Wyncode Academy, a private immersive coding school based in Miami, has partnered up with Codecademy, the world’s largest online provider of programming skills with 25 million users, and five other bootcamp programs in other cities to launch ReskillUSA. It's a new initiative spearheaded by Codecademy that will offer a series of bootcamps designed to make it easier for students to get from zero to employable in the shortest time possible, and to make it easier for education providers to aid the new students.
With 1 million open programming jobs projected for 2020, ReskillUSA aims to address this growing skills gap, said its organizers.
Zach Sims, CEO of Codecademy, said the new initiative grew out of a discussion at the White House about the future of technology education. “We were, we decided, reaching only a fraction of those we could help – the average victim of underemployment or unemployment likely had no way to know the opportunities that exist for them within technology,” Sims said in a blog post. "We’re now making it easy for anyonein America to get started on a path to better employment."
Along with Wyncode, Codeacademy’s founding partners include FlatironSchool, DevBootcamp, Sabio.la, Grand Circus and Thinkful. The schools will offer Codecademy sessions along with their own bootcamps, where offline instructors will be available to help students with the online lessons.
ReskillUSA's stated mission for this partnership: to educate the market with a clear message across all bootcamps and a single place for individuals to understand their offerings and to create better hiring outcomes for all membersthrough employer commitments to interview graduates from ReskillUSA partners.
“ReskillUSA will close the gap between technical education and employment by bringing together accessible vocational education programs with employers willing to hire from them. By combining learning and labor, ReskillUSA aims to train more Americans for the jobs of today – and to help them get hired,” said Juha Mikkola, co-founder of Wyncode, who confirmed the idea for the initiative grew out of discussions at the White House that Wyncode and others were invited to take part in .
Wyncode opened earlier this year but its nine-week boot camp approach has already been validated with a 100 percent job placement rate in its first cohort, Mikkola said. He also said Wyncode, which holds its bootcamps and bases its business at The LAB Miami, encourages its prospective students to use online learning tools like Codecademy to get started with programming to see if it is right for them.
“In fact, we consider using online tools like these a prerequisite to being accepted into our program, and we’ll be hosting offline Codecademy sessions in the Wyncode space starting in December,” said Mikkola.
Posted Nov. 7, 2014