Episode 41: May 2019 Bootcamp News

In May the coding bootcamp industry got a lot of coverage in mainstream news including the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. In our latest podcast we discuss the new ways military veterans can learn to code, we look at three New York Times articles about coding bootcamps, and hear about a coding bootcamp facing closure. Income share agreements remained a hot topic, plus find out about diversity scholarships, university and coding bootcamp partnerships and more!

Veterans Transitioning into Tech

• The US Department of Veterans Affairs published a blog post all about VET TEC, their new high tech training program for veterans, with all the eligibility requirements and details.
• St Louis Public Radio profiled two St Louis schools teaching veterans to code, Claim Academy and LaunchCode, and talked to some students who are military veterans.
• The Colorado Sun profiled cybersecurity bootcamp SecureSet in Colorado Springs where 40% of the students are veterans who are transitioning out of the military.
• Check out this list of Scholarships for Veterans and this podcast about how to use the GI Bill for coding bootcamp.

Diversity-Fueled Scholarships

• Mayden Academy in Bath, UK, is offering scholarships of 70% off tuition to women for the 16-week full stack track. The Bath Echo reports the discount aims to address the need for more diversity in tech in the UK. The scholarships is available until February 2020.
• Facebook is offering scholarships for women and underrepresented groups to go to Ironhack in Miami. The Miami Herald reports that Ironhack has won $250,000 in diversity funding and will use the money to fund full and partial scholarships for diverse students. The next deadline to apply is May 31, so hurry!
• Wyncode is partnering with CareerSource South Florida to launch a Women in Tech Cohort with $200,000 in scholarships.
• Computer weekly covered Makers Academy’s announcement of their Women in Software Power List which honors 30 women in the UK who represent the best of the coding community.

Income Share Agreements: Pros & Cons

• Two US News articles, one which looked at the pros and cons of ISAs, and another which looked at how ISAs could help students choose what subject to study because those that are eligible for an ISA may have better outcomes.
• In a MarketWatch article, the Chicago Fed President warned colleges about moving too quickly towards ISAs, with a concern that grads might prioritize their payments over other expenses, and have to rely on credit for other aspects of their lives
• A report by the Aspen institute suggests that schools and training programs need to provide simple and accessible information about how the ISAs are repaid.
• Lambda School + income share agreements
  • Barrons looked at the rise of online education in competition with traditional college, mentioning Lambda School.
  • ProShare looked at whether MOOCs could replace continuing education, also mentioning Lambda School.
  • BYU Universe looked at Lambda’s ISA as an alternative to expensive college programs.
• An Opinion piece in the New York Times by author Malcolm Harris, likens students using ISAs to “subprime students” and worries that, “If I.S.A.s take off as a desirable funding source, it’s inevitable that they will begin to reshape childhood… Every child becomes his or her own start-up.”
• According to Yahoo, a new income sharing provider called Align has closed its Series B fundraising round.
• And then Student Loan Hero lists schools or colleges which offer ISAs, including Make School, an intensive coding school which works with the Dominican University of California.
• North Carolina coding bootcamp Coder Foundry has launched a tuition deferred program called Launchpad where students don’t pay tuition until they land a job earning $40,000 or more.
• In Milwaukee, Wisconsin, DevCodeCamp has announced they are now offering income share agreements where students don’t pay until they are earning at least $40,000.

Should you Go to a Tech Bootcamp?

• Steve Lohr from the New York Times looks at how effective intense technology programs are for helping people move into the middle class, focusing on nonprofit organizations like TechHire, Skillful, Per Scholas and Year Up
• A Forbes contributor looks at 5 jobs to pivot into with number one being software engineer, and quotes a coding bootcamp grad who launched his own business.
• Bloomberg looks at the highest paying jobs for 2019 with Data Scientist and Software Engineer topping the list.
• Nate Swanner from Dice looks at tips for choosing a good coding bootcamp including looking at outcomes, understanding what the bootcamp offers, and reading reviews.
• Tech Republic looks at whether it is still worth becoming a data scientist despite recent reports by Glassdoor and Stack Overflow showing a fall in US data science wages in 2019.
• A Forbes contributor also looks at demand for data scientists in the US, saying that demand for data science is increasing, citing a report from Indeed which found a 30% increase in demand since 2018, but searches by job seekers only grew by 15%.

