February 2020 Coding Bootcamp News

Table of Contents

• $70 Million in Coding Bootcamp Fundraises
• 3 University Bootcamp Updates
• Lambda School News: Regulatory & ISA Discussion
• Bridging the Tech Gap
• The Future of Tech Education in 2020
• News About New Coding Bootcamps
• Our Favorite February Pieces on the Course Report Blog

February was busy with $70 million in fundraising, 5 new university-bootcamp partnerships, and regulatory controversies that centered around California schools Lambda School and Holberton School. We also talk about two new influential reports about tech training this month, and continued discussion about the future of tech education. And of course we round up new campuses, and 13 new coding bootcamps we added to the Course Report directory in February.

Looking for a high-level overview of the entire bootcamp industry? Course Report cofounder Liz Eggleston recently gave a talk about the state of the coding bootcamp industry that talk is now available via Skill FM! And if you’re looking to dig a little deeper, we published our Guide to Coding Bootcamps in 2020 as a free, 40-page PDF report.

Curious about what happened in January? Check out last month’s episode where we round up the biggest news from January 2020.

$70 Million in Coding Bootcamp Fundraises

• According to EdSurge, Udemy, an online learning platform with over 150,000 courses, has raised a $50 million Series E round of funding, claiming a $2 billion valuation.

• Bloomberg reported that Bangalore-based startup InterviewBit raised $20 million at a $110 million valuation.

• EdSurge published an article about Dunce Capital, which is a $3.5M fund that offers angel funding for small education startups like sales bootcamp SV Academy. 

• Edsurge also reported on 2U’s earnings report for 2019 so we got a peek into how Trilogy is performing on 2U’s books. 

  • According to Education Dive, 2U plans to launch 6 lower-cost bachelor’s degrees in partnership with the London School of Economics.

  • Yahoo Finance reported that Trilogy is opening a FinTech bootcamp with the University of Toronto. University Business reported that Michigan State University partnered with Trilogy to create a full stack coding bootcamp in Detroit. 

3 University Bootcamp Updates

• Cision PRWeb reports that Noodle Partners is now partnering with the University of Tulsa to create an online cybersecurity bootcamp.

• Central New Mexico Community College offers a 10-week Data Science bootcamp, according to Cision PRWeb.

• Yahoo! Finance reports that Fullstack Academy is expanding its partnership with University of San Diego to include an in-person coding bootcamp. 

Lambda School News: Regulatory & ISA Discussion

• Business Insider did a deeper dive into Lambda School founder & CEO Austen Allred and Lambda School’s claims around job placement. 

• The Verge explored the potentially high cost of the ISA.

• New York Magazine also looked into Lambda School’s job placement figures for its graduates and ISA structure.

• In a Betakit article, Josh Borts, the CEO of Lighthouse Labs, came to Lambda’s defense.

• The BPPE issued an emergency ruling that Holberton School must pause their bootcamp in California.

• Business Review reports that Wild Code School is now accredited by the National Qualifications Authority with the approval of the Ministry of Labor and the Ministry of Education.

Bridging the Tech Gap

• A new report came out this February from New York’s Center for an Urban Future about the state of tech training in New York City. The report finds that while existing programs are successful, there aren’t enough options in enough neighborhoods in NY. This report was covered by InsideHigherEd and The New York Times. 

• Applications are now open for two new cohorts through the NYC Tech Talent Pipeline! New York City residents can now apply for the Data Analyst Training Accelerator at Galvanize and NYC Web Development Fellowship at Flatiron School. 

• The Olean Times Herald reports on Flatiron School’s $1.3 million partnership with The Department of Small Business Services and the NYC Tech Talent Pipeline to train NYC residents for a career in software engineering. 

• TechRepublic reported that Flatiron School announced a partnership with Cognizant US Foundation to offer the NexTech100 scholarship which grants $1.2 million total to 100 students from either high-need or underrepresented backgrounds. Flatiron school also unveiled its Women Take Tech Initiative, a new campaign toward gender parity in the tech world.

• InsideHigherEd just reported that the American Workforce Policy Advisory Board will be launching a national advertising campaign promoting education alternatives like bootcamps to the traditional four-year degree. This was created in association with CEO Tim Cook of Apple and the now former CEO of IBM, Ginny Rommetty.

