July 2021 Coding Bootcamp News

Table of Contents

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• 1 MAJOR ACQUISITION + $35M IN FUNDRAISES
• ISA REGULATION + PELL GRANTS IN BOOTCAMPS
• TECH HIRING IN JULY 2021
• 7 PUBLIC/PRIVATE PARTNERSHIPS THAT VALIDATE THE BOOTCAMP MODEL
• BRINGING (AND KEEPING) UNDERREPRESENTED FOLKS INTO TECH
• 9 NEW SCHOOLS + 3 NEW CAMPUSES
• 8 NEW SCHOOLS ADDED TO COURSE REPORT
• FAVORITE PIECES ON THE BLOG

This July, we’re reporting on one huge ($850M!) bootcamp acquisition and $35 million in bootcamp fundraises. Two higher ed experts opined about both sides of the debate around expanding federal funding like Pell grants to short-term programs like bootcamps. We’re also covering what bootcamps need to do beyond just teaching students to code, and we’ll share a bunch of partnerships that are giving validity to the bootcamp model in July. Plus, find out which 8 new bootcamps we added to the Course Report directory this month!

July 2021 is the month that bootcamps started returning to in-person learning! Check out our COVID-19 + Coding Bootcamps post to find out which coding bootcamps are reopening their in-person campuses for upcoming cohorts!

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

1 MAJOR ACQUISITION + $35M IN FUNDRAISES

• 2U (which owns Trilogy Education) announced they will acquire substantially all of edX’s assets for $800M in cash. Proceeds of the transaction will go to a nonprofit led by Harvard and MIT focused on transforming educational outcomes, tackling learning inequities. Verdict covered the pushback from the higher ed community on this recent acquisition.

• CodeBoxx raised $2 million in a seed round led by MadaLuxe Group.
• According to TechCrunch, Microverse has raised $12.5M. 
• CodeOp closed an investment round worth €1.25.
• According to the University of Kansas, a $50,000 grant from an anonymous donor to KU Endowment, is funding scholarships for KU Boot Camps. 
• CodeX Academy and Pivot Technology School both raised $10M in incentive-aligned tuition financing through Leif, and they will use that money to expand its ISA tuition financing program for students.

ISA REGULATION + PELL GRANTS IN BOOTCAMPS

• InsideHigherEd published a debate on the pros and cons of expanding the US’s federal financial aid program, specifically Pell Grants, to include eight-week vocational programs.
• Forbes highlighted how ISAs are growing in popularity in the traditional college sphere.
• According to Marketwatch, the Student Borrower Protection Center is helping bootcamp graduates who landed jobs as software engineers sue Make School because of hidden fees. 

TECH HIRING IN JULY 2021

• Business Leader says tech hiring in the UK is at its highest level, averaging over 100K job vacancies per week. 
• The New York Times covered President Biden’s new jobs plan, which calls for billions of dollars in workforce training, including funds for “wraparound services” like career counseling.
• Patrick Lynott, Head of UK admissions & placement at Boolean, wrote a guest post in B Daily News about why “learning to code” isn’t a career and tech bootcamps need to do more.
• Hechinger Report dove into the importance of paid training as a means to recruit diverse tech talent, and how the new National Apprenticeship Act could help more people access these kinds of programs.
• Seattle Business Magazine highlighted how former bartenders and servers made a career pivot into software engineering after graduating from Coding Dojo.
• BusinessInsider also highlighted how many people are switching from service industry jobs to tech roles like software engineering, and spotlit recent bootcamp grads from Tech Elevator and Hack Reactor.

7 PUBLIC/PRIVATE PARTNERSHIPS THAT VALIDATE THE BOOTCAMP MODEL

• The UK Authority reports that the London government has invested in a data science bootcamp to reskill its workers. 
• Central New Mexico Community College’s Deep Dive bootcamps have been so successful that they are now offering their programs to other community colleges and organizations. 
• Valdosta Daily Times reports that Galvanize has been awarded a Phase III SBIR Indefinite Delivery/Indefinite Quantity (IDIQ) Contract by the U.S. Department of Defense. 
• Cybint has partnered with Central Texas College to offer cybersecurity training to military students and veterans in Texas. 
• 11 Alive reports that City of Refuge has been awarded a $5.4 million grant from the Department of Labor to establish a tech career training program called the Tech Transformation Academy, which will be run in partnership with DigitalCrafts and the Carolina Cyber Center.
• According to Nashville Business Journal, Pivot Technology School partnered with Target’s Shipt to offer 30 full scholarships to students trying to get into data analytics or software engineering.
• Japan Times covered the COVID-19 open-source database created by Code Chrysalis bootcamp grad, LaShawn Toyoda.

BRINGING (AND KEEPING) UNDERREPRESENTED FOLKS INTO TECH

• Forbes covered a recent Girls in Tech report that says half of the young women who go into tech jobs leave the field by age 35 and 8 tips for employers to attract, retain and nurture more women technologists.
• The majority of graduates from Hackbright Academy and Target’s Perficient Bright Paths Program have landed jobs. 
• BeSmartee’s Women in Tech Scholarship awardees recently graduated from LearningFuze and reflect on what they learned during the program.
• Technically Philly highlights how the Microsoft LEAP Apprenticeship Program and Zip Code Wilmington are training and supporting underrepresented technologists.
• According to AP News, Mississippi Coding Academies is partnering with the University of Southern Mississippi to offer a coding bootcamp program to Gulf Coast residents by opening a campus in Biloxi.

9 NEW SCHOOLS + 3 NEW CAMPUSES

• Trilogy Education, which is a 2U brand, is now expanding their boot camp reach to Australia, with new boot camps at The University of Sydney, The University of Western Australia, and The University of Adelaide.  
• Cybint has partnered with Academy IT to offer in-person and online cybersecurity bootcamps across Australia.
• Oregon State University and The University of Texas at Dallas have both teamed up with Fullstack Academy to offer part-time data analytics bootcamps. 
• Netflix and 2U, Inc. have partnered to offer for-credit, online boot camps in data science, Java engineering and UX/UI to Marymount undergraduates. 
• CodeBoxx is launching a campus in Philadelphia by the end of this year. 
• Holberton School has partnered with Actual Leader Group to open a new campus in Paris. 
• According to Vermont Business Magazine, the Community College of Vermont has partnered with workforce retraining and education provider Upright Education to help Vermonters develop the skills they need for careers in tech at bootcamps.
• According to The News Enterprise, Greater Knox Coding Academy has partnered with the Elizabethtown Community and Technical College to train programmers in Kentucky. 
• Claim Academy will be moving to a larger campus that it purchased from Washington University this year. 
• Qwasar and Cañada College have acquired grant funding to offer a new software development training program with a low price point to draw applicants from low-income communities.

8 NEW SCHOOLS ADDED TO COURSE REPORT

The Boot Camps at the University of Sydney (Trilogy)
The University of Western Australia Boot Camps (Trilogy)
Coders Campus
Coding Bootcamps Europe
Heicoders Academy
DATAROCKSTARS
JobPrepped 
Cybertek School

FAVORITE PIECES ON THE BLOG

Jess really enjoyed speaking with FourthBrain alumni Matt about his career change. Matt is a classically trained guitarist who poured his creativity and curiosity into learning machine learning and AI by enrolling in FourthBrain’s online machine learning bootcamp. 

Liz spoke with a UX bootcamp alum, Christine about whether her Climb Credit bootcamp loan was worth it for her. Find out how she is paying off her loan while she works as a UX designer!