REPORT

ESMT Berlin Coding Bootcamp, a Trilogy bootcamp in Berlin, Germany
Modern Labor, an online coding bootcamp
CodeOp, a coding bootcamp for women in Barcelona, Spain
Magnimind, a data science bootcamp in Santa Clara, California
FlockJay, an online tech sales bootcamp
Wagner College, which offers tech bootcamps powered by Quickstart on Staten Island, NY
Nova Data School, a data science bootcamp in Fairfax, Virginia.

Our Favorites on the Course Report Blog

Liz’s favorite interview in April was with a mom named Ashley who went to DigitalCrafts and landed an internship at a Financial Services company, and spun that into a full-time job. With Mother’s Day coming up, Liz asked her about getting through a bootcamp while balancing kids and Ashley had some amazing advice on setting up a schedule and logistics. Here’s a quote from Ashley: “Becoming a developer has made me a better role model for my family. I have two girls of my own and when I learn new things, I like to show them as well. We even made a sensor for their school garden to indicate when the soil needs water.”

Imogen enjoyed working on a new video which is like a mini-documentary about the coding bootcamp industry, why it exists, and what sort of outcomes students see. The title of the video is “Are coding bootcamps worth it” and it includes interviews with coding bootcamp graduates from Hack Reactor, General Assembly, and Flatiron school.

FURTHER LISTENING

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Written by

Imogen Crispe, Content Creator and Entrepreneur

Imogen is a writer and content producer who loves exploring technology and education in her work. Her strong background in journalism, writing for newspapers and news websites, makes her a contributor with professionalism and integrity.