YouCode’s curriculum attempts to answer those issues with a balance of technical training and personal development coaching. Its program is built to closely mirror the professional setting.

The ultimate goal for all of YouCode’s learners is job placement after graduation, and the school’s structure reflects that mission from top to bottom. Not only does it have a team of coaches and administrators with years of experience in Morocco’s technology sector, it also works closely with companies on developing a curriculum oriented toward this goal.

“It was mandatory that we collaborate with other companies and integrate them into our curriculum-making process,” said Fayçal Bengatta, YouCode’s project manager. “We will be collaborating with companies such as Société Générale and IBM in order to adapt the specialties of the learners to the needs of the companies that would hire them later. That is the goal.”

Sidi Ali Maelainin, who works in corporate citizenship for IBM in Rabat, pointed out that in Morocco, there is a growing demand for employees to fill “new collar” jobs, which emphasize specialized technological skills more than college degrees—the kind of training YouCode advertises.

“New collar,” Maelainin said, “is a category where you might want to have someone with, for example, 10 to 20 percent of the engineers’ capabilities of problem solving, of analytical thinking, et cetera, and you want from them 80 percent of what a technician can do, which is, for example, monitoring systems or writing lines of code all day long. It’s a mix of the right level of technical skills with the right level of soft skills for jobs that are not necessarily the top-level jobs, more the entry-level ones.”

Developing this balance of skills is the basis for YouCode’s program. Last October, the school welcomed its inaugural class of 112 students, 68 percent of whom are from cities other than Youssoufia. Over the next two years, this group will develop technical skills in computer programming as well as soft skills like public speaking, time management and teamwork. Instead of the teacher-student structure common in schools and universities, the instructional model focuses on team projects and peer-to-peer learning.

Dalila Boutoumilate, 28, a YouCode coach with a degree in software engineering and computer science from the National School of Applied Science in Safi, described the learning environment as “very different from traditional education.”

“The students will search for the information themselves,” she said, “and they will learn better, because the information is from them. When students don’t know as much as other students, they teach each other.”

Sometimes students will bring in something Boutoumilate doesn’t know, she said, “so I learn also from them.” Her role, she said, is to “use my experience from work to guide them.”

This structure is the result of an educational model developed by Simplon, which began in 2013 in Paris and now operates a network of over 40 schools across France and worldwide.

Simplon’s “factories,” as it calls its training centers, focus on helping people develop all of the skills they’ll need to succeed in the workplace, emphasizing the overall development of personalities, rather than just technical abilities.

At YouCode, evidence of this collaborative approach is everywhere. Students are not called students but “learners,” and teachers are “coaches.” Chairs and desks have wheels to facilitate flexible seating arrangements. Even the walls of the classrooms can be moved to encourage teamwork and communal learning.