January 2020 Coding Bootcamp News Roundup

Table of Contents

• Coding Bootcamp Acquisitions & Fundraises
• Bootcamp Updates: Scholarships etc!
• Regulatory News
• New Partnerships
• Women in Tech
• Wisdom For and From Bootcampers
• New Coding Bootcamps
• Our Favorite January Pieces on the Course Report Blog

It's our first podcast of 2020 and January is already buzzing with bootcamp news! To kick off the New Year, we’re telling you about new acquisitions, fundraises, accreditation, and regulation. Plus we’re passing along tips on how to spruce up your resume for that new tech job! And of course we round up general coding bootcamp updates, new campuses, and new coding bootcamps in the Course Report directory.

If you're curious about what happened last year, pause this episode and check out our last episode where we round up the biggest news from 2019.

Coding Bootcamp Acquisitions & Fundraises

• Online education company K12 Inc. recently acquired coding school Galvanize for $165M. Remember that Galvanize bought Hack Reactor last year (for an undisclosed amount)!

• Publishing company Wiley recently purchased London-based Mthree for $129M, which will join Wiley’s recent coding bootcamp acquisitions of Software Guild and LearningHouse.

• Indonesian-based coding bootcamp Hactiv8 raised $3M this January, according to Tech in Asia. 

• Edtech start-up Konfinity raised an undisclosed seed round led by AngelList.

• According to an article in the Indiana Business Journal, Indiana tech companies have seen a 260% increase in venture and growth funding since 2018. That was partly attributed to Indianapolis-based Kenzie Academy raising $100 million in tuition financing to help incoming students pay for training in November. It was the biggest deal of the year.

Bootcamp Updates: Scholarships etc!

• Esther Wojicicki has officially joined the Holberton School’s Board of Trustees. 

• Flatiron School received a $1.2M grant from Cognizant to offer scholarships to those historically underrepresented in the tech world, including women, minorities, veterans, and people with disabilities. 

• According to a report from Coding Dojo, the most affordable cities for developers include Detroit, Michigan, St. Louis, Missouri, Huntsville, Alabama, and Lowell, Mass.

• Online program manager Noodle Partners published a Year in Review in University Business. As of January 2020, Noodle Partners has partnerships with 20 universities, including University of Virginia, Tulane University, University of Michigan, and University of Tennessee, and aim to partner with even more universities this year.

Regulatory News

• Richard Garrett of the education research firm Eduventures shared his predictions for higher ed this year. He’s anticipating growth in certificate program enrollment and notes that there has been a depression in the number of CS grads as coding bootcamp graduates continue to rise. His third prediction is that in 2020, coding bootcamp graduates will outnumber domestic Master’s degrees awarded in Computer Science.

• An interesting piece on Texas Public Radio just came out about Texas coding bootcamps and the TWC (Texas Workforce Commission) which is the regulatory body that oversees them. It’s a 6-minute listen – totally worth it.

• The Information reported that Lambda School has pulled out of CIRR. Lambda School reported in 2018 that 85.9% of their graduates found jobs in their field within 180 days, but founder Austin Allred now says that they will publish their own outcomes report.

New Partnerships

• Launch Academy has officially partnered with Apprenti, a federally recognized registered apprenticeship program. Students will do the 19 week Launch Academy bootcamp and will conclude with a two-week small group project.

• Galvanize has partnered with the U.S. Air Force. Galvanize was awarded a Phase I SBIR contract by the U.S. Air Force to train those on active-duty.

• According to CNBC, Southeast airline AirAsia has teamed up with Google to create AirAsia Google Cloud Academy.

Women in Tech

• This is not breaking news, but the tech industry is still struggling with diversity. While the U.S. Labor Department shows that the percentage of women in the workforce has climbed to 46.8%, a recent Adeva report shows that women only make up 25% of computing jobs within the tech workspace. How do we fix this? Tech news site Techaeris recommends women enroll in coding bootcamps.

• All-women coding bootcamp Ada Developer Academy welcomed new CEO Lauren Sato.

Wisdom For and From Bootcampers

• Melanie Curtin from Inc. listed five things you didn’t know that recruiters look for on your resume. Melanie points out that most recruiters aren’t looking for an Ivy League education. She even says that a recruiter for Accenture said that when recruiting for a software engineering position in a past role, she was more interested in people who'd graduated from coding bootcamps than those with a BS in Computer Science from a prestigious college.

• If you’ve been rejected for a data science position, Analytics India Mag recommends brushing up on your skills by enrolling in a course like the Introduction to data science from Metis.

New Coding Bootcamps

• According to Irish Tech News, Wild Code School just opened a campus in Dublin, Ireland for its 5-month long web-development course.

• Electric Works is a mixed-use space within a repurposed factory building in Fort Wayne, Indiana that hopes to open its own coding bootcamp later this year. 

• Fullstack Academy has partnered with Louisiana State University to offer a new cybersecurity and web development certificate program this year. 

• Trilogy Education is partnering with Arizona State University to launch a part-time cybersecurity bootcamp in Phoenix.

In January, we added these 12 new bootcamps to the Course Report directory:

• Framingham State University (in partnership with Stack Education)

• Worcester State University (in partnership with Stack Education)

• St. Joseph’s College of Maine (in partnership with Stack Education)

• CodingU (in partnership with Code Fellows and Washington Technology University)

• University of Central Florida (in partnership with HackerU)

• California State University - Long Beach (in partnership with HackerU)

• American University (in partnership with HackerU)

• LakeHub Academy

• Flow State Academy

• Alterra Academy

• Developers.Institute

• EnkiCamp

Our Favorite January Pieces on the Course Report Blog

To kick off the New Year, quite a few schools launched new courses – and Liz got to publish deep-dives about a few of these:

• Everything you need to know about Codesmith’s new online bootcamp

• Inside Springboard’s new software engineering career track with Colt Steele

• Inside Brainstation’s Digital Marketing Diploma Program

Jess’s favorite piece (and first piece for Course Report!) is this spotlight on Pedro, a Wyncode alumni Pedro – Pedro landed an amazing job as lead software engineer at Miami’s Restaurant Brands International.