Episode 15: June 2017 Bootcamp News

Missed any news about coding bootcamps from June 2017? Course Report is here for you! We’ve compiled the most important news and developments in this blog post and podcast. In June, we heard John Oliver and Megyn Kelly talk about bootcamps, we read about new investments in bootcamps, a number of newspapers wrote about the impact bootcamps are having at a local level, and we were excited to hear about more diversity initiatives and scholarships. Plus we round up all the new campuses and new coding bootcamps around the world.

General News

• Flatiron School celebrated their 5th birthday in New York City.
• John Oliver mentioned BitSource as part of a future plan for out-of-work miners.
• Megyn Kelly reporter Jacob Soberoff visited BitSource in Kentucky to interview coal-miners-turned-coders.
• Trump signed an executive order to double funding to apprenticeship programs
• IDG talks to employers about the debate between CS degrees and coding bootcamps
• Chronicle of Higher Education published an article about a new model for quality assurance standards led by Entangled Solutions. Here’s the full framework.
• Dev Bootcamp’s Chief Academic Officer wrote a guest post in Fortune about the 3 signs that show you that you could be in the wrong career.

RELATED: Bootcamp Apprenticeships, Fellowships & Internship
RELATED: CIRR Job Placement Data for Bootcamps

New Fundraising and Investments

• Trilogy education raised $30 million in series A funding led by Highland Capital Partners, with Rethink Education and City Light Capital, and we read a profile of a number of Trilogy students studying at the UNC Charlotte Boot Camp
• Coursera is not a coding bootcamp, but while we’re talking about fundraising, the online university course provider just raised $64 million in a Series D round of funding.
• Minerva’s Online Coding School is raising money via Kickstarter to fund online data science courses at Minerva’s Data Lab.

The Local Impact of Bootcamps

• In the New Haven Register, Kevin Conlan makes the argument for bootcamps preparing candidates for tech roles in emerging tech cities like New Haven.
• Montana newspaper The Missoulian published an article where a Montana tech investor explained about how code schools are a great way to get people who want to change career paths into new entrepreneurial activities which would benefit the state as a whole.
• TechZim profiled a Zimbabwean man who learned to code in the USA, then founded ZimCode, an organization in Zimbabwe teaching young people how to code in 12 weeks.
• Forbes did an Interview with co-founder of CodingNomads Kim Desmond about why she and her husband launched a company to teach coding bootcamps around the world
• Fast Company profiled a number of diverse students learning to code at Queens coding bootcamp C4Q, and Quartz looked at C4Q’s deferred payment system.

Diversity in Coding Bootcamps

• An all-girls coding bootcamp won $72,000 in the WeWork Creator Awards.
• The Incline profiled former high school teacher Kelauni Cook, who learned to code at Academy Pittsburgh, now teaches at a coding bootcamp for girls and minority students, and is launching Black Tech Nation.
• The New York Times profiled some students at Holberton School, and looked at how they get diverse applicants through their application process by making it blind.
• TechCrunch profiled coding bootcamp graduate Asia Joumaa who graduated from Lebanon’s SE Factory coding bootcamp, and is now a web developer at Beirut company Pixel38.
• The Memo profiled the founder of CodeYourFuture, a British nonprofit coding school for refugees, plus a CNBC article profiled a student at the school.
• CBC news profiled an Egyptian refugee in Canada who is giving a month of profit from his clothing company to Re:Coded a bootcamp that focuses on training refugees and displaced youth.
• WPBF profiles TK2 Academy founder Donnavan Kirk about why he started the bootcamp in Boca Raton. Boca Life Magazine looks at how TK2 is putting an emphasis on recruiting female students.

Coding Bootcamp Scholarships

• In the Detroit Free Press we saw that Facebook is sponsoring 25 free places at Michigan coding bootcamp Grand Circus this fall - which usually costs $8500
• One interesting way that TechHire has manifested is in a series of free 6-week summer coding bootcamps in Miami, for students aged 15-22
• According to Portland Biz Journals, PDX Code Guild coding bootcamp in Portland now accepts the GI Bill.

RELATED: Coding Bootcamp Scholarships
RELATED: Coding Bootcamp Scholarships for Women
RELATED: Course Report Exclusive Bootcamp Scholarships

New Campuses + Schools

• DevMountain is opening a new campus in downtown Phoenix this summer. Dev Mountain also has campuses in Provo and Salt Lake City, Utah, and Dallas, Texas.
• Coding Dojo is opening a campus in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Coding Dojo also has campuses in Silicon Valley, Seattle, LA, Dallas, DC, and Chicago.
• The StraitsTimes announced that Byte Academy is closing its Singapore campus after disagreements between an investor and the school’s parent company.
• A new coding bootcamp is opening in Cleveland, Blue Ocean Coding, a 12-week, full-time course covering C#/.NET, Java and SQL Server.
• A new tech education school with deferred tuition is opening in the Bay Area called MissionU. Classes focus on data analytics and business intelligence.
• Talking of longer bootcamps, Southern Careers Institute in Austin, Texas is launching a 33-week coding bootcamp where students can choose to study .NET or JavaScript.
• A new 12-week coding bootcamp is opening in Sandpoint, Idaho. DevTree Academy will have small 10-person classes

New Schools in the Course Report Directory:

• The DevMasters in Irvine, CA
• Cambridge Spark in London
• Coder Space in Liverpool
• Project Shift in Durham, North Carolina

Favorite Pieces on the Blog

Imogen Crispe

• I really enjoyed interviewing former teacher and counsellor Courtney Waller who is in her second developer role after graduating from Thinkful’s Flexible Web Development Bootcamp.

Liz Eggleston

• My favorite piece was with Jeren Nomer, who was in tech recruiting and now runs career services at Fullstack Academy. She talks a lot about the mistakes made by coding bootcampers that she interviewed as a recruiter and how to correct for those.

Lauren Stewart

• I really enjoyed speaking with Shane, an alum from The Iron Yard. Since he graduated he has created his own music app, worked for a music app company, and now leads a mobile dev team at Bridgestone!

FURTHER READING

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

About The Author

Imogen is a writer and content producer who loves writing about technology and education. Her background is in journalism, writing for newspapers and news websites. She grew up in England, Dubai and New Zealand, and now lives in Brooklyn, NY.