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

At Fullstack Academy, we believe job outcomes transparency is vital to our mission of changing lives and communities and powering the future through tech. To support accessible, transparent reporting for our bootcamp students, we have a history of active partnerships with organizations founded on that very purpose:

• In 2017, just a few years after Fullstack Academy 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.

• 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, the WTEA evaluates the efficacy of career-building education programs via the primary metric of graduate employment outcomes.

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 brand's 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.

Fullstack Academy was one of the first bootcamp educators in the country to release transparent job outcomes as a founding member of CIRR. In the same spirit, we’ve joined WTEA in its mission to set new benchmarks for quality in education.

Our latest jobs report is available as of August 2023 and highlights over 600 students’ educational and career success journeys. The students evaluated in the report graduated in 2020 from our full-time Software Engineering Immersive cohorts, including the Grace Hopper Program for women and non-binary students.

Key takeaways from the report include:

2020 Graduate Job Success Rates

84% of full-time 2020 Fullstack Academy Software Engineering Immersive alumni were hired in the field within one year of graduation.

This 84% is an average of:

• The 87% of 2020 Grace Hopper Program Software Engineering Immersive alumni hired in the field within one year

• The 83% of Fullstack Academy Software Engineering Immersive alumni hired in the field within one year

2020 Graduate Job Success Earnings

The average salary reported by full-time 2020 Fullstack Academy Software Engineering Immersive alumni hired in the field within one year of graduation was $85,856.

This $85,856 is an average of:

• The average salary reported by 2020 Grace Hopper Program Software Engineering Immersive alumni ($90,211)

• The average salary reported by Fullstack Academy Software Engineering Immersive alumni ($82,338)

A Note on Our Process and Future Reports

We collect graduate outcomes data over a 1-year period, meaning software engineering immersive students who graduated bootcamp in December 2020 had until December 2021 to report their employment outcomes. From there, the data collected by Fullstack Academy undergoes a thorough audit, analysis, and reporting process via an objective third party (our last report, detailing 2019 employment outcomes, was published in 2021).

Additionally, the 2020 Jobs Report was the first to be issued and validated through WTEA. Fullstack Academy joined WTEA in 2022 and submitted the 2020 jobs data for review following the finalization of the WTEA Career Impact Audit standards and methodology.

We remain dedicated to transparency, and through our involvement with WTEA, plan to release subsequent years’ jobs outcomes data on a regular cadence. We encourage other educators to adopt the same focus.

Learn more about our hiring outcomes and student success stories.