March 2021 Coding Bootcamp News

Table of Contents

• 1 MAJOR ACQUISITION & 2 FUNDRAISES
• TREND ALERT: THE ISA FUNDRAISE
• WOMEN IN BOOTCAMPS
• RESKILLING A POST-PANDEMIC WORKFORCE
• BOOTCAMP ALUMNI SUCCESS STORIES
• 5 NEW SCHOOLS & PARTNERSHIPS
• 21 NEW SCHOOLS ADDED TO COURSE REPORT
• FAVORITE PIECES ON THE BLOG

We’re wrapping up March, which is Women’s History Month, so it’s only appropriate to share media coverage about the women-in-tech initiatives and scholarships at coding bootcamps. Over at the Course Report office, we published our Alumni Outcomes & Demographics Report in March and it offered key insights into how coding bootcamps are lifting women in tech. March also marks one year since the pandemic began in the U.S., so we’re diving into all of the workforce development news we saw in the US, UK, and Canada. Plus, we’re covering the one big bootcamp acquisition of March (hint: it turns the university-bootcamp partnership model on its head!), and the 21 new bootcamps we added to the Course Report directory.

Curious about what happened in February 2021? Check out last month’s episode with the biggest bootcamp news from February.

1 MAJOR ACQUISITION & 2 FUNDRAISES

• Education Dive covered Southern New Hampshire University’s acquisition of Kenzie Academy.
• TechCrunch reports that NYU professor Scott Galloway raised $30 million to launch Section4, an online bootcamp that upskills business managers. 
• Silicon Canals reports that Hungarian coding bootcamp Codecool raised €7M in March.
• 2U, Inc. welcomed Lorin Thomas-Tavel to their leadership team as the new Managing Director of Boot Camps. 

TREND ALERT: THE ISA FUNDRAISE

• Business Insider reports that Rithm School landed $25M in incentive-aligned tuition funding so they can grow their income share agreement program. 
• According to NPR, The U.S. Department of Education announced it is scrapping a controversial rule that granted only partial student loan relief to borrowers who were defrauded by private, for-profit colleges.

WOMEN IN BOOTCAMPS

• In our recent Bootcamp Alumni Outcomes & Demographics Report, we found that while women are still underrepresented in coding bootcamps compared to census data, the percentage of women improves year over year (41% in 2020!) and continues to outpace the percentage of women in traditional computer science degree programs. Females also had a slightly greater salary lift – 59% salary lift versus 53% for males. 
• Information Week dove into how scholarships can support diversity and inclusion, and highlighted Flatiron School’s Women Take Tech program.
• Wise has partnered with Product School to provide $90K of education scholarships to women and non-binary people.
• The Salt Lake City Tribune highlighted Tech Moms, a 9-week part-time intro to tech class that offers daycare and laptops and helps local women bridge into tech careers.
• Denver News 7 reports that Hack Reactor alum Kelly Revenaugh has helped create a support group where women can share their experiences, mistakes, and questions with other women in the bootcamp.
• According to Inside Indiana Business, Microsoft awarded a $300,000 grant to the Be Nimble Foundation, which will be used to provide digital skills and workforce development for Black talent in the tech sector. Be Nimble partners with six training bootcamps, including Eleven Fifty Academy.

RESKILLING A POST-PANDEMIC WORKFORCE

• In the UK, nearly two-thirds of companies surveyed by a recent CWJobs’ Tackling Tech Training Report say they’ve increased their spend on technology hiring in 2020 and 58% of those companies say the pandemic has put greater pressure on hiring tech talent.
• Politico dove into how higher education and tech companies are racing to roll out programs and credentialing to ensure people out of jobs and students are prepared to step into technical roles.
• NewsAnyway hammered out why employee training is so crucial in the workplace.
• Looking for a corporate training provider for your organization? Check out Course Report’s corporate training page to find the program that’s right for your team!
• The CBC wrote about how an estimated 25% of working people in Canada have started over in jobs completely unrelated to what they did before COVID-19. CBC highlighted Lighthouse Labs alum Megan Hein who made a career change from the service industry into software engineering in 2020.
• Nucamp announced a $50K scholarship fund for former employees of either Best Buy or Fry's to receive about 25% credit towards a Front End or Full Stack bootcamp tuition. 
• Galvanize announced their new professional development courses.

BOOTCAMP ALUMNI SUCCESS STORIES

• News5 Cleveland highlighted Tech Elevator grad Seth Boyle who was a musician and barista pre-pandemic. When his job and all of his music gigs were wiped out in 2020, he turned to Tech Elevator to pivot into software engineering. 
• A team of Metis data science bootcamp alumni received an honorable mention from the XPrize’s Pandemic Response Challenge for their project, www.StopCovidNow.co. This challenge focused on the development of data-driven AI systems to predict COVID-19 infection rates and prescribe Intervention Plans (IPs) that regional governments, communities, and organizations can implement to minimize harm when reopening their economies. 

5 NEW SCHOOLS & PARTNERSHIPS

• Code Fellows announced two new partnerships this month. They have partnered with CodeCrew in Memphis and Nashville’s PivotTech.
• Google announced that it’s expanding its certificate programs through a partnership with Guild Education.
• Stack Education is partnering with various universities to offer a Clinical Trial Management bootcamp. 
• According to KRQE, The Thoma Foundation partnered with the Central New Mexico Community College Ingenuity program to fund a new UX/UI Deep Dive Coding Bootcamp to help students in rural areas throughout New Mexico.
• LearningFuze is now offering a data science bootcamp and is reopening its in-person campus in California.

21 NEW SCHOOLS ADDED TO COURSE REPORT

We added 21 new bootcamps to the Course Report school listings this month:

• Kellogg Digital Marketing Bootcamp
• Dartmouth Engineering Data Science Bootcamp
• MIT xPro Bootcamp
• NYU Tandon School of Engineering Bootcamps
• University of Hartford Bootcamps
• University of Vermont Bootcamps
• St. Joseph’s University Bootcamps
• Beetroot Academy
• YouGrow
• CloudInstitute.IO
• IIM Skills
• Headstart Academy
• CyberWarrior
• RenasTech
• AwakeLab
• QA in USA 
• Path Unbound
• Develhope
• Masters Design Lab
• Top Interns
• Assembler School of Software Engineering

FAVORITE PIECES ON THE BLOG

Jess had the opportunity to work with Thinkful experts Jim Jones and Anne de Ridder to create two dynamite pieces about product management and technical project management. Jim and Anne break down the differences between product management and project management, what the career paths look like, and how Thinkful’s online bootcamps are helping both career changers and upskillers get their dream job in project management and product management. 

Liz enjoyed speaking with two couples who have all started their tech careers with DigitalCrafts. Lee and Danny graduated from DigitalCrafts three years ago and both recommended DigitalCrafts to their significant others. Now, Danny’s wife Kim and Lee’s husband Tait are graduating from DigitalCrafts and they all shared really good advice about choosing a bootcamp, excelling in a remote bootcamp, getting a job, shining in the interview process, and more.