Episode 16: July 2017 Bootcamp News

Need a summary of news about coding bootcamps from July 2017? Course Report has just what you need! We’ve put together the most important news and developments in this blog post and podcast. In July, we read about the closure of two major coding bootcamps, we dived into a number of new industry reports, we heard some student success stories, we read about new investments in bootcamps, and we were excited to hear about more diversity initiatives. Plus we round up all the new campuses and new coding bootcamps around the world.

Bootcamp Closures

Listen: 1:48

• Dev Bootcamp announced on July 12 that it would cease operations in December 2017.
  • Covered by Geekwire, Chicago Tribune, Venture Beat, & Education Dive.
  • The San Francisco Chronicle looked at reasons behind the closure.
  • Quartz interviewed Dev Bootcamp President Tarlin Ray.
  • Slate’s Money Podcast touched on the closing of Dev Bootcamp.
• The Iron Yard announced on July 20 that its last cohort would finish this summer.
• Covered by Inside Higher Ed, Xconomy, Indianapolis Business Journal, Tech.co, Newburgh Gazette, Palm Beach Post, & Nashville Post.
• CBS spoke to students and staff at the Raleigh campus to find out how they were feeling.
• The Las Vegas Review Journal spoke to some members of the Las Vegas tech scene who were sad to see The Iron Yard leave the area.
• Melissa Korn of the Wall Street Journal looked at reasons for both schools closing.

 

Bootcamp statistics

Listen: 8:37

• We published the 2017 Course Report Market Growth Report which found that the industry has grown 1.5x, to an estimated 22,949 graduates in 2017, up from 15,077 in 2016.
• Flatiron School in New York City published their latest student outcomes report.
• PhD Student, Kyle Thayer, did a research study about coding bootcamp students published in a peer reviewed publication.
• An EdSurge article covered a report which blames increasing tuition, and coding bootcamps for athe decline in college enrollments.
• Inside Higher Ed announced a new report by nonprofit research group, Ithaka S&R, that describes the landscape for non-degree postsecondary training, including coding bootcamps.

 

Bootcamp Student Experiences

Listen: 14:16

• Laurence Bradford interviewed a Dev Bootcamp graduate for Forbes about why he left an Ivy League school to transition into tech.
• The Straits Times wrote about a Fullstack Academy graduate who graduated from Yale-NUS college in Singapore, then moved to New York for bootcamp, and is now a software engineer at online marketplace Carousell.
• CBS 12 highlighted College Basketball player Donnavan Kirk and his story about learning to code at TK2 Coding Bootcamp in Boca Raton, Florida.
• A Business in Savannah reporter went to Georgia Tech Bootcamp’s demo day and spoke to grads about their 24-week learning experience.
• The Gazette talked to students and staff about DeltaV Code School, in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and highlighted how the school is filling a need for development talent in the area.

 

Bootcamp Structure/Curriculum

Listen: 16:14

• MarketWatch gave an overview of the bootcamp industry including what people are really looking for when attending coding bootcamps, pricing, teaching style, accreditation, and jobs outcomes.
• NBC News looked at how technology is changing so quickly that people need to keep updating their skills, and interviewed Flatiron School co-founder Avi Flombaum and a Flatiron grad.
• Ryan Craig, who runs University Ventures, wrote a piece for Tech Crunch about “last mile” education and how coding bootcamps fit into that concept.
• Inc published a story about Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff’s efforts to persuade the President to implement apprenticeship schemes in tech, as automation is putting certain jobs at risk.
• Tracy Chou wrote in Quartz about her experience as a top Silicon Valley software engineer and discusses the importance of a humanities/arts education for developers to understand the people who will use the software they create.

 

Bootcamp fundraising

Listen: 19:51

• Ironhack has raised $3 million in financing for its bootcamps in Madrid, Barcelona, Paris and Miami, in a funding round led by Madrid-based company JME Venture Capital.
• According to ChicagoInno, Amazon made a $10,000 donation to Code Platoon, the Chicago-based code bootcamp for veterans.
• British coding school Northcoders in Manchester, England received £100,000 in funding from the iAMDigital Fund.

