consolidation. Stowe predicts that some of the weaker programs will close, stronger bootcamps will rise, and there will be a lot of mergers and acquisitions.
—Increased government and regulatory support. “We’re seeing greater support from the government for alternative education offerings like bootcamps and [massive open online courses], and we fully support that,” Stowe said. Students are not alone in the debate over college vs. vocational coding schools, either, he said. With Dev Bootcamp approaching its fourth anniversary next month, Stowe said, “We’re going to try to follow up and do some research on our outcomes on not just the first group, but on the groups from the first year. How many are in management? How many are still programmers? How many have grown in their careers? How many times have they changed jobs?”
—Stronger partnerships between coding schools and corporations. “Companies are looking to hire talented developers and to refresh the hard and soft skills of their workforce,” Stowe said. He anticipates a growth in company-specific courses, such as the “soft skills” training that Dev Bootcamp provides engineers to help them thrive in the workplace.
—Greater emphasis on a more diverse array of skills. Coding has become a foundational skill, Stowe said, but employers are demanding skills in specific areas such as big data, analytics, machine learning, privacy, and cybersecurity. “With Metis [also a Kaplan-affiliated educational program] we can train data scientists in a matter of weeks, as opposed to a year-long, or years-long masters’ degree,” Stowe said.
Dev Bootcamp spokesman Chris Nishimura says the San Diego program, which was supposed to launch in November, was delayed until December 28 due to construction planning. “Based on demand for the program and the need for qualified Web developers in San Diego, we certainly plan to continue in the market,” Nishimura wrote in an e-mail. The next class is scheduled to begin the first nine-week phase of the 19-week program today (Feb. 29), with subsequent cohorts set to begin in San Diego on May 23 and August 22.
Dev Bootcamp emphasizes hands-on, project-based learning over traditional classroom lectures and homework, teaching students to write code in such Web development programs as Ruby on Rails, HTML5 & CSS, and JavaScript.
Reviewers generally give Dev Bootcamp good marks on the Course Report website (4.6 out of 5 stars), and Stowe said the 19-week program is divided conceptually into teaching students interpersonal “soft” skills, like empathy, (so they can keep the job they get), “hard” coding skills, and “meta-cognitive” skills, so they can learn new skills in the ever-changing computer industry.
“Somebody coming out of our program may be trained in Ruby or Java, but we also train them to learn new skills, how to optimize, and to learn new technologies very quickly,” Stowe said.
