July 2016 Coding Bootcamp News Roundup + Podcast

Table of Contents

• General News
• Diversity
• Investments/Fundraising/Updates
• Tech Giants Launching Bootcamps
• College vs Bootcamps
• Outcomes
• New Coding Bootcamps
• Favorite Pieces to Write in July for the Course Report Blog

Welcome to the July 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. This month the biggest trends this month are initiatives to increase the diversity in tech, some huge investments in various bootcamps, and more tech giants launching their own coding classes. Read below or listen to our latest Coding Bootcamp News Roundup Podcast!

• General News
• Diversity
• Investments/Fundraising
• Tech Giants Launching Bootcamps
• College vs Bootcamps
• Outcomes
• New Coding Bootcamps
• Favorite Pieces to Write in July for the Course Report blog

General News

Listen: 01:37

Course Report + Flatiron School Full Scholarship
July
Course Report
Together with Flatiron School in NYC, we held a competition for a student to win a full scholarship to Flatiron’s Web Development in-person program. The lucky winner was Jessica H, and because Flatiron had so many amazing entrants, they also gave away a scholarship to their remote bootcamp Learn to Dallin W. Congratulations!

Composing Code: Why Musicians Make great Software Developers
July 3
By Tech Elevator Founder Anthony Hughes, Huffington Post
Tech Elevator founder Anthony Hughes wrote a piece for the Huffington Post about why musicians make great software developers. This is really interesting because in our 2015 outcomes report, we found that people who had majored in music for undergrad saw the greatest salary jump after attending a bootcamp, compared to other majors. Anthony writes about how musicians have analytical, methodical and logical minds - which are also great attributes for a developer. And anecdotally, we have actually spoken to bootcamp grads who found their music backgrounds were super useful while learning to code. Check out our alumni spotlight on General Assembly grad (and singer) Rachel Smyth who was a finalist on American Idol, and is now a developer at a music startup!
Related: Alumni Spotlight: Rachel Smyth of General Assembly
Related: Alumni Spotlight: Julia Wells of Sabio (coming soon)

Metis becomes the first and only data science training bootcamp in the United States to accept international M-1 Visa students
July 19
Business Wire
Metis data science bootcamp recently announced that they are the first data science bootcamp in the U.S. authorized to enroll international students with M-1 visas. An M-1 Visa is a temporary student visa that allows international students to attend an accredited vocational or non-academic school, such as a trade school. International students who are already in the U.S. on an F-1 visa may also transfer to Metis. If you’re an international student looking for bootcamp options, check out Metis’ data science bootcamp with campuses in NYC or San Francisco.
Related: An International Student’s Guide to Coding Bootcamps

Survive Getting Laid off and Bounce Back like a boss in these 3 easy steps
July 18
By Chris Riotta, Mic
In this article, Chris Riotta gives an example of a guy called David who got laid off and decided to use that spare time to upskill and go to a coding bootcamp. David then ended up with a much better job than the one he left. This shows that coding bootcamps are not just for people at the start of their careers - and we have seen a number of examples of this on our blog. Check out our interviews with Hack Reactor grad Tyson, and RefactorU grad Clayton.
Related: Alumni Spotlight: Tyson of Hack Reactor
Related: Alumni Spotlight: Clayton of RefactorU

Be Nice to Nerds
July 16
The Economist
In the Economist article “Be Nice to Nerds”, the writer looks at how the adage “be nice to nerds, you may end up working for them” is extremely true, and developers are now thought of as the “new kingmakers” in companies. Developers (the article calls them nerds) are becoming more prolific, and the author actually sees the growth of coding bootcamps as an indicator that this is true.

Diversity

Listen: 06:00

Cultivating Coders partners with Hispano Chamber on boot camps
July 1
By Kevin Robinson-Avila, Albuquerque Journal
The Albuquerque Hispano Chamber of Commerce is helping fund people with disabilities to take a coding bootcamp. 21 students will be able to take Cultivating Coders’ 8-week bootcamp, which usually costs $7950 each. The Hispano chamber of commerce wants to help people in under-served areas get high-paying jobs in an in-demand field. The interesting thing about this assistance is it is also primarily aimed at helping disabled individuals who qualify for government educational assistance through the Division of Vocational Rehabilitation (DVR).

Facebook donates 15M to Code.org to diversify computer science education
July 14
By Blake Montgomery, EdSurge
Facebook has pledged $15 million towards computer education. Over the next five years, Facebook will give this amount to Code.org, a nonprofit which aims to expand access to computer science through its Hour of Code initiative, and its introductory classes. Code.org has a focus on diversity and so far 45 percent of participants are female and 48 percent are underrepresented minorities. Facebook also partnered with Lesbians who Tech and Dev Bootcamp earlier this year, to sponsor 20 women to learn to code at a coding bootcamp.

