The Iron Yard's Austin coding academy. Photo courtesy of The Iron Yard.
Coding schools are one of the most biggest trends in the tech industry today. Enrolling in these accelerated programs in order to learn a coding language is often a huge commitment of time, money and emotion.
In Austin alone, there's a variety to choose from: from MakerSquare, The Iron Yard and Galvanize to General Assembly, Austin Coding Academy, and Lumenbrite, coding schools and bootcamps are popping up at a rate that is all but indicative of their increasing popularity.
But does that popularity necessarily lead to higher earnings, better career prospects, or success?
According to Course Report’s 2015 Alumni Outcomes and Demographics Study, the answer to those questions is a resounding yes.
The report, which surveyed 665 alumni from more than 40 coding schools, found that about two-thirds of bootcamp graduates found full-time employment as a developer. On average, participation in a coding bootcamp led to a 38 percent increase in salary (rounding out at an average salary increase of $18,000). And in total, nearly 90 percent of graduates found employment after 120 days.
Here are some other key findings from the survey:
- Over a third of bootcamp participants are female. According to the report, women represent just over 14 percent of undergraduate computer science majors.
- Average course length is 10 weeks, and average tuition is $11,852.
- 79 percent of graduates already have their Bachelor’s Degree but have little to no experience in programming.
- Learning Python leads to the highest salary upon graduation (approximately $80,000), while learning C# leads to the highest chance of being employed as a developer.
- For low-income students, attending a bootcamp could lead to a $36,000 jump in salary.
- The average participant is 31 years old and has 7.6 years of work experience.
