Careers / Fast Facts About 5 Types of Tech Training Programs

Fast Facts About 5 Types of Tech Training Programs

By Gina Roos | Posted 2016-04-12

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Fast Facts About 5 Types of Tech Training Programs

A new study from JPMorgan Chase examines five different types of tech training programs, and examines the pluses and minuses of each.
Traditional Education: Advantages

These more established programs offer recognized credentials, broad skills development and federal funding.
Traditional Education: Challenges

Universities potentially offer outdated curricula that don't match employer needs due to their less nimble nature, and they need to work on building career pathways to employees. Students have to commit significant time and money.
Bootcamp: Advantages

Programs offer a nimble curricula and only require 10 to 12 weeks to train or up-skill employees.
Bootcamp: Challenges

Programs often teach only a specific skill set, lack soft skills training, and have a rigorous process for assessment and acceptance. Employers are hesitant to hire bootcamp graduates.
Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs): Advantages

The benefits of MOOCs are cost (free or inexpensive), flexibility (learning at your pace), and access to high-quality instruction, particularly for students who might not have this access.
MOOC: Challenges

The drawbacks are a lack of structure and guidance, limited community, and limited job placement support and credential value. It also requires access to infrastructure resources including broadband Internet or a computer.
Internship & Apprenticeship: Advantages

Internships help candidates build relevant skills and focus on competencies. They also are a low risk to employers while giving non-traditional candidates exposure to companies.
Internship & Apprenticeship: Challenges

Obstacles include scaling internship programs, employer burden, employer-specific training, and a need for a new model to determine and assess the competencies needed for apprentices.
Integrated Technical & Experiential Program: Advantages

Programs offer a suite of skills, are potentially adaptive to different learning styles and provide more pathways to technology for diverse candidates.
Integrated Technical & Experiential Program: Challenges

There are significant startup costs, and they are difficult to replicate. Programs also can be difficult to understand and require strong employee relationships to ensure the curriculum is current.
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With nearly 2 million technology jobs expected to be created in the next decade, the tech training world faces major obstacles for developing a skilled and diverse workforce, a new study released by JPMorgan Chase indicates. The report, which looks at programs designed to teach information and communication technology skills, focuses on five areas: traditional education, bootcamps, open online courses, internships and apprenticeships, and integrated technical and experiential programs. Each type of program faces unique challenges, including a lack of data for evaluation, rigid hiring requirements, lack of diversity and rapidly changing sector needs, yet there are opportunities to improve tech training with the help of employers and intermediaries, the study finds. These include developing new opportunities for more participants to enter tech training jobs, skills matching, new credential tools, standardized data collection and better collaboration. The report is part of JPMorgan Chase's New Skills at Work initiative to address the mismatch between employer needs and job seeker skills. Here are the pros and cons of each of the five types of training program.