Strada Education Network has been surveying thousands of people across the US since the great lockdown began. Strada is a think tank and organization at the intersection of education policy, and employment, workforce development included.
Their most recent surveys have covered reskilling, online education, back to school, and the general disruption that COVID-19 has caused across the country to education, work, and employment. Their recent version for September 2020 was illuminating:
"68% of adults considering enrolling in education prefer enrolling in non-degree pathways, up from 1 in 2 a year ago."
This staggering! There is a huge concern right now around whether or not any education will not only be worth the cost but also whether it will actually lead to a job or not.
Further still, one year ago, ~16%of Americans without degrees cited that taking care of bills and immediate needs was of primary importance to them. Now, we're up to 33%.
People are worrying over what education to pursue, its cost, the value it will provide, and less than 33% understand available career pathways and valuable skills about potential educational programs.
Qwasar is a Non-degree Career Pathway
Qwasar is a real pathway into careers in full stack development, software engineering, data science, and machine learning.
Everything about our programs are designed to prepare you for jobs and get you into the workforce. We cover 4 major elements in our programs that are vital to you having the best possible opportunity for employment and for ongoing career success:
- strong depth and breadth of technical skills
- strong technical portfolio up with production-ready code that has been peer reviewed
- software development experience
- confidence, preparation, and significant practice for technical interviews
Further, our program curricula are aligned to job descriptions. Check it out: look up some jobs in software engineering, look at the requirements, then look at the curriculum in our programs (we wrote blog article here as well). They match, which means you can have confidence that you will be prepared for jobs and able to apply to jobs with proof on your resume that you're capable.
Qwasar Is Affordable
Compared to Computer Science degrees that cost up to $240K (and last 4 years) or bootcamps that cost on average $13-15K (and last only 3 months), Qwasar is affordable in comparison. At $100/month part-time and $200/month full-time, total program costs max out at around $2400 with most students spending less than that.
Since bootcamps don't train to Silicon Valley standards and CS degrees take ages (and don't focus on technical portfolios or interviews), Qwasar is a pretty good deal.
We recognize that for many in the US, these prices are still out of reach. We're doing our best at Qwasar to keep our prices affordable, our programs accessible, and despite that, we know there is still more to be done.
(Graph from Strada Education Network ongoing survey results and report; please see link at top of article for data access)
It is our sincere hope that with more affordable prices and accessible program structures, fewer people will answer "No" to the question 'can you access the education or training you want?'. 34% of Stada Education's survey respondents said they can access the training they want, which means 66% cannot! 2 in 3 people can't get the training they want! NOW is the time to re-train and to upskill, especially if you want to get into the tech world.
Consider joining Qwasar or share the program with someone you know who's into coding. We've got ongoing cohorts starting throughout the year so apply!
