SAN FRANCISCO, June 05, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Today the Holberton School , a two-year higher education school for software engineers, announced the graduation of its inaugural class, with students already working for some top companies including Apple, CreditKarma, Docker, Dropbox, IBM and Scality.
Launched in 2016, the school’s population has exploded 6 fold in just under two years and recently moved into a new location that can eventually accommodate 1,000 students. At that time, Holberton will graduate more qualified full-stack software engineers annually than Stanford and Harvard combined. The school’s overall student body is now more than 200, with new students added 3 times a year.
According to Megan Smith, chief technology officer of the United States and former Google executive, “there’s going to be 1.4 million tech and I.T. jobs coming within the next decade and only 400,000 trained people to fill them,” leaving one million highly paid jobs with no one to fill them.
“We are trying to fix this problem,” said Julien Barbier, co-founder and CEO of Holberton. “U.S. companies are desperately trying to fill the talent gap by importing talent from abroad (Last year alone, the federal government received 233,000 application for H1-B working visas ) when we are finding amazing talent right here. These students, from radically different backgrounds, earned their way here and have proven they belong here. Congratulations to them all.”
Holberton is free until students find a job, there is no upfront tuition; graduates are asked to contribute a percentage of their salaries to the school for the first three years of their employment, giving back to the next generation of students. The curriculum combines project-based and peer learning, where students help each other to learn and reach goals. There are no lectures and no teachers, but instead tech mentors , who provide guidance to the students and on the school curriculum. Students acquire practical skills and an understanding of theory through hands-on learning; guaranteeing that they possess the skills necessary for the technology industry's most demanding jobs.
“After trying a traditional college education, including the traditional mountain of student debt, Holberton gave me my future back,” said Mason Fish, student, now with Docker. “Holberton took me in, didn’t charge me a dime, and gave me not just an education, not just a job, but a roadmap for the rest of my life. They taught me how to learn on my own, something I’ll do forever.”
Dora Korpar was working as a cashier at Trader Joe’s after being unable to find a job with her degree in Biology. She’s now working for Silicon Valley storage company Scality. Sravanthi Sinha had a bachelors degree in technology, but was bored with her job. She enrolled at Holberton and was offered an internship with NASA’s SETI program halfway through her time at Holberton. Mason was a guitar player who’s now a Software Engineer at Docker.
The school's numerous achievements include introducing students to highly qualified mentors from well-known companies, articles published by both students and founders , and even having one student receive a coveted internship at NASA's SETI Institute . Holberton is the winner of the EdTech Digest Awards Program 2017 , was featured in The New York Times emphasizing diversity and named Business Insider’s hottest startups . Holberton students have also been conducted real world research on hacking.
About Holberton School Using project-based learning and peer learning, Holberton’s mission is to train the best software engineers of their generation. At Holberton, there are no formal teachers and no formal courses. Instead, everything is project-centered. Holberton gives students increasingly difficult programming challenges to solve and minimal initial directions on how to solve them. As a consequence, students naturally look for the theory and tools they need, understand them, use them, work together, and help each other. Holberton School teaches how to learn instead of teaching a specific tool or programming language. Holberton School is based in San Francisco and supported by leaders from the technology industry. Go to www.holbertonschool.com to learn more.
Editorial Contact Joe Eckert for Holberton School jeckertflak@gmail.com
