Episode 18: September 2017 Bootcamp News

Need a rundown of everything that happened in the coding bootcamp industry this September? You’re in luck! We’ve collected all the most important news in this blog post and podcast. This month, we kept up with the status of the bootcamp industry, learned about how bootcamps are thriving in smaller markets, and explored different ways to pay for bootcamp. Plus, we added 7 new schools from around the world to the Course Report school directory! Read below or listen to our latest Coding Bootcamp News Roundup Podcast.

 

Two of our Favorites:

Listen: 1:36

• A grad from The Iron Yard in Houston helped build a website to help Harvey and Irma hurricane victims.
• The New York Times looks at people in their 60s, 70s, and 80s, who are learning to code, including an 84-year old doing Codecademy, and a 71-year old retired pilot who took General Assembly’s web development immersive.

 

The Status of the Industry:

Listen: 4:00

• According to articles in Reuters and in The Memo, Galvanize coding bootcamp, which has campuses in Denver, Austin, Boulder, NYC, Phoenix, San Francisco, and Seattle, has fired 11% of its workforce (that means ~40 people).
• Forbes contributor and ThirdEye founder Rajat Bhageria writes about whether learning to code is still worth it for millennials, mentioning Flatiron School, General Assembly, and Make School, but worries that coding could become automated in future.
• Quartz published an article that digs into the idea that while online coding bootcamps are good ideas they still suffer the same pitfalls of online education as a whole. The piece focuses on the notion that students are still less engaged online.
• ELearning Inside News says coding bootcamps aren’t doomed, but proposes that it’s just the on-site model that is the real problem and that online coding boot camps like Bloc and Thinkful will continue to thrive.
• The James G Martin Center for Academic Renewal published an in-depth overview of the coding bootcamp industry, looking at growth, closures, and viability of bootcamps.

 

Bootcamps Thrive in Smaller Markets

Listen: 7:40

• The Startup Capital podcast looked at the lack of tech talent in smaller cities like Tallahassee, Florida and talked to the Director of I/O Avenue, a 12-week coding bootcamp in the area, and the CEO of CareerSource Capital Region.
• In Cincinnati, WCPO looks at what the city is doing to bring non-profits, technical organizations, universities, and large companies together to make coding a bigger part of their ecosystem, and talks to the founders of Tech Elevator and Cincy Code IT.
• The Charleston Business journal looks at how coding schools are constantly evolving to meet market demand, which is especially important since the closures of Dev Bootcamp and The Iron Yard - the latter of which had a campus in Greenville – and mentions JRS Coding School and CodeCamp.
• DW.com gave an overview of Berlin, Germany’s growth, why it is becoming such a tech hub, and how coding bootcamps are helping prepare talent for tech jobs.

 

Fundraises + Investments

Listen: 10:32

• According to Fortune magazine, Google, Accenture, and CloudNow have contributed $40,000 towards student living costs in San Francisco at Holberton School.
• TechCrunch and Venturebeat reported that one-year hybrid online/in-person data analytics bootcamp MissionU has raised $8.5 million in a financing round led by FirstMark Capital.

 

Ways to Pay for Bootcamp

Listen: 12:09

• Ed Surge published an in-depth look at App Academy’s income sharing agreement, and why they had to change it to a more structured payment plan offering, in order to adhere to New York State law.
• BizTimes talked to DevCodeCamp student George Werner whose employer paid for his bootcamp tuition.

 

Experiences of a Graduate + Founder

Listen: 14:26

• Launch Academy grad Briana West wrote a guest post for Technical.ly Philly about going to job interviews after bootcamp, her background as a ballet dancer, and her new Developer job at Power Home Remodeling Group.
• Silicon Harbor Radio talks to JRS Coding School chief technology innovation officer Tom Wilson about the school’s mission “to leverage tech to improve healthcare” and how “talent is the fuel that drives innovation”.

