Podcast
September 2016 Coding Bootcamp News Roundup + Podcast
Written By Imogen Crispe
Last updated on July 23, 2024
Written By Imogen Crispe
Course Report strives to create the most trust-worthy content about coding bootcamps. Read more about Course Report’s Editorial Policy and How We Make Money.
Course Report strives to create the most trust-worthy content about coding bootcamps. Read more about Course Report’s Editorial Policy and How We Make Money.
Welcome to the September 2016 Course Report monthly coding bootcamp news roundup! Each month, we look at all the happenings from the coding bootcamp world from new bootcamps to big fundraising announcements, to interesting trends. Of course, we cover our 2016 Outcomes and Demographics Report (we spent a ton of time on this one and hope everyone gets a chance to read it)! Other trends include growth of the industry, increasing diversity in tech through bootcamps, plus news about successful bootcamp alumni, and new schools and campuses. Read below or listen to our latest Coding Bootcamp News Roundup Podcast!
Listen: 01:37
2016 Coding Bootcamp Alumni Outcomes and Demographics Study
September 14
Course Report
We surveyed graduates from 52 qualifying coding schools and received 1,143 qualified graduate responses. Here are the highlights:
Next generation of software engineers need training not retraining
September 22
By Sylvain Kalache, CIO
Sylvain Kalache used our stats to demonstrate the demographics of typical coding bootcamp students being around 31 years old with 7.6 years of work experience. But he questions whether bootcamp students are really equipped to meet industry standards and calls grads “superficially-prepared software engineers.” But then he also says college students study too much theory and lack practical skills, and wonders what is the right balance? Sylvain suggests the answer could be longer bootcamps 7 months or longer, like Turing or Galvanize (or the new Learners Guild). He also likes the idea of the EQUIP program where colleges partner with coding bootcamps .
Coding bootcamp pays off: Grade report 64% increase in average salary
September 14
By Kurt Schlosser, GeekWire
When writing about our report, Kurt Schlosser focused on salary increases. We found that 64 percent of coding bootcamp graduates see an increase in salary compared to what they were earning at their jobs before bootcamp . Kurt also noted the average increase in salary of $26,021.
Related: 73 Percent of coding bootcamp graduates employed full time, earn salary lift
Survey: 2016 Coding Bootcamp graduates report 64% lift in Salary
September 14
EdSurge
EdSurge opens their great article about our report with the statement “These boots were made for working”, and looks at how some coding bootcamps are now eligible for federal funding. Key stats mentioned include 73% of grads report landing full time jobs requiring the skills learned at bootcamp , and that those grads saw a salary increase of 64%.
Related: Coding bootcamps yield high returns on job placement diversity
Related: Coding bootcamps see continued momentum
Listen: 04:33
The White House Summit on Computer Science for All
September 14
The White House
The #CSforAll summit was held at The White House in September. Thought leaders, educators and students got together to discuss how to make sure our workforce is trained to be able to handle all the tech jobs that exist now, and new ones in the future. The focus was mainly on K12, but there was a lot of emphasis on getting more girls and women into coding. Dode Barnett, a legislator for the Muscogee Creek Nation, emphasized that girls need to be brought up knowing they are just as capable as boys. And Megan Smith, the US Chief Technology officer, pointed out that of the highest paying jobs in the US, 49% require coding.
College of Charleston researchers look at how well code-school grads fare
September 4
By Thad More, The Post and Courier
Two College of Charleston professors in conjunction with California think tank, ETR Associates, have been granted $189k in funding to study coding bootcamps and how they compare to a traditional, four-year computer science education. The study will last over a two-year period and is funded by the National Science Foundation. Many are happy to see alternative education routes that help fill the tech skills gap. However, senior research associate at ETR states, “an education that’s laser-focused on helping graduates land specific jobs risks valuing short-term success over long-term stability,” implying that bootcamps may still have room for improvement. The study is not focused on which type of education is better, but it is focused on seeing what advantages both coding schools and computer science degrees have, and how they could influence each other.
The Coding Bootcamp Hype Cycle
September 9
By David Yang, EdSurge
Fullstack Academy founder and lead instructor, David Yang, discusses the coding bootcamp industry in 5 phases using the Gartner Hype Cycle. The stages include: “Technology Trigger," "Peak of Inflated Expectations," "Trough of Disillusionment," "Slope of Enlightenment" and "Plateau of Productivity." These stages, in relation to the bootcamps, reveal how excitement and product maturity are not always matched, and that expectations can sometimes damage early stages of industry. Yang encourages a push for bootcamp transparency around career outcomes—if we don’t then government entities will step in and do it for us. He also suggests reaching out to students who might not be aware of coding schools as an option, and focusing on improving diversity of gender, race and economic access.