Tech Education in Africa and the Middle East

• Lambda School, an online bootcamp which offers Income Share Agreements is launching in Africa alongside Microsoft’s Africa Development Centre in Lagos and Nairobi.
• Region Week also looked at the eligibility requirements for Lambda School in Africa – it’s open to citizens of Cote d’Ivoire, Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, and South Africa who are 18 years old or above. Lambda School is partnering with PayStack to provide co-working space for students.
• Tech Jaja looks at a number of different options for learning to code in Uganda, including Andela, an Africa-based developer bootcamp and apprenticeship program
  • Business insider reports that Andela is launching a new program called The Power of X which aims to recruit mid-level and senior software developers to work with clients, alongside the apprentices. Remember that Andela raised $100 million in Series D funding in January 2019.
• Africa News reports that the first free coding school in Senegal, Sonatel Academy, is taking part in the Digital Women’s Day event in Dakar, Senegal on June 13 and 14, and will involve talks by prominent women in tech, as well as an awards ceremony.
• KT Press profiled a Rwandan woman who went to Moringa School, while balancing her family commitments and built an app to help patients with or without medical insurance figure out which pharmacies to shop at. CNBC Africa profiled the first Rwanda coding school at Rwanda Polytechnic.
• The Arab Daily News reports that Middle East-based nonprofit Anera (American Near East Refugee Aid) is partnering with coding bootcamp ReBootKamp to provide tech and professional job skills training to unemployed Palestinian youth in Gaza, East Jerusalem, the West Bank, and Jordan.
• Vogue Australia profiles the co-founder of Re:Coded Alexandra Clare about how she and her husband decided to start the coding bootcamp after witnessing the plight of displaced youths in Iraq fleeing ISIS.
• A 25-year-old Palestinian woman, Shahenaz Monia, wrote a guest post for ReliefWeb about how learning to code at Gaza Sky Geeks changed her life. She became a freelance web developer, then a full-time mentor at Gaza Sky Geeks’ new campus in Hebron.

Coding Bootcamps at Universities

• Education Dive reporter Hallie Busta interviewed Trilogy CEO Dan Sommer about the recent Trilogy acquisition by 2U for $750 million. Dan talks about how 2U’s capabilities will accelerate Trilogy’s expansion on the ground and online, how the practical skills Trilogy focuses on complement traditional degrees, and how Trilogy is trying to be more transparent when they are providing curriculum for college-branded courses.
  • University of Connecticut is partnering with Trilogy Education to launch a coding bootcamp in Stamford. The 24-week part time program begins on July 30. Trilogy now partners with 46 universities.
  • Trilogy Education launching bootcamp at the University of Western Australia in Perth.
• Kenzie Academy is partnering with Colorado State University to launch a one to two year program for high school students and college students to learn skills for a successful tech career.
• Education dive looks at a report by Strada Education Network and the Lumina Foundation which found that non degree credentials such as certifications and coding bootcamps can improve economic mobility. The survey found that non-degree credentials deliver the largest earnings boost for workers in fields like security and engineering.

Advice for Employers

• Idaho Press reports that Coding Dojo is partnering with the Idaho Dept of Labor to pair graduates with apprenticeship programs at local Boise companies. Participants will go through a 14-week bootcamp, followed by a 6-month apprenticeship at companies like Vynyl, TeschGlobal, and Go West Robotics.
• In Boston, Wayfair is partnering with Boston coding bootcamp Resilient Coders to recruit software developers. Students can get two weeks of additional training, specific to the technical-skill requirements and programming languages needed for a job at the company.
• The Tennessean profiles Nashville Software School, and their relationship with global financial firm AllianceBernstein, which has hired at least 6 graduates.

