Education

Checking In On Obama's TechHire


Former U.S. President Barack Obama pauses while speaking during a campaign rally with Senator Joe Donnelly. Photographer: Luke Sharrett/Bloomberg

© 2018 Bloomberg Finance LP

The TechHire initiative was a $150 million grant program of the Obama Administration aimed at getting more people from less advantaged backgrounds in the doors of coding programs or on other technology career paths.

Some of the 2016 TechHire grants were aimed at coding bootcamps, the intense, short-term – several months maybe – training in writing computer code or other similar high-tech skills because, while the bootcamps were offering great, industry-aligned training from subject experts, many of these programs charged up-front tuition. And tuition at coding camps is not covered by federal student grants or aid.

In addition, many of these coding programs positioned themselves as career supplements, an “add-on” to a college degree, as the “last mile” of career training — the type of thing you do after you’ve already earned a good educational foundation. Which meant that these programs were not only not accessible to non-graduates, they tended to benefit those who already had a head start.

Even further, almost all of the coding programs were designed to be demanding, with long days, late nights. That meant that, even if you could afford it, doing a coding camp while you had a job was probably implausible.

With all this, it made sense for Obama’s team to try to open them up to those who could benefit from the cutting edge training, but maybe could not normally access it. That was the idea. But how did it work in practice?

In 2016, one of the TechHire grants went to LaGuardia Community College in New York City in the form a unique public/private partnership between state and federal agencies and The Software Guild, a Wiley brand, software development training company, Udaciity and others. The goal was to build a program open to LaGuardia students, taught by the private companies. It was the only community college working directly with a bootcamp to receive a TechHire grant and, according the announcement at the time, the program was to, “offer accelerated tech training for more than 300 low-income young adults over the next three years.”

So, halfway in, has it worked? Has the federal grant put coding within reach and made private companies and public colleges work together?

According to program leaders, yes.  So far, over 80% of students in The Software Guild’s portion of the coding program have graduated and the retention is a robust 92%.

“It’s absolutely living up to its promise to turn a large underserved population of LaGuardia students into computer programmers, helping close the digital skills gap,” said Rachel McGalliard, General Manager and Vice President of The Software Guild. “Our effort with LaGuardia has been a successful effort to train lower-income students to enter tech fields. We’re quite proud of our results,” she told me.

With a reach of just a few hundred, the program isn’t going to change the dynamics of either coding bootcamps or low-income students who want to pursue a technology career. But that doesn’t make it unimportant either. Since Congress is in the middle stages of reauthorizing the Higher Education Act, which will allocate funds and establish funding models for all types of post-secondary education, the LaGuardia/Software Guild partnership is instructive.

For private education entities like The Software Guild, there’s value in cozying up to a public school. Brand, for one. Administration, for another. For The Software Guild, the LaGuardia program is one of the 11 university-affiliated programs they run. And for schools such as LaGuardia, there’s value in providing proven learning experiences to more people. And, if you’re going to teach your students to code, why re-invent the wheel?

Because it makes sense, the fudging of the line between college and coding camp is a trend that’s ongoing nationally. In another example, one coding school in California has recently partnered with an established four-year private university to offer computer science degrees taught using code-camp models and at the coding camp campus. Whether the university acquired a coding camp, or the camp is now offering full bachelor’s degrees may depend on your perspective. But the bigger point is that it doesn’t matter.

If coding and other tech skill can be taught under the awning of an accredited university, great. And more importantly, if federal funds can stimulate these types of programs and open important career opportunities to eager, low-income students, that should be what we want. If it works at LaGuardia, as it seems to, it’s an idea the Department of Education should steal from the Department of Labor, which originally funded the TechHire grants.



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