Nani Rios has a full-stack web development certificate of completion from Codeup and a $28,000 loan at 10% interest.
What she doesn’t have is access to the school’s placement program, nor its guaranteed tuition refund if she doesn’t find a job. Rios, 23, took out the loan to attend the for-profit bootcamp because she believed it was a low-risk proposition.
“They promised to help me find a job or I’d get my money back,” said Rios, who heard about Codeup from her husband, who is in the military. She knew that veterans could use their VA benefits for tuition, and that, too, made her feel comfortable. “The military trusted it.”
Her cohort was just a week and a half from completing its coursework when Codeup stunned students and remaining staff by closing abruptly on Dec. 28. That day, school officials sent an email that announced the school’s immediate closure, reversing course from a Dec. 8 communication that said Codeup was committed to allowing current students to complete their programs.
Rios, whose only previous work experience was in retail, was counting on Codeup’s placement services to help her find a web developer job. She said she’s been working on her résumé and updating her LinkedIn profile, “but I’m not receiving any of the guidance I was promised after graduation. I’m left with so much debt.”
Rios wasn’t the only student who considered Codeup’s placement services part of what she was paying for. A student who graduated with a data sciences certificate in November said he was swayed by the school’s emphasis on the relationships it had built with local companies to help Codeup students get hired.
“There’s tons of other boot camps, and this information is even available free in a lot of places,” said Brock Green, who financed roughly half of the $31,000 tuition and completed the program a month before Codeup closed. “For me, the value was not in the classroom, it was in this idea that the school had connections.”
Codeup, he said, “has not filled their end of the bargain.”
It’s unclear how many students were enrolled at the time of closure. Emails to students show several cohorts, which generally included anywhere from six to 15 students.
While some students took out loans to finance the courses, the vast majority of students at Codeup over the past several years were military veterans. Crystal Poenisch, a former Codeup student who later worked in the marketing department, said “veterans with VA benefits” were “our No. 1 target.”
‘Stuck and scrambling’
Poli Gonzalez is one of those veterans, and while he’s not facing debt like some non-veteran students, he was using a program for disabled vets that also included a housing allowance. That has now evaporated.
Gonzalez moved to San Antonio to attend the school, signed an eight-month lease, and started right about the time Codeup moved into new offices and quietly laid off roughly a quarter of its staff.
Gonzalez said he didn’t know anything was amiss until then-CEO and co-founder Jason Straughan emailed students on Dec. 8 to say Codeup would no longer accept new students but remained “committed to delivering a quality education to each of you.”
Three weeks later, he got the email notifying him of the school’s immediate closure. He immediately reached out to his counselor at the VA, who let him know his housing benefits would cease.
“They told me, ‘What you got last is what you got. There’s not going to be any more,'” said Gonzalez, who is trying to figure out how he’ll pay his rent and