“At Per Scholas, the bar is set substantially higher.” – WIRED Magazine

WIRED Magazine published “Urban Onshoring: The Movement to Bring Tech Jobs back to the U.S.” November 11, 2014 and in it featured Per Scholas’ Urban Development Center initiative with Doran Jones alongside Majora Carter’s newest initiative StartupBox. The article written by Issie Lapowsky highlights the Per Scholas STEP course and UDC model as a viable business solution. Highlights include:

• “The Urban Development Center lends this whole urban on-shoring concept some serious street cred, primarily because of a man named Keith Klain […] he spent years as the head of global testing for Barclay’s Capital, traveling the world setting up and managing software testing operations in India and Kiev. For Klain, bringing these jobs back to the US is not just altruism. It’s business.”
• “Both operations—Startup Box and Doran Jones—paint their new operations as more than just charity projects. As offshoring becomes more and more problematic in the ever-changing tech world, they say, on-shoring is a major market opportunity. They can make outsourcing more efficient and diversify the talent pipeline in tech, in addition to bringing some much needed jobs back to the US.”
• “Here at Per Scholas, the bar is set substantially higher […] The classes are free, but to get accepted, students have to pass a lengthy entrance exam and an in-person interview. Once they pass, it’s eight weeks of hardcore—some called it “grueling”—training in different coding languages and crash courses in agile development. […] Klain calls [the earning potential in testing] ‘kind of life-changing money.’ It’s little wonder then that [the students] are willing to power through the tough days.”
• “This is probably one of the largest, if not the largest, infusions of good paying jobs in this area in a very, very long time,” says Plinio Ayala, who has been president and CEO of Per Scholas since 2003. “It could really transform this community.”
• “What if it catches on? What if tech work could unify—instead of divide—communities in urban centers, from San Francisco and New York City? Even Klain, business-minded as he is, can’t help but let his imagination run wild with the potential impact a place like this could have on a place like this.”

For the full article, see here. Learn more about enrolling in the software testing course or other courses at Per Scholas, the UDC project, make a donation, hire testers, or get involved in other ways.