Greg Meier (right) and Nick Wichert (second from left) talk in their office space with instructors Tyler Hackbarth (left) and Miles Koller. Meier and Wichert founded Ward 5 Code Camp, the first and only computer coding school in Wisconsin. Classes are scheduled to begin in January. Credit: Gary Porter

SHARE Click to enlarge

By of the

In less than three months, and for far less than the cost of a college education, graduates of a new wave of computer coding training programs — today's trade schools for the Internet economy — are earning an average of nearly $76,000.

In digital time, Wisconsin is late to this party. But finally, two years after the start of San Francisco-based Dev Bootcamp, local entrepreneurs are launching the idea here.

The school that will open in January in Milwaukee, called Ward 5 Code Camp, will have much in common with more than 100 coding boot camps that have emerged in places such as Boston, Indianapolis, Barcelona, Singapore and, of course, Silicon Valley. These schools are small, nimble start-up enterprises that say they cut out all of the theory and home in on preparing students to have the computer coding skills many companies are clamoring for.

Ward 5 could be a powerful force in the state, where employers such as PKWare Inc., a Milwaukee software developer, often find themselves looking outside of the Midwest for computer programmers, said Matt Little, vice president of product development. That's because, by the time many colleges and university students here graduate, their programming skills are already obsolete.

"They learn how to develop applications for yesterday, not today," Little said.

American colleges and universities are arguably the best at integrating new skills into their curricula, but the "blurring speed" at which the economy is changing is making that difficult, said Anthony P. Carnevale, director of Georgetown University's Center on Education and Workforce.

"All over the world, what you're hearing from employers is that the rate of change in the workplace is way outrunning our ability to pass it back to schools," he said.

So from Cisco network managers to crane operators, there are now 30 million people in the workplace with industry certifications that have to be updated every few years, Carnevale said.

In the area of computer programming, coding boot camps help develop and update the workforce. Surveys show that nearly 60% of them teach Ruby on Rails, an open-source framework for writing code that emphasizes collaboration and use of already written code, when appropriate. Knowing how to work with Ruby, Phython and other in-demand programming languages is quite valuable to employers, Little said.

Job placement is built into the coding boot camps' curriculum, said Liz Eggleston, co-founder and editor at Course Report, a New York company that operates a boot camp directory.

"It's definitely about job placement," Eggleston said. "It's outcomes based — their success aligns with their students' success."

Successful but costly

There are 145 boot camps in Course Report's directory, but the biggest ones alone are expected to graduate nearly 6,000 students this year, according to the company's survey of 41 full-time U.S. coding schools. And the majority of students coming out of them are finding full-time employment, Eggleston said.

Seventy-five percent of graduates from 48 of the programs got jobs related to their training and were earning an average of nearly $76,000 a year, another Course Report survey found. The students said their salaries rose an average of 44% as a result of their program.

Dev Bootcamp, the pioneer that operates in San Francisco, New York and Chicago, boasts an 85% employment rate four months after graduation. It was acquired in June for an undisclosed price by Kaplan, the leading test preparation company.

The programs aren't cheap. An average full-time program spans nine to 12 weeks and costs about $10,000, Eggleston said. Dev Bootcamp charges $12,200, but the cost can be as much as $20,000.

Still, the coding camps are emerging as a viable alternative to for-profit colleges, which have struggled with increased attention on their high dropout rates and alarming numbers of degree-less students left swimming in debt.

Boot camps are not accredited, so their students can't use federal loans or grants, Eggleston said. The average age of coding boot camp students is 29 or 30, she said. But some argue that the coding schools also offer an alternative to traditional colleges and technical schools, which have high dropout rates and large bureaucracies.

In Wisconsin, for example, just 27.4% of students at the state's four-year public colleges and 47.7% of the students in the state's four-year private colleges graduate in four years. And 31.3% of students at the state's two-year public colleges — a category that includes most technical schools — require three years to graduate, the publication says.

Responding to demand

As for responding to employer demand, colleges have to go through drawn-out curriculum review processes that take time and money, and may be driven by what the instructor wants to teach rather than what employers need, said Greg Meier, co-founder of Global Entrepreneurship Collective Inc., the Milwaukee nonprofit that is organizing Ward 5.

"Our advantage is we can adapt to the market immediately," Meier said. Like many coding boot camps, Ward 5 is building into its curriculum access to mentors and networking with businesses that have technology needs.

Among the millennials arguing for a new order in education and hiring is Dale J. Stephens, a 19-year-old entrepreneur who leads UnCollege, a social movement supporting self-directed higher education.

"As more and more people graduate from college, employers are unable to discriminate among job seekers based on a college degree and can instead hire employees based on their talents," Stephens wrote in an editorial for CNN.

"Because we can document our accomplishments, and have them socially validated with tools such as LinkedIn Recommendations, we can turn experiences into opportunity," wrote Stephens, who recently won a $100,000 Thiel Fellowship, supported by PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel, and is building RadMatter, an online site to demonstrate talent.

Although some say the failure of four-year colleges is driving the formation of boot camps, Eggleston more often hears that a boot camp formed because of demand from businesses. Many boot camp founders are tech people who were trying to hire developers and saw a need for more people to be trained in coding, she said.

By next year, 60% of the new jobs being created will require skills that only 20% of the population have, according to Qualigence International, a Livonia, Mich., recruiting and research firm. Among the areas expected to see the most growth: computer applications software engineers, with a projected growth rate of 22% within the next few years, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

People who do well in coding boot camps do not necessarily have math, science and engineering backgrounds, Eggleston said. Many have humanities backgrounds.

The people who tend to enjoy coding are collaborative problem-solvers who love technology, said Tammy McCormack, PKWare's vice president of human resources.

Coding knowledge — even a little — is a valuable asset in our competitive economy, where the amount of data continues to grow, said PKWare's Little. Programming experience is becoming such a necessary job attribute that he argues schools should be teaching everyone a computer language, rather than a foreign language.

"Whether you like it or not, it's the future," Little said. "Every job is going to expect some level of coding in the next five to 10 years."

Accepting applications

Ward 5 is taking applications now for two classes that will start in January and run for 12 weeks. The adult program will be held three days a week, and will cost $6,500. The high school student program will be held two evenings a week and will cost $2,500. To sign up, go to www.5ward.com

***

TEST YOUR CODING SKILLS

Wondering if you have what it takes to do computer programming? An easy and inexpensive way to pursue that question is to go to one of the online sites that offers the ability to learn some coding skills for free:

■Codecademy.com offers free coding classes over the Internet in a variety of programming languages. More than 1,000 British schools are using the company's services now that the United Kingdom has integrated computer science into its national curriculum.

■Coderdojo.com is a volunteer-led, global community of programming clubs. The clubs, called Dojos, give young people between the ages of 7 and 17 the opportunity to learn how to develop computer code, websites, apps, programs, games and digital media.

■Coursera.com partners with top universities and organizations worldwide to offer courses online for anyone to take. The company is one of the driving forces behind MOOCs, massive open online courses, a way for enormous numbers of people to experience university courses over the Internet.

■Udacity.com develops courses with industry leaders such as AT&T, Google and Salesforce.com, and offers them online, most for free. The platform also offers "nanodegrees" in specific areas that are designed and taught by technology companies in partnership with Udacity.

Correction: An earlier version of this story misstated Tammy McCormack's position at PKWare. She is vice president of human resources, not vice president of development.