The hype for coding boot camps is waning, as some programs within the U.S. have been forced to close their doors.
Coding boot camp is essentially a crash course on coding that people will use in order to get an edge in the job market. As coding has become a skill in high demand in the U.S., students eagerly have attended these crash courses in the hopes of obtaining a high-paying software development position afterward.
But some issues have arisen around the coding boot camp craze, as too many schools and false job promises have caused some schools to shut down.
An oversaturated market
Too many coding schools have opened their doors to try to cash in on the coding craze, causing the coding boot camp market to suffer from intense competition. But some pioneers in the code education field faced unsustainable business models as well.
Dev Bootcamp, a leading program founded in 2012, was one of the first coding schools to give intensive courses on Javascript and Ruby. Even though enrollment was growing, Dev Bootcamp announced that they were unable to find a viable business model to continue, and that they would shut down by the end of this year.
Loose promises of jobs
Many of these coding schools claim that their students can easily locate a job upon graduation, but only few follow through on these loose promises. Some students have faced months of unemployment after taking on tens of thousands of dollars of debt. The crash course coding route can still be a path to lucrative success, but finding a job can be tougher than one might expect.
Not all schools face this issue, though. Flatiron School is an example of quality shining through, with a job placement rate of 97 percent. Schools that work to ensure their students are given jobs are able to bolster these results and draw in higher enrollment numbers. As the market is swarming with competition, students want to know that the course they’re taking out debt on will land them a job.
Takeaway
Competition is tough for graduated students and the schools themselves. And yet, coding is on track to be the most in-demand skill in the near future. As future jobs will increasingly rely on computers, learning code is and will continue to be a useful skill to learn. So, taking a crash course on coding can still be worth it, but the demand for coders right now in the job market isn’t as high as it once was.
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