Change is the only constancy in life. It’s a maxim that innovative tech educator Avi Flombaum says particularly applies to technology. However, he argues that higher education isn’t keeping pace with the tech skills demanded by the current job market. He asks, “Why do 90% of college grads need a boot camp in order to get a career that they love? If college and universities were doing their job, (boot camps) shouldn’t exist.” In response, Flombaum co-founded the Flatiron School, which provides intensive accelerated boot camp style learning. With an up-to-date curriculum focused on coding, data science, and cybersecurity, Flatiron students graduate within a matter of months and typically walk right into a job. According to Flombaum, “it’s a roadmap to a new life.”
Flombaum’s vision for tech education comes from his own journey as a college dropout entering the field. He experienced the vacuum of alternatives to traditional computer science degrees and recognized the unanswered need to keep pace with real-time demands in the job market. The Flatiron School has filled those gaps with great success. Approximately Ninety-five percent of its graduates land a tech-related job within six months.
Technology is too critical in modern life to let technical fluency in the workforce fall behind. Says Flombaum, “Companies can’t wait for higher education to catch up” and workers “don’t need to be afraid to learn something new.” He adds, “If we allow ourselves to run away from every single concept that makes us insecure, we’re not going to grow. Be okay not knowing things—it’s the first step in knowing the thing. Give it a name. Identify it. And then let’s start breaking it down and playing with it. We really drill it into students, that they’re not stupid. This is the nature of learning.”
