As one of the few sectors that’s been growing year over year, both in terms of job openings and earning potential, tech is an attractive career industry. It’s a major reason that interest in coding bootcamps is growing like never before.
Built around the idea that core coding skills can be taught in structured, hyper-concentrated ways, coding bootcamps are designed to teach students the coding languages that are the most in-demand by employers today.
These coding fundamentals are often taught by requiring students to build coding projects from scratch, giving them real world experience while developing a portfolio of skills they can show to prospective employers.
After many years of offering coding education, coding bootcamps have proven that students can not just enter a career in tech after graduation but also significantly improve their salaries as well.
These years of offering classes have also led to different coding bootcamp models emerging. The earliest models leveraged either online-only or offline-only learning. However, as time has gone on, the downside of these models has emerged, leading to a new type of coding bootcamp model: the hybrid bootcamp. We’ll take a look at all three models below.
#1 Offline Bootcamps
The earliest bootcamp model, offline bootcamps, follows traditional classroom learning approaches. Students attending offline bootcamps are expected to go to class every day, all day, for the entirety of the bootcamp.
This can mean going to school full-time for six-to-eight months. It’s the most immersive bootcamp experience around with students sitting in classrooms with other students and learning directly from instructors.
Students ready to dive into the deep end of coding and who have the flexibility to attend class full time often enjoy offline bootcamps.
However, this model comes with some very serious downsides that make it impossible to attend for many students.
For starters, these bootcamps are often the most expensive coding bootcamps out there, sometimes coming in at $10,000 per bootcamp. This figure can make them cost prohibitive for many students.
Furthermore, offline bootcamps are usually based only in major metropolitan areas, making them inaccessible to individuals living in smaller cities or towns who are unable or unwilling to move to big cities.
#2 Online Bootcamps
Given the challenges associated with offline bootcamps, the online bootcamp model emerged. Because all training and instruction for these bootcamps happen completely online, they are the most flexible coding bootcamp out there.
Prospective students with major time commitments and responsibilities, from full-time jobs to raising children, often need the flexibility that online bootcamps offer. Also, with prices as low as $100 per course, online bootcamps represent an extremely affordable way to learn to code.
For all their upsides, however, online bootcamps come with some big downsides too. The major downside is their lack of accountability. Because of their incredible flexibility, online bootcamps come with no instructors and generally have zero deadlines for projects or assignments.
This open-ended education model means students usually peter out when it comes to actually getting work done. A lot of students start online bootcamps but very few actually complete them.
#3 Hybrid Bootcamps
The last bootcamp model to emerge was the hybrid community coding bootcamp. With the goal of taking the best of the online and offline models, hybrid bootcamps have students do the bulk of their learning online via structured modules.
Then, during the weekend, they attend in-person workshops with other students and a dedicated instructor. This mixed online-offline approach gives students flexibility during the week to learn around their schedules while still giving them the structure and deadlines needed to actually complete projects and acquire the coding skills they strive for.
Perhaps most importantly, hybrid bootcamps are able to teach students how to code in their towns and on their budgets.
Hybrid bootcamps are located in smaller cities and towns, in addition to big cities, meaning they’re accessible to a broader range of students. Furthermore, at around $2,000 per bootcamp, hybrid bootcamps are one of the most affordable ways to learn how to code.
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