In conjunction with North Carolina’s recent rise in tech opportunities and job openings, a new arena of education is rising to popularity.
Campuses for coding education programs and organizations have sprouted up across the state for students to learn new skills they can bring to the job market—one that’s rapidly gearing more toward tech-centric professions.
Yesterday, we published a deep dive into local code school movement. Included was an overview of four Triangle code schools that each have something unique to offer their students. (Recap on those below.)
Today we revisit the topic in this list of code education programs offered by community colleges, private organizations, nonprofit organizations and casual meetup groups.
Plus, we zoom out to see what some of NC’s lesser known programs have to offer in campuses mostly outside the Triangle.
Recap of local code education programs, both private and nonprofit
The Iron Yard
With campuses in Raleigh and Durham, The Iron Yard is known for its high-ranked, intensive program for software developers, as well as additional variety of courses for both enterprise and startup companies. The school offers back and front-end engineering at its Triangle locations on a full and part-time basis, ranging from $900 to $13,900.
Tech Talent South
This school provides similar, immersive code-learning opportunities to students, but with more options for flexibility. The school has several part-time courses in locations spread throughout the Triangle, at HQ Raleigh, The Nest, Launch Chapel Hill and The Frontier at RTP. Courses span areas such as iOS development, web design, JavaScript 101 and even a course on how to code the perfect newsletter.
In the Triangle, there are also education opportunities for techies that don’t necessarily fit the traditional white male stereotype of the coding community:
Girl Develop It RDU
Girl Develop It operates around an all-inclusive mantra to welcome women into tech, and provide a space for them to ask questions and learn to code. The organization offers part-time sprint courses that cover several coding topics, as well as subjects like website design and development.
Code the Dream
For coders who haven’t always had easy access to tech education programs, like immigrants and minorities, there’s Code the Dream in Durham. The nonprofit program has courses designed to contradict the typical code school setup premised on the idea that people can afford to pay $14,000 for a 12-week bootcamp or that they have the time for a full-time, scholarship-funded program while still having to provide for themselves and their families simultaneously.
CTD’s curriculum involves giving employment opportunities to students, in the form of real-world application projects for local nonprofits in different fields.
Code school contenders in the community college space
Durham Technical Community College
Durham Tech offers computer science tracks in its information technology department, including software or web development, network security, IT and cloud systems administration, as well as office systems technology.
The curriculum in these programs allows students to earn certificates and a diploma as they move toward an associate’s degree.
The college also has 10 individual coding courses within its computer science department, each at three semester credit hours.
If students decide to move through these courses from start to finish, they begin with a basic computer programming introduction course and travel through the ranks of knowledge to their final capstone project, in which they design and implement their own projects with minimal instructor support.
Wake Technical Community College
More niche-focused coding classes are offered at Wake Tech. There’s a Simulation and Game Development Department, which offers both day and evening classes, as well as two-year associate’s degrees, diplomas and certifications in game development.
The program’s website says graduates qualify for employment as “testers, quality assurance analysts, artists, animators, programmers, designers, engineers and administrators.”
Wake Tech also has a web technology program with three IT degree tracks in web development, web design and mobile applications development, in addition to another IT program which focuses more on software development, data science and programming support services.
Tuition costs for computer science courses in both Durham and Wake Tech’s programs largely depend on the amount of credit hours students choose to take per semester.
Both colleges charge the same amount of in-state tuition, which is $76 per credit hour, and students have the option to take up to 16 hours each semester.
The Triangle’s coding workshops, events and meetups of note
Raleigh Code Camp
Code Camp is annual networking and speaker conference to help connect and grow the local developer community.
Code for America
Code for Durham, Code for Cary and Code for Raleigh are all arms of a national nonprofit reinforced by a mission to change how citizens participate in government, by facilitating civic tech events where coders can work together to design innovative solutions to local problems.
In the Triangle, these include projects such as creating an open database for NC’s school report cards. Code for Raleigh has made the data available through an open data portal and is working on ways to make it easily usable by the public.
Members of the local chapters are welcome to periodic events within the Triangle Code for America’s Meetup group, such as Edit Your City, where coders collaborate on local online communities called “wikis.”
Coding Kickstart
Recently, Research Triangle Park announced that it’s opening a free, “complementary” coding workshop to the public starting next week.
Created by The New York Code + Design Academy, the curriculum is designed for the “code curious,” says RTP’s website. It offers students beginners’ access to different coding skills they can learn.
The workshop will be held in January, March, April and May.
Other coding bootcamps in NC
Coder Foundry
Its headquarters in the Triad, at a Kernersville campus, Coder Foundry has four locations in the U.S.—New York City, Dallas, Charlotte and at headquarters.
There, the school hosts a $13,900 18-week immersive programming class. There’s also an accelerated 12-week version of the course that costs $9,900.
The same course is offered in Charlotte, but only at the accelerated option.
While the bootcamp teaches students tech skills like Angular JavaScript, the key is that it operates around a goal to directly set graduates up for employment at enterprise companies.
Over the duration of the course, students work with graphic designers and communications experts to put together resumes, they get professional headshots for their LinkedIn profile/websites, and the staff conducts weekly mock interviews so students can practice the best strategy to impress and communicate with potential employers.
Then staff introduce students with companies looking for developers with their skills and knowledge. The website says some graduates are even offered jobs before the class ends.
Level
Level is a coding bootcamp designated for data analytics professionals. It’s offered through Boston’s Northeastern University, which has a number of locations throughout the U.S.
At its Charlotte campus, the bootcamp’s program is divided into two courses. Both sessions are held at the end of January.
Level Set, a 15-week part-time course, teaches statistical analysis methodologies within real projects and case studies. For $5,250, students get the technical know-how they need to make business decisions based on data science.
The other option is Level Core, a $7,995 intermediate course offered full and part-time wherein students apply the same material taught through Level Set, but in a deeper way. They complete a one-on-one capstone project with industry employers so they can gather the network and experience needed to enter analytics professions once they graduate.
Craftsmanship Academy
More close to home, there’s a coding education program in the Triangle that serves local students through an in-person apprenticeship program.
It’s held throughout every year at its studio in Holly Springs for students who want to become junior developers after graduating.
There’s also a remote instruction and peer learning for foundation-level web developers, offered online.
Thinkful Raleigh
Thinkful offers a bootcamp-style coding program wherein students can land their next job without quitting their current one, reads the banner on the program’s homepage.
In addition to supplying students with job-impressionable skills, the program introduces grads with career coaches, interview training sessions and negotiation workshops. Plus, it guarantees job placement.
Costs for the part-time courses vary, but the program does offer scholarships for Raleigh residents. A Meetup group called Learn to Code Raleigh connects members of the Thinkful Raleigh network together. It has 232 coders listed as members.
General Assembly
It’s also worth mentioning that NYC-based code education company, announced last year that it would be adding Raleigh to its campus list.
Towards the end of the year the school put out a job listing for a city manager to help establish courses at the new location. So far, GA has told ExitEvent they have nothing new to report on the expansion.
But folks can sign up for the school’s online intensive 13-week web development program in the meantime.