 

Coding Bootcamp Leadership

Listen: 21:09

• Codeup founder Michael Girdley was profiled in Silicon Hills News.
• Bootcamp Coding Autism won an MIT entrepreneurial award.
• Hackbright Academy has a new CEO and VP of Business Development. CNBC profiled CEO Alice Hill who was the CTO at eBay. Lioness magazine profiled Erin Geiger, who is in the newly created position of VP of Business Development at Hackbright and has a background in senior roles at NGOs.

 

Diversity/Women in Tech

Listen: 22:10

• Marketplace wrote about the recent the 2017 Tech Leavers Survey which surveyed 2000  people who left their tech jobs, and found women experience significantly more unfairness in tech than men.
• GoodCall looked at gender pay gap, how women tend to pursue degrees that lead to lower-paying jobs, and interviewed Flatiron School COO Kristi Riordan about how Flatiron is making education more affordable and manageable.
• Technical.ly DC announced the launch of Prism Shift, Launch Academy’s new women-only bootcamp in Washington, D.C.
• A free 11-week coding bootcamp for women has launched in Toronto, Canada, aimed at women who have some coding experience, but want to advance and become more job-ready, or get a promotion in their current jobs.

 

Paying for Bootcamp

Listen: 25:03

• Forbes looks at how universities are exploring the Income Sharing Agreement model, which we’ve seen in bootcamps for years.

 

New Coding Schools/Campuses/Courses

Listen: 25:27

• According to GoodCall, data science bootcamp Metis has launched a DigitalGlobe Data Challenge as a part of the 12-week full-time data science course.
• According to Technical.ly DC and a few other publications, Coding Dojo is ending their Ruby on Rails course, and replacing it with a full stack Java course.
• According to My Broadband, WeThinkCode is expanding with campuses opening in Cape Town, and potentially across the rest of sub-Saharan Africa.
• And the Tennessean announced that Birmingham-based bootcamp, Covalence, will be opening a new campus in Nashville, TN beginning October 2nd.
• According to Euronews, a coding school in Brussels is working to make technology education available to everyone, no matter their academic or economic background.
• Applications are now open for Clubhou.se Code Bootcamp in Augusta, which offers a full time, 3-month bootcamp.
• The Israel Innovation Authority is kicking off a new $2.8 million coding boot camp program meant to provide six to 12 months of intensive training for college graduates in the sciences who are interested in a computer programming career.

 

New Schools on CR

Listen: 27:16

• Southern Careers Institute, San Antonio and Austin, TX
• SE Factory, Beirut, Lebanon
• DevTree Academy, Sandpoint, Idaho
• UNIT Factory, Kiev, Ukraine
• UP Academy, Lisbon, Portugal
• University of Miami Coding Bootcamp, Miami, FL
• University of Richmond Coding Bootcamp, Richmond, VA
• Beginex, New York City, NY
• USC Viterbi Data Analytics Boot Camp in Los Angeles, CA
• University of Minnesota Coding Boot Camp, Minneapolis, MN

 

Favorite Pieces on the Blog

Listen: 28:06

Imogen Crispe

• I really enjoyed producing a video piece about 5 Tips to Ace an Online Coding Bootcamp with the Thinkful team!

Lauren Stewart

• It was great to see our 2017 Market Sizing Report go live!

Liz Eggleston

• I was very happy to get our 2017 Market Sizing Report published – it’s a great resource for people to see how this industry is actually growing. We also produced a piece about other coding bootcamp options, now that Dev Bootcamp is going to close down.

 

FURTHER READING

• June 2017 Coding Bootcamp News Roundup + Podcast
• May 2017 Coding Bootcamp News Roundup + Podcast
• April 2017 Coding Bootcamp News Roundup + Podcast

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