Coding Bootcamp Controversies

• The Arizona Central, Education Dive, and other publications report that Woz U, Steve Wozniak’s coding school, has had its license revoked in Arizona and may be forced to close, after the discovery of connections with a suite of career college collapses.
• The New York Times and Post Industrial dive into a lawsuit against coding bootcamp Mined Minds, a bootcamp set up with the goal of helping people in West Virginia affected by the decline in coal mining retrain to work in tech. Now more than 20 former students are pursuing a lawsuit claiming that Mined Minds was a fraud.
• US News looks at how people should research coding bootcamps before signing up, citing Course Report stats, and noting that a number of bootcamps have closed over the years, and some get mixed reviews, or have faced scrutiny from local governments.
• An opinion piece on Huff Post looks at whether tech companies inflate the costs of online education. They’re talking about 2U here, which just acquired Trilogy Education.

Alumni Success Stories

• A General Assembly data science student shared his final project looking into bands The Grateful Dead and Phish. In a Medium post, David Bertsch wrote how he built a natural language processing model which could classify different Reddit posts as being about one band or the other.
• The Wall St Journal looks at mid-career professionals who are going to coding bootcamp and finding success. The article highlights a 42-year-old cable television programming executive, a 40-year-old marketing executive, and a 36-year-old military veteran who all took coding bootcamps to switch careers.
• Tech Republic highlights Kentucky-based coding bootcamp Awesome Inc, and talks to a graduate, former car mechanic Jonathan Grub who is now a developer for software company Schedule it.

Updates: New Campuses + Courses

• Los Alamos Daily Post reports that CUltivating Coders is offering a free coding bootcamp to students aged 17-29 in Albuquerque from September to November. Applications are open now!
• General Assembly, a prolific provider of coding bootcamps and other tech courses, has moved to a new campus in Washington, DC.
• Rolling Out profiles Flatiron School’s Atlanta campus and how the local team is working with the community.
• Built in Chicago highlights 4 UX design courses in Chicago including General Assembly and Designation UX bootcamps.
• American Inno covered the launch of online data science training program Refactored.ai that has a deferred tuition model, so graduates don’t pay until they have landed a job. The course Uses AI to personalize learning.
• The Star Tribune reports that more than 12 cybersecurity programs have opened in Minnesota in the past 3 years, in response to headlines about major data breaches.
• Coding Dojo is offering scholarships to teachers in Seattle who have been laid off from their jobs. Their are 30 scholarships available for June, July, August and September for students to attend the 14-week coding bootcamp at their Bellevue campus, or online.

New Coding Bootcamps on Course Report

• Bethel Tech, an online coding bootcamp founded by the Bethel Church
• The Jump, a bootcamp in London, UK
• CodeBoxx, a coding bootcamp in QUebec City, Canada
• Chris Trotzky Bootcamp, a bootcamp in Hamburg, Germany

Favorite Pieces on the Blog

Imogen enjoyed interviewing Alex Mannix, a woman who graduated from Codesmith coding bootcamp in New York. Alex had always been interested in coding, but initially dismissed it in college because of imposter syndrome, and feeling like she should have been doing it since she was 10. Then she won the Edie Windsor Lesbians Who Tech Scholarship to fund 50% of her Codesmith tuition! She explained how supportive both the Lesibans Who Tech and the Codesmith communities are, and how she hopes to inspire more women to think about getting into tech!

Liz got to chat with two employers who hire from bootcamps in May! First, she talked with the VP of People at CD Baby, Gretchen Boster, about how their new hires from Epicodus coding bootcamp in Portland, Oregon are performing on the job. CD Baby actually participates in Epicodus’ internship program which facilitates internships for all Epicodus students. Liz also talked with Avery Johnson, a Technical Solutions Recruiter for Datadog, to understand the value bootcamp grads bring to the Solutions Engineer role. They hire mainly from Flatiron School.

FURTHER LISTENING

• April 2019 Coding Bootcamp News Roundup + Podcast
• March 2019 Coding Bootcamp News Roundup + Podcast
• February 2019 Coding Bootcamp News Roundup + Podcast

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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.