Articles about the rise of coding boot camps and courses are almost as common as the number of start ups pursuing this market. Who knows where this will go, but there are five lessons we can take away from this new phenomenon.
1) Traditional educational institutions have lost their monopoly on rigor. For centuries, the academic world has been the place to go for people seeking complex, detailed and rigorous learning experiences. It’s probably fair to say for that for almost all of higher education history, the campus was way ahead of the workplace in terms of cognitive challenge – not so much any longer.
2) The “already educated” will be a major market for learning providers. Many, if not most, of the students in the coding schools already have a college degree that is not getting them what they want in their careers. While colleges have developed many occupationally-oriented graduate programs (especially in the health field), the coding school students seem to be looking for a faster economic payoff than traditional post-baccalaureate degree programs provide.
3) States and metro regions need to see the benefit to economic competitiveness. Investing in already educated workers in their 20’s, 30’s and beyond will be a distinctive competitive advantage for states and metro regions willing to do so. This is a huge untapped workforce development opportunity because most public sector expenditures focus on people much less ready for higher paying jobs in the short term.
4) Experience-based education trumps traditional learning environments again. The stories about the boot camps depict environments where students learn by doing. Reading, listening to a lecture, taking notes and independent study cannot create the same results as active learning experiences. Many professors in a wide range of courses in traditional institutions have been taking the same approach and getting good results, too.
5) The tech industry will benefit from an infusion of people with different backgrounds. There aren’t many IT majors in these boot camps. The diversity in educational focus and prior careers reported in these articles seems strong. That can only be a good thing for digital companies that recognize it’s about the customer experience more than the technology itself.
Michael Meotti is the Principal of Ed Policy Group and formerly served as CT Commissioner of Higher Education and President of the United Way of Connecticut. Check out Mike’s blog about higher education trends, student success, college readiness and education technology.