Careers in Code - Leading Coding Schools 2016
September 14
Newsweek
Newsweek published an article in their Educational Insights section citing some Course Report stats on how much the coding industry has grown since 2012. The article talks about how the high demand for developers has spawned the rapid growth of the coding school industry, with colleges unable to keep up with applications for CS courses. The article describes the fast-paced and immersive nature of coding bootcamps , and how they focus on the latest and most relevant web development languages, which are needed in the industry now. The article quotes staff from Dev Bootcamp, LearningFuze, Coding Dojo, Actualize, Holberton School, and DevMountain.
Why high-tech boot camps are appealing to students and lenders
September 16
PBS Newshour
This PBS Newshour segment focused on students choosing bootcamps as a cheaper alternative to college and discussed Galvanize bootcamp in Denver. Reporter Hari Sreenivasan spoke to instructor Wes Reid (whom we also profiled in September), and Galvanize co-founder Jim Deters about the tight acceptance rates, how bootcamps are producing career-ready students, and the blossoming partnerships between colleges and coding bootcamps .
HackerYou Puts Bootcamp Program on Hold as it Seeks Private Career College Accreditation
September 22
By Amira Zubairi, Betakit
Toronto-based HackerYou, a bootcamp in web , mobile, and front-end development offering full-time and part-time courses, has recently suspended programming to submit an application to register as a private career college in Ontario. Many bootcamps have struggled to be recognized as a legitimate higher education institution outside of the tech space, therefore HackerYou is working to become accredited. According to HackerYou CEO Heather Payne, the bootcamp was first unable to register back in 2012, but now that the program has expanded, they are ready to become a private career college.
Related: CEO Spotlight: Craig Hunter, Bitmaker Labs
Coding Dojo offers scholarships for ITT Technical Institute students left in the lurch
September 7
By Monica Nickelsburg, GeekWire
Due to pressure and scrutiny from the U.S. Department of Education, ITT Technical Institute has closed all 130 campuses. Coding Dojo, a Bellevue, Washington-based coding bootcamp , wants to come to the rescue by offering scholarships up to $4k to former ITT Tech students. Scholarships can be used for Coding Dojo campuses in October to December of 2106. This scholarship launched shortly after Coding Dojo and Bellevue College’s announcement of partnering to provide joint software classes.
Listen: 10:31
Tech Opportunity Fund
The Iron Yard and Code Fellows have partnered to create a new fund to pay for diversity scholarships, and hopes to award $100 million over the next five years. Vice President Joe Biden announced the Tech Opportunity Fund at the St Louis headquarters of LaunchCode in September. A number of publications including The Seattle Times, Xconomy, Geekwire, Post and Courier, and Education Dive, have covered this story, and so far The Iron Yard has pledged $40 million, and Code Fellows has committed $5 million to the Fund. They hope other coding schools and civic organizations will help contribute to the remaining $55 million needed to reach the $100 million goal. Nonprofit Operation HOPE will provide financial literacy training to scholarship winners.
For more reading, we recommend these articles:
Code Fellows pledges $5M to new Tech Opportunity Fund, with shout-out from VP Biden
Code Fellows pledges $5M to increase diversity in tech
Code school network launches $100M scholarship initiative
Fund Worth Up To $100M Seeks to Increase Diversity in Tech Workforce
Greenville-based Iron Yard commits $40M for tech scholarships
New scholarship fund: Tech would be more diverse if coding schools weren’t so costly
Sabio Coding Bootcamp partners with Antioch University Los Angeles and Operation Code for VetsHack on Labor Day Weekend
September 1
PR Newswire
During Labor Day weekend, Los Angeles-based coding bootcamp , Sabio, partnered with Antioch University Los Angeles and Operation Code to hold a VetsHack hackathon. As a reminder, Operation Code is a non-profit focused on getting veterans to code. This event was supported by Facebook and the objective was to bring civilians and veterans together to create software solutions for daily challenges that veterans and their families face. Sabio and Antioch offer a Certificate in Web Development that allows enrolled Antioch students to learn coding, while allowing students who receive federal and state financial aid, including the G.I. Bill, to become Sabio fellows.
