Taking on the Coding Skills Gap

The United States has a major problem when it comes to the coding skills gap. We have a need for more people with coding capabilities but many college graduates are not leaving school with these skills. Consider a recent article for Bloomberg Business titled “Are You Wasting Your Money at Coding Boot Camp?

Sarah Grant of Bloomberg Business writes, “Fixing the gap between the skills that students graduate college with and the ones they need for a good job has been O’Donnell’s battle since he was Colorado’s secretary of higher education, from 2004 to 2006. In that role, he privatized the state’s student loan servicing business. ‘I was constantly getting complaints that there weren’t enough STEM grads,’ he said. ‘There wasn’t a lack of college grads; it was that the graduates didn’t have the critical skills employers needed.’ The rise of boot camps has been one answer to that problem. The pitch: Learn tech-related skills such as mobile development, Web design, and coding for a fraction of the time and expense it would take to get a Master’s degree. Boot camps last from 10 to 12 weeks and charge about $11,000. Starting salaries for boot camp graduates, said O’Donnell, can range from $70,000 to $100,000. There are 67 full-time boot camps in around 51 U.S. and Canadian cities, according to boot camp review site Course Report, which estimates that by the end of this year, the market will have grown 138 percent from last year. Not all these programs live up to the promise of all-but-guaranteed jobs with great salaries, however. And with no formal accrediting system in place, prospective students have little data with which to compare them. What’s more, lenders can’t determine how much a program will help or hurt student creditworthiness. Some programs don’t even track graduates’ outcomes, said O’Donnell. ‘If a program doesn’t even have the processes in place to know what their numbers are, it’s an indication that the program isn’t as competitive,’ he said.”

For those who really want to get ahead of the curve and set themselves up for lucrative coding-related careers, it starts early. When it comes to youth coding education, your best bet is CodeRev Kids.

At CodeRev Kids, we offer a customized coding education that focuses on computational thinking, which encompasses a wide variety of programming concepts and languages. Our lessons build upon one another and we adjust starting points to each student’s level of expertise. Thus, the entire curriculum is customized. Even though we are known for saying we are the most educational tech camp out there, we also keep the focus on having fun. As a result, students stay engaged while learning to blend creativity with technology.

Sign up for one of our classes today!