After Skill Distillery opened its intense Java programming course last year in the Denver Tech Center, the high-tech boot camp began getting calls from veterans.
“These were very intelligent people coming out of the military and contacting us about the GI Bill,” which subsidizes education for veterans, said Cole Frock, the school’s director of education. “We’ve probably had somewhere around 75 calls.”
The company had to turn veterans away from the 19-week, $16,000 programs, but it began the process to become a GI Bill educator. Now the school, a division of longtime IT training firm Batky-Howell, has good news for vets: They can use their benefits to pay tuition.
“Right now, when someone gets out of the military and is transitioning from military life, they have options, but the options are fairly limited as far as IT goes,” Frock said. “Across the nation, there is a massive developer shortage. … What this program does is give someone with limited experience the ability to get hired as a junior Web developer or front-end developer, which, at the current rate, you’re looking at a $65,000 starting salary.”
Desperate for more skilled workers, the tech industry is tapping into the underused resource of veterans who could benefit from a quick training course to get up to speed.
Private boot camps, such as Skill Distillery and Galvanize, are popping up all over the country to offer specialized programming courses to train the inexperienced and underemployed.
But few boot camps benefit from the GI Bill, said Julie Samuels, executive director of Engine, a tech-entrepreneurship advocacy and research foundation, who wrote ” Talent-Starved Tech Firms Should Be Training Our Returning Veterans” for Forbes magazine.
“That’s the first one I’ve heard of,” she said. “The big problem here is that a lot of these (boot camp) companies aren’t accredited. They can’t tap into things like the GI Bill, Pell Grants and other kinds of federal student loans.”
Galvanize, which offers programming courses geared toward entrepreneurs, isn’t GI Bill-approved, but it added a scholarship for women and veterans. It’s also in the process of qualifying for Vocational Rehab funds in Colorado to help veterans offset tuition costs.
Boot camps are gaining attention among employers as key places to recruit new workers, said Dan McMahon, manager at the Denver office of the Robert Half Technology staffing agency.
“The candidate market is so tight, we’re seeing more managers hiring those people and putting them in positions where they may be training and molding them to fit in their environment,” McMahon said. “They are motivated to be successful.”
The GI Bill pays 40 to 100 percent of tuition and housing assistance for veterans who have served at least 90 days of active duty since 2011.
Nationwide, there are 12,000 schools that accept the GI Bill. In Colorado, there are 195 active schools, said Daniel Webster, Colorado’s director of National Association of State Approving Agencies.
The agency approves all sorts of schools, including short IT programs. But any school that applies must also be accredited by the state’s department of higher education, approved by the state’s private occupational schools division and pass regulations set by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.
“It’s pretty thorough, and not many meet that,” said Webster, adding that financial records are scrutinized and the schools must be in business for at least two years. “We don’t want veterans to be ripped off.”
The VA is very aware of the deficit in training opportunities. Last year, it partnered with Coursera, which offers free online classes taught by college professors. The VA upped the ante, offering courses at brick-and-mortar Learning Hubs, including one launched Wednesday in Colorado Springs, where veterans can enroll in a Coursera program and earn one certification for free. The program charges for additional certifications.
This summer, the VA plans to launch the Accelerated Learning Program and use $10 million to pay tuition fees at these tech boot camps, said Rosye B. Cloud, the VA’s senior adviser for veteran employment.
“Our goal is to participate in a range of IT-centric training opportunities we’ve identified as great career pathways,” Cloud said.
The program targets courses that can be completed within six months, are tailored to the adult learner and “have a strong outcome in employment,” she said. And it’s not part of the GI Bill. In fact, she added, veterans who have exhausted that educational resource can still apply for the new boot camp program.
Schools already have been approved but not announced, she said.
Tamara Chuang: 303-954-1209, tchuang@denverpost.com or twitter.com/Gadgetress