 

Market Demand for Bootcamp Graduates

Listen: 16:03

• HR Dive looks at how STEM jobs are still hard to fill according to the American Staffing Association and Career Builder skills index. The article notes that it will be hard to change this problem quickly but apprenticeships and coding bootcamps will help.
• Holberton School co-founder Sylvain Kalache wrote a guest post in Venture Beat about how the new Amazon HQ will need around 17,000 developers, and because top colleges are only graduating 600 CS majors per year, alternative education providers like bootcamps, and schools like Holberton and 42, are needed to fill the gaps.
• In The Incline, Pittsburgh bootcamps TechHire Pittsburgh and Academy Pittsburgh explain why a culture shift is needed to help bootcamp grads land jobs, because many large companies still expect a college degree by default.
• Data Science Nigeria, a data science bootcamp, wants Nigeria to become the data science outsourcing hub for Africa by 2019, and to create 1 million new jobs in 10 years.
• Forbes talks to a number of employers about why they like to hire from coding bootcamps. Employers include Overstock.com, Equitymultiple, Xyrupt, Level 11, and Textio.

 

Universities + Bootcamps

Listen: 19:17

• In NextWeb this month, Matthew Hughes looked at how the Stack Overflow developer survey and doesn’t discredit a college CS degree, and notes how well paid those without degrees are.
• In a Flatiron School survey which got covered by Education Dive, they found that 68% of working adults would seek further education if it guaranteed them a high-paying job.
• In Forbes, the founder of bootcamp curriculum provider Trilogy Education, Dan Sommer, says he believes that universities are the solution to the workforce development gap, and that a lot more skills-based training can happen on campus.
• Western New England University is offering a 10-week data science bootcamp, "Data Science & Analytics," in partnership with Startup Institute, from Oct. 3 through Dec. 12, in downtown Northampton

 

New Bootcamps & Campuses

Listen: 21:07

• AmericanGenius.com reports that Apple’s one-year Swift App Development program is launching at Austin Community College in October.
• DevMountain is opening a new campus at the U.S. Bank Center in downtown Phoenix, AZ. The 12-week program will teach full-stack web development and the next session starts November 27th.
• LaunchCode is opening in Tampa, hoping to fill the gap left by The Iron Yard when it closed its St. Petersberg campus.
• Senegal’s first coding bootcamp has opened in Dakar, aimed at 18-30 year olds with a bachelor’s degree. Applications are open now with a deadline of October 5 for the November class.
• Software Guild has partnered with Israeli training company, HackerUSA, to offer a cybersecurity bootcamp in Akron, OH.
• New Indianapolis coding school Kenzie Academy was started by one of the Galvanize co-founders. Students learn for 40 hours per week for a year, then can apply to be a Kenzie Studio Fellow where they are paid to work on projects for local companies.
• 42 is opening a third campus which will be in Brussels, Belgium. The founders are seeking private backers for the free school which will accommodate 450 students. Quartz also did a deep dive about 42 in Paris, looking at sleeping arrangements, how students hacked the elevator system, as well as origins, and funding.
• Code Nation, a 12-week coding bootcamp is launching in Manchester, England.
• School of Code is launching a 4-month bootcamp in Birmingham, UK.
• Invictus Knowledge Institute app development and sys admin school opened in Pensacola, Florida on September 25th. The school offers 4, 8, and 16-week courses.

 

New Schools on Course Report

• Impact Byte, Jakarta, Indonesia.
• First Step Coding, Boston, New York City, San Francisco, Silicon Valley, and online.
• Logols, Troy, Michigan
• Academia devtoHack, Caracas, Venezuela
• Digital Creative Institute, San Antonio and Austin, Texas
• Hyperion Development, online
• TechFleet Academy, Columbus, Ohio

 

Favorite pieces on the blog

Listen: 24:48

• Liz’s interview with Brainstation student Graeme Davis, a CEO who says that the tech skills he learned at bootcamp have made him a better leader.
   
• Lauren’s Q&A with a Thinkful graduate named Jose, who was the first in his family to attend college and was so motivated that he graduated from Thinkful early and is now a developer at Bank of America.
   
• Imogen’s video piece with Debbie Berebichez, who is the chief data scientist at Metis. If you’re curious how you should prepare before applying to a data science bootcamp, this is the best 5 minutes you can spend!

 

FURTHER READING

• August 2017 Coding Bootcamp News Roundup + Podcast
• ​July 2017 Coding Bootcamp News Roundup + Podcast
• June 2017 Coding Bootcamp News Roundup + Podcast

 

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