Related: Coding Bootcamp Veteran Scholarships
Related: 3 Reasons Veterans Make Great Tech Bootcamp Students
Chicago nonprofit trains veterans to be software developers
September 9
By Alexia Elejalde-Ruiz, Chicago Tribune
Code Platoon is a Chicago-based nonprofit that provides a coding bootcamp for military veterans. Poised to address both tech talent gaps and challenges to veteran employment, Code Platoon graduated its first class of 9 students this year. Rodrigo Levy, founder and executive director, hopes that this will be the beginning of a broader push to put veterans on paths to lucrative, high-demand software development jobs.
Open Cloud Academy Launches Cybersecurity Program for Veterans
September 9
By Laura Lorek, Silicon Hills
Silicon Hills News reporter Laura Lorek writes about a cybersecurity bootcamp for veterans in San Antonio. Open Cloud Academy is a 3-month program, paid for through a Department of Labor training grant. Graduates are certified as cybersecurity professionals and placed in an internship with a partner company.
Edie Windsor coding scholarship selects 40 LGBTQ women to learn how to code
September 26
By Megan Rose Dickey, Tech Crunch
Earlier this year Dev Bootcamp and Lesbains Who Tech launched the Edie Windsor Coding Scholarship, which pledged $200,000 towards tuition for LGBTQ women. Now, Megan Rose Dickey of TechCrunch reports that 40 scholars have been selected, all are LGBTQ, 67% are people of color, and 10 percent identify as trans. Scholars can choose which bootcamp to attend including The Iron Yard, General Assembly, Dev Bootcamp, Thinkful , Hack Reactor, Turing, DevMountain, Sabio, Galvanize, and Coding Dojo.
The Activist Bringing Tech Training to the Bronx
September 9
By Hannah Bloch, Wall Street Journal
A 2015 report by the Citizens’ Committee for Children, called the South Bronx neighborhood in New York City the “highest risk community” for children. This area the highest poverty rate and the highest number of adults without a high-school diploma. Thanks to Knowledge House founders Jerelyn Rodriguez and Joe Carrano, more than 500 students from low-income households have taken part in tech-focused workshops and classes. Knowledge House, a South Bronx non-profit aimed at teaching disadvantaged students tech skills, partners with engineering consultancy Hackerati, to offer seminars, classes, and mentoring to those aged 16-24. Knowledge House is also launching the Bronx Digital Pipeline, a borough-wide initiative to shrink the tech skills gap.
Cultivating Coders gains traction locally, nationally
September 19
Kevin Robinson-Avila, NewsOK
Albuquerque, NM based coding bootcamp , Cultivating Coders is gaining traction in Tech.Co’s fourth annual “Startup of the Year” competition. Cultivating Coders aims to offer web and software development training to underserved communities. After winning Tech.Co’s March “Startup Night” pitch competition at South by Southwest, in August the bootcamp was selected to the semifinals for “Startup of the Year” against 49 other companies to compete for $250,000 in products and services. Cultivating Coders offers education directly to underserved communities in urban and rural areas, provides a Workforce Innovation Opportunity Act certification allowing low-income students to receive federal financial aid, and has graduated 36 students to date.
Listen: 18:08
Why Free Bootcamps + Inexpensive Bachelor's Degrees Make Sense
September 28
By Ryan Craig, EdSurge
According to Ryan Caig of EdSurge, students of today are better off investing in expensive bachelor’s degrees combined with real-life coding training through bootcamps . The City University of New York (CUNY) has recently partnered with Virginia technology talent development company, Revature , to provide free industry aligned coding bootcamps for CUNY graduates. Revature at CUNY will launch on-site 12-week coding bootcamps this fall offering niche technology skills at no cost. Students who complete the training are then employed by Revature and receive industry certification. The program is expected to train and hire over 2,000 CUNY graduates over the next five years.
Related: CUNY Partners with RevatureBootcamp for Graduates
to Offer Tuition-Free Coding
September 27
Business Wire
Related: Learn to Code at These Free Bootcamps
Listen: 16:40
Two Iron Yard grads want to make it easier for servicemembers to buy condos
September 14
By Tajha Chappellet-Lanier, Technical.ly DC
Tajha Chappellet Lanier reports on two Iron Yard DC students who built an app to help veterans find Department of Veterans Affairs loan-approved condos for sale. Stella Ma and Eric Douglas found that the current process is tedious and inefficient, and wanted to make the process more seamless for veterans. Stella’s boyfriend is an active navy member, so they had experienced the flawed system firsthand.
