Fullstack Academy Joins Education Quality Assurance Nonprofit, WTEA, as a Founding Member

Transparency with our outcomes is vital to supporting Fullstack Academy’s mission of changing lives by helping students from all backgrounds and skill levels see themselves in tech. In 2017, just a few years after Fullstack was founded, we co-founded the Council on Integrity in Results Reporting (CIRR), a nonprofit based on the belief that prospective students should know a school’s outcomes before deciding whether to enroll. And now, we’re excited to share that we’ve joined the Workforce Talent Educators Association (WTEA) as a founding member.

WTEA is a nonprofit committed to ensuring quality and driving excellence in career-building education. Through its Career Impact Audit and WTEA Accreditation, the organization will set new benchmarks for quality in education, including student satisfaction and graduates’ success in the job market as well as other governance and academic quality measures.

We believe wholeheartedly that education is an investment in a learner’s future, and that investment should lead to a fulfilling career. Our commitment to increasing access to education as well as providing transparent, student-first outcomes has been ingrained in Fullstack Academy’s mission throughout our nearly 10-year history. We are thrilled to be a founding member of WTEA in an effort to better ensure students of all education levels and backgrounds receive the skills and job readiness needed to successfully enter the workforce.

For years, the quality of a student’s education has generally been based on the institution’s ranking and the level or type of degree without much regard for skill development and workforce readiness. WTEA is shifting that focus.

“To achieve strong learner outcomes, educators and employers should see themselves as one cohesive ecosystem and share an incentive to actively invest in a continuous, collaborative relationship,” said Dr. Jennifer Dirmeyer, managing director & chief accreditation officer at WTEA. “But historically, this has been much easier said than done. With WTEA, this changes. Our forward-looking members align the goalpost to overcome long-standing skills mismatches, to the benefit of program effectiveness, a return on learner educational investment, and a diverse and job-ready talent pipeline.”

While securing a good job isn’t the only benefit of getting an education, for many students, it’s the most important factor. In a recent study by Ellucian, 62% of students said they enrolled to improve their job prospects, yet only 39% felt prepared for the workplace when they graduated.

As more education providers commit to improving job readiness and sharing transparent workforce outcomes, students across the country will be better armed with the data they need to decide what the best educational path is for them.

As a former member of CIRR, Fullstack Academy was one of the first bootcamp educators in the country to release transparent job outcomes, so we are particularly excited to see others join the movement.

Our latest jobs report was released in 2020 and highlights over 500 students’ educational and career success journeys. The students evaluated in the report graduated in 2019 from our full-time web development cohorts in New York and Chicago, as well as the Grace Hopper Program – our immersive software engineering course for women and non-binary students.

Key takeaways from the report include:

• Graduation rate: 84.7%

• Job placement: Over 90% of the graduates who participated in a job search landed an in-field job within one year of graduation, with most grads (80%) getting hired within six months.

  • The top 10 companies hiring these grads were Bloomberg, Etsy, Wayfair, American Express, Cedrus Digital, XSELL Technologies, Northern Trust, Datadog, IHS Markit, and Lifion by ADP.

• Median salary: $82,500

  • 21.4% of our hired grads earn salaries of $100,000 or more, with more than one-third earning $90,000 or more.

We remain dedicated to transparency and, through our involvement with WTEA, encourage other educators to adopt the same focus.

Learn more about our hiring outcomes and student success stories.