COVID-19 and lockdown have drastically affected our economy and world of work. Internet use surged, to the point where the world’s largest streaming platforms deliberately throttled the quality of their video services to help internet infrastructure cope with the heavy use. Zoom became a household name almost overnight.
In a space of a few days, almost all businesses moved their operations online and remote. Software and web services were vital in this huge shift in the business landscape – and as a consequence, computer coding has become a highly sought-after skill, with demand for skilled developers and programmers skyrocketing. Right now, careers in tech dominate Glassdoor’s list of highest-paying careers.
So how do you get these essential skills and enter these extremely-high-paying careers? For decades the traditional answer has been “university”. However, “traditional” no longer means “best”. New models of education for 21st-century essential tech skills – such as coding bootcamps – are increasingly showing their value as more affordable, more practical, and more career-oriented choices, especially in today’s world of everything digital.
Reasons why a bootcamp might be better for you than uni
Bootcamps are more affordable
According to Statistics SA, more than half (or 51%) of South African youth aged 18–24 claimed that they did not have the financial means to pay for their tuition. One year of tuition at a South African university costs on average R65,000 – and you have to finish three years of study before you get your degree. That means you’re putting down nearly a quarter of a million rand before you’re even allowed to start your professional career. Bootcamps, on the other hand, are ultra-focused on specific skill sets over a shorter period of time, meaning they can cost as little as R4,000 a month.
Bootcamps get you earning, fast, and without sacrificing years of time
Most people don’t have the time or resources to dedicate to the three or four years it would take to graduate from university. Bootcamps, on the other hand, have an average length of around 4 months, and cost far less as a result. Learn fast, earn fast – that’s their design.
Bootcamps focus on practical skills
Bootcamps teach you exactly what you need to know to make beautiful websites, complex software applications, or intricate data models. On a bootcamp, you don’t need to pick up extra credits or arbitrary subjects just to get enough ‘points’ to graduate. Instead, you focus on the best practices and technologies being used in the industry, so that you’re learning exactly what you need to start a professional developer career.
Bootcamps are more inclusive
Universities are subject to all kinds of hoops you need to jump through to get accepted. Your grades, your activities – and in some cases even your race and gender – need to be ‘just right’ for you to get accepted into uni. Bootcamps understand that everyone should be given a chance to learn these skills with the right mentorship and guidance; in some cases, you don’t even need a Matric or any experience in coding to get started.
Bootcamps are faster to react to world-changing events, like COVID and lockdown
Bootcamps are a relatively modern invention – which means that they’ve been teaching online and using technology and digital resources for their entire lives. This means that your bootcamp will keep going, even when every university and business in the country has physically shut down.
These are just some of the many reasons why a coding bootcamp might be a better choice than university for those exploring their options after school, or in switching careers. Bootcamps are fast, agile, affordable, and flexible, allowing you to hone job-ready essential tech skills to start a high-paying career in a fraction of the time and cost of university programs – and best of all, one of the best bootcamps in the world is found in South Africa.
HyperionDev is a MICT SETA accredited coding bootcamp that teaches students job-ready critical tech skills in software engineering, web development, or data science. Their model uses a combination of hands-on experiential learning, guided personal mentorship, and expert code review of everything they write to give them the coding skills they need to graduate and start working in as little as 3 months.
HyperionDev’s coding bootcamps are the ideal way to learn how to code, and get the career skills you need to join the tech industry, whether you’re a career professional making a big change, a matric picking their career future, or a teacher looking for programs that can give their students tech skills that can be used anywhere.
Learn more about their world-proof coding bootcamps here.
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ARTICLE SPONSORED BY HYPERIONDEV