Alumna’s startup gives students a chance to explore new career paths
September 16
By Anjishnu Das, Daily Bruin
Daily Bruin reporter Anjishnu Das profiles Sabio coding bootcamp alumna Nicki Klein, about her project Betagig which won $250,000 at a hackathon. It’s an app which allows students to connect with employers and “beta test” a career by shadowing professionals, and has now been nominated for Tech.co’s Startup of the Year Competition.
Web developer Billiam Liu finds his place in Vancouver's software industry without a degree in computing science
September 2
Georgia Straight
Billiam Liu studied commerce at the University of Victoria, and then attended Lighthouse Labs Web dev Bootcamp in downtown Vancouver. His intensive bootcamp experience had a 7-1 student-mentor ratio and each class had 20 students. Doing 12 hour days and being taught over 550 hours, including weekends, simulating the experience of a software developer in the real world, Liu explains how he needed this career change so that he would not get bored and could be challenged all the time.
Listen: 19:26
Online coding school Treehouse Introduces VR Techdegree
September 20
Business Wire
Treehouse, an online coding school, has announced their Virtual Reality Techdegree aimed to increase skilled talent for the rapidly growing VR industry. This is the world’s first online certification for virtual reality developers. Treehouse offers Techdegrees that are 12-month guided learning programs designed for entry-level developers. The VR Techdegree launches in January 2017 offering a curriculum consisting of coursework, real-world VR projects, project code review, peer-to-peer support and a final exam.
Developers are Flocking to Blockchain Bootcamps
September 8
By Olga Kharif, Bloomberg Technology
Banks and insurers are starting to use blockchain, the technology underlying bitcoin, as a tool to record transactions and asset transfers. Venture capitalists are investing more than $1.1 billion in related startups, but reports are saying there aren’t enough developers who have mastered this software. Jeff Garzik, a bitcoin blockchain expert notes that there are about 250 true masters of the technology and about 8 thousand people globally who have various levels of proficiency. More workshops are being created to teach the basics of cryptography and Solidity, necessary skills for blockchain as Byte Academy in New York plans to offer a full-time, eight-week program this fall for $10,000. Many companies are running their own blockchain bootcamps for employees including Deloitte, Capgemini Financial Services, and Google parent Alphabet Inc.
Listen: 21:13
TAG Innovation School is Milan, Italy
Rithm School in San Francisco
Codez Academy in Wales in the UK
Noble Desktop in New York City
Code Astra in Hyderabad, India
Open Cloud Academy in San Antonio, TX
Learners Guild in Oakland, CA
Blackbelt Coding in Miami, Fl
Revature in Reston, VA and online
CoderSchool in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
A Coding Camp Specifically Designed for College Students Is Coming to Boston
September 23
By Olivia Vanni, BostonInno
Horizons school is opening a new campus in Boston, their third campus after San Francisco and Philadelphia.
Related: Universities + Coding Bootcamps
Coding school Prime Digital Academy moving to downtown Minneapolis
September 20
By Katharine Grayson, Minneapolis / St. Paul Business Journal
Prime Digital Academy is moving from Bloomington, Minnesota, to a 14,000 square foot space in downtown Minneapolis. The space is about 50 percent larger than Prime's offices in Bloomington.
Exclusive: Coding school in downtown Dallas doubles its footprint
September 15
By Candace Carlisle, Dallas Business Journal
Dev Mountain is doubling the size of its teaching space in Dallas, Texas.
Utah firm launching 'coding bootcamp' in Middle East
September 6
By Jasen Lee, Deseret News
Utah-based coding bootcamp , V School, is launching a new campus in Beruit, Lebanon. Their 12-week full-stack JavaScript course in the Middle East launched with about 20 Syrian refugees and 40 students overall.
Listen: 25:02
Community and Culture at Dev Bootcamp
By Imogen Crispe, Course Report
Alumni Spotlight: Wendy Yu of NYC Data Science Academy
By Imogen Crispe, Course Report
Why Granicus Hires Dev from Turing School
By Liz Eggleston, Course Report
Alumni Spotlight: Pedro Martin of General Assembly
By Lauren Stewart, Course Report
FURTHER READING:
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.
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