SE Factory's Bootcamp For Tech Graduates Aims To Bridge Lebanon's Skills Gap
July 18
By Sindhu Hariharan, Entrepreneur
A new coding bootcamp has launched in Lebanon to allow people from all backgrounds and socio-economic levels to benefit from coding skills. SE Factory is a 3-month bootcamp and aims to provide underprivileged and low-income youths with employment and entrepreneurship opportunities.

ThoughtWorks offers £8000 scholarships to women
July 4
Gadgette
Chicago-based software company Thoughtworks has announced they will give full scholarships to six women to take Makers Academy coding bootcamp in London, England. We see a lot of bootcamps that offer scholarships, but it’s cool to see this initiative coming from an actual software company.
Related: Coding Bootcamp Scholarships for Women

40 Girls will participate in a hands-on computer science program
July6 2016
By Darlene Aderoju, EdScoop
The university of Southern California has teamed up with Girls Who Code to host an immersion bootcamp for high school students who will graduate soon. Darlene Aderoju explains that educating young women about tech at a younger age, increases the likelihood that they may go into STEM careers when they graduate.

Over 140k in grants awarded to nonprofit organizations in Prince George’s County
July 12
By Brad Bell, ABC7
Prince George’s County, Maryland has announced grants of up to 19,000 dollars for nonprofits like 100 Black Men of Prince George’s County who will put young people through a 9-week coding bootcamp.

U.S. veterans enrolled at SA tech school may get full tuition covered
July 7
By Kristen Mosbrucker, BizJournals
A San Antonio coding school, CodeUp, has just been approved by the US Dept. of Veteran Affairs to allow students to utilize benefits of the G.I. Bill for their education. CodeUp's four-month course exposes students to a variety of coding languages and costs $17,500; GI Bill benefits would potentially cover up to 100 percent of the tuition. While the exact benefit for each veteran depends on the years of military service and other factors, this new way to finance learning to code is a prominent step for bootcamp education.

Investments/Fundraising/Updates

Listen: 11:04

Education player Code Institute raises €500,000 investment
July 8
By John Kennedy, Silicon Republic
Ireland-based coding bootcamp Code Institute has received a 500,000 euro investment. The investment comes from the Bank of Ireland, the Early Stage Equity Fund, and Enterprise Ireland, and aims to tackle the widening skills gap across Europe. The EU commission has predicted there will be 825,000 tech job vacancies by 2020.

Codecademy raises another $30 million led by Naspers
July 12
By Ingrid Lunden, Jonathan Shieber, Tech Crunch
Codecademy raises $30 million to expand coding education
July 11
By Tony Wan, EdSurge
Codecademy raises $30 million series C round
July 12
By Nathan McAlon, Business Insider
Free online coding course provider Codecademy has raised 30 million dollars and plans to expand its offerings. This is exciting because Codecademy has been around since 2011 and has 25 million users, but has mainly only offered only free services. Last summer the company launched Codecademy Pro, which costs $20 per month. This new funding takes Codecademy’s total funding to 42.5 million dollars. The main investor in Codecademy was Naspers, who also invested $60 million in Udemy in June, and $15 million in Brainly in May.

General Assembly Lays Off ~50 People
July 25
Kathleen Pender, San Francisco Chronicle
We don’t know nearly enough about these layoffs to comment, but here are the facts:

• Coding bootcamp General Assembly laid off 50 people or about 7 percent of its staff.
• GA still has more than a dozen full- and part-time job openings in San Francisco and plans to open a campus in or near San Jose later this year
• Jake Schwartz, GA’s co-founder and chief executive, told the SF Chronicle that layoffs were necessary because the company “grew 5,000 percent in the last five years in terms of revenue and more than that in terms of headcount. When you grow like that you don’t always grow the right way all around the world. Things get out of whack.”

Strayer Q2 Earnings Call
July 27
Seeking Alpha
Since acquiring New York Code & Design Academy, Strayer Education now includes NYCDA in their quarterly earnings calls. Interesting stuff for us! Here are the highlights from the Q2 call:

• ~$3 million was relegated to the expansion of NYCDA (apparently, NYCDA received regulatory approvals faster than Strayer had anticipated).
• Expansion plans include seven new NYCDA locations by the end of 2016. This includes locations in Washington DC, Philadelphia, Atlanta, Raleigh, Austin, Salt Lake City and Seattle.
• In every case except Seattle, these new NYCDA locations will be housed in Strayer University campuses to operate.

Tech Giants Launching Bootcamps

Listen: 13:22

Apple will open an iOS application developer academy in Italy
July 8
By Joe Rossignol, MacRumors
Apple has announced that its iOS developer academy will open in Italy in October this year, in partnership with the University of Naples.This is an update on a previous announcement from Apple in January that they would be starting a training facility at some point. In its first year, the program aims to teach 200 students how to make iOS apps. The nine-month curriculum was designed by Apple itself, and also covers design techniques and startup creation skills.

