Apple's App Course Runs $20,000 a Student. Is It Really Worth It?

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: Two years ago, Lizmary Fernandez took a detour from studying to be an immigration attorney to join a free Apple course for making iPhone apps. The Apple Developer Academy in Detroit launched as part of the company's $200 million response to the Black Lives Matter protests and aims to expand opportunities for people of color in the country's poorest big city. But Fernandez found the program's cost-of-living stipend lacking -- 'A lot of us got on food stamps,' she says -- and the coursework insufficient for landing a coding job. 'I didn't have the experience or portfolio,' says the 25-year-old, who is now a flight attendant and preparing to apply to law school. 'Coding is not something I got back to.'

Since 2021, the academy has welcomed over 1,700 students, a racially diverse mix with varying levels of tech literacy and financial flexibility. About 600 students, including Fernandez, have completed its 10-month course of half-days at Michigan State University, which cosponsors the Apple-branded and Apple-focused program. WIRED reviewed contracts and budgets and spoke with officials and graduates for the first in-depth examination of the nearly $30 million invested in the academy over the past four years -- almost 30 percent of which came from Michigan taxpayers and the university's regular students. As tech giants begin pouring billions of dollars into AI-related job training courses across the country, the Apple academy offers lessons on the challenges of uplifting diverse communities.

The program gives out iPhones and MacBooks and spends an estimated $20,000 per student, nearly twice as much as state and local governments budget for community colleges. About 70 percent of students graduate, which [Sarah Gretter, the academy leader for Michigan State] describes as higher than typical for adult education. She says the goal is for them to take 'a next step,' whether a job or more courses. Roughly a third of participants are under 25, and virtually all of them pursue further schooling. About 71 percent of graduates from the last two years went onto full-time jobs across a variety of industries, according to academy officials. Amy J. Ko, a University of Washington computer scientist who researches computing education, calls under 80 percent typical for the coding schools she has studied but notes that one of her department's own undergraduate programs has a 95 percent job placement rate.

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