• Lila Macellan wrote in Quartz this February about how Etsy doubled the number of Black and Latinx employees hired in 2019 from the previous year by partnering with schools, including Flatiron School, Npower, VetsWhoCode and Render ATL.

• BET listed Atlanta, Georgia as the new tech mecca, especially for African Americans. Atlanta is the second largest majority Black metro area in the US, and home to large companies like Coca Cola, Macy’s, and Delta Airlines.

• Coding Dojo is opening their Bellevue campus up to five refugees from Rwanda, Burundi, Ukraine and Ethiopia. 

• The Jakarta Post reported on the growth of the digital economy in Indonesia. Indonesia is now turning to coding schools like Purwadhika coding school to continue growing.

The Future of Tech Education in 2020

• In an interview with Fast Company, Ryan Craig, cofounder of University Ventures, says the big trend for all learning institutions will be to focus on a student’s employability post-graduation. Craig says alternative education programs like coding bootcamps and company-sponsored apprenticeship programs will only see increased enrollment; however, the most successful programs will bridge bootcamp graduates with entry-level tech job opportunities. 

• The Pie News reports that at the recent HolonIQ summit in London, ed tech investors such as Emerge Education and Bisk Ventures hammered home the point that universities need to be agile to survive, and that partnering with coding bootcamps is a way to ensure success.

• In a recent article, Forbes shared its criticism of bootcamps as stemming from unstandardized curriculum, lack of accreditation status, and instructors that lack pedagogical training. 

• TechRepublic and CIO Dive covered the HackerRank report released this month, which says that 32% of hiring managers have hired a bootcamper, and that 72% of those managers believe that bootcamp grads are equally or better equipped for their jobs than traditional CS grads. And nearly one-in-six Gen Z respondents learned from a bootcamp!

• Brainstation released its Digital Skills Survey this month, which focuses on the skills that developers will need on a five-year horizon.

• A recent TechRepublic article suggested that successful IT professionals won't limit themselves to the nuts & bolts of code, but will double as advisors, helping with vendor selection, mapping overflow, and improving processes. The most important takeaway is that all tech professionals should do their due diligence and stay up-to-date on all the latest technologies! 

• We also saw a controversial post come out of Dice about programming languages that won’t be in use by 2030. Dice’s predicts that Perl, Objective-C, Ruby on Rails, R, and Coffeescript will be defunct within ten years. 

• The News Observer recommends that companies think about training their own employees internally, as IBM does. 

• Forbes has some great onboarding recommendations when hiring bootcampers – assigning a peer mentor, giving tech hires ample time to dig through old code to familiarize them with your codebase and style, and having tech hires play different roles to get an understanding of all aspects of your team. 

News About New Coding Bootcamps

• Nashville Biz Journal highlighted new Nashville coding bootcamp CodeX, which was created with the idea of supporting and keeping tech talent in Nashville. 

• The West Virginian Gazette reported on the opening of NewForce, which is a 6-month, tuition-free software development training program created in partnership with Mountwest Community and Technical College in Huntington and the West Virginia Community and Technical College System.

• The data science bootcamp Metis is launching a live, online bootcamp.

• FutureFive spotlit Vietnam’s new CoderSchool, highlighting the low cost of living and vibrant culture of Ho Chi Minh as well as CoderSchool’s full stack and machine learning programs as a great reason for international students to enroll. 

In February, we added these 13 new bootcamps to the Course Report directory:

• Applied Course

• Becker College School of Graduate and Professional Studies IT Bootcamps (in partnership with QuickStart)

• Colaberry

• CourseCareers

• FACE Prep’s ProGrad program

• Florida Atlantic University’s Center for Online and Continuing Education bootcamp (in partnership with QuickStart)

• goHarness

• Mindmajix

• PrefaceNomad

• Reboot Academy

• Ubunifu College

• Uplift Code Camp

• WBS Coding School

Our Favorite February Pieces on the Course Report Blog

Liz has interviewed so many data science bootcamp graduates, so she was most excited to put this piece together about data science jobs that bootcamp graduates can land – plus what each of those jobs actually do.  

Jess’s favorite piece was a spotlight on two alumni from Tech Elevator’s Ohio campuses. Both alumni are three years out from their Tech Elevator graduation, and now they have amazing Senior Engineer jobs at Google and Accenture!