Microsoft announces professional degree program to fill the skills gap
July 14
By Lucia Maffei, Tech Crunch
Microsoft has partnered with edX.org, a nonprofit online learning website to offer a Microsoft Professional Degree program in data science, aiming to help professionals grow their skills in in-demand fields. Microsoft also already has a summer data science program.
Related: Microsoft Research Data Science Summer School’s Course Report page

College vs Bootcamps

Listen: 14:50

Bootcamps Are Refactoring Computer Science Education
July 1
By David Yang (Fullstack Academy), Huffington Post
Fullstack Academy founder David Yang wrote an article for Huffington Post about the ongoing debate between CS degrees and coding bootcamps. He criticizes some of the “arcane ideas” being taught in CS degrees, and says that “we can’t expect to create a scalable and competitive workforce of programmers if we’re limited to the pool of people who are accepted to top universities.” He is in favor of bootcamps filling this gap, claiming that “bootcamps have proven to be much more effective in closing the education to employment gap in tech”. And here at Course Report we are starting to see students forgoing college to go straight to a bootcamp. We recently spoke to 18-year-old Josh who skipped university and went straight from high school to Holberton School in San Francisco.
Related: Student Spotlight: Josh of Holberton School

Can you launch a tech career without four years of college?
July 19
By Anne Fisher, Fortune

A high schooler wrote to Annie Fisher of Fortune Magazine to ask her if he can become a computer programmer without going to college and getting in debt. Anne responded that he probably should go to college, but mentions coding bootcamps as a potential alternative, as long as he works really hard. However, she concedes that she still thinks he should go to college to get a more “rounded education” including soft skills and writing skills, and because many employers require a college degree, especially as you climb the ranks.
Related: CS Degrees vs Coding Bootcamps Webinar

Outcomes

Listen: 16:30

How coding bootcamps can escape the fate of Trump University
July 12
By Darrell Silver (Thinkful), MarketWatch
Thinkful founder Darrell Silver has written a piece for Market Watch explaining how coding bootcamps can escape the fate of Trump University. This piece continues the debate among coding bootcamps about outcomes reporting, and whether it is necessary or possible to standardize a way for bootcamps to report their outcomes. A flurry of medium articles have also contributed to this debate, with posts from Dev Bootcamp, and Turing. Darrell argues that reliable and comparable outcomes data is essential so that students can work out which bootcamps are trustworthy and will actually help them get jobs as developers.
Related: The Myth of Bootcamp “Transparency” by Jon Stowe, President at Dev Bootcamp
Related: Bootcamps Are Lying to You by Jorge Tellez, Growth and Operations at Turing
Related: My plea for whole truths by Lia James, Partnerships Manager at Turing
Related: Students demanding the facts about coding bootcamps by Darrell Silver

New Coding Bootcamps

Listen: 17:51

French billionaire offers free code education
July 16
By Kathleen Pender, San Francisco Chronicle
We previewed free code school 42 in our May podcast, but now it has actually opened in Silicon Valley. This article is about how the school, founded and funded by French billionaire Xavier Niel, has started its “piscine” portion of the program where students compete for one of 300 places in the 3-year tuition-free program. The school also offers free housing for people from out of town with a 160-bed dormitory. Fun fact: Course Report co-founder Liz was interviewed for this article!
Related: 42 Course Report Page

New coding boot camps to start this fall at Seattle Central College
June 28
By Katherine Long, Seattle Times
Seattle Central College has won a grant of $3.8 million dollars to help students take coding bootcamps. This initiative aims to train people without college degrees, and get them into paid apprenticeships in Seattle-area startups. Seattle Central College has partnered with LaunchCode, a St Louis nonprofit, to train 700 people over 4 years.
Related: University and Coding Bootcamp Partnerships

Why a new cybersecurity bootcamp chose DC as its launch city
July 13
By Tajha Chappellet-Lanier, Technically DC
Washington, DC is now home to cybersecurity bootcamp, Empower Security Academy. It launched a month ago to fill the cybersecurity gap. According to Peninsula Press, there are currently about 209,000 unfilled cybersecurity positions. The founders saw this as a huge problem. Especially since their experience revealed that many backend engineers didn’t have the cybersecurity knowledge needed. They figured a bootcamp model was the solution. And get this, one of the founders couldn’t get a job with his tech knowledge until after he became a Hack Reactor bootcamp alum. (He had a masters in information science.) After Hack Reactor he saw the opportunity to start his own. Empower Security Academy’s first cohort will be this October.

Other new bootcamps:

• Growth X in San Francisco
• Code Tahoe in Nevada
• Codeworks in Barcelona
• Basecamp in Vienna
• TAG Innovation School in Milan
• RED Academy in Toronto and Vancouver
• Array School of Technology in Wyoming
• Redwood Code Academy in Santa Ana

Favorite Pieces to Write in July for the Course Report Blog

Listen: 21:47

Engineering Empathy at Dev Bootcamp
July 19, 2016
By Imogen Crispe, Course Report

Student Spotlight: Emma Schafer of Software Guild​
August 8, 2016
By Lauren Stewart, Course Report

Alumni Spotlight: Wendy Zenone of Hackbright Academy
July 14, 2016
By Liz Eggleston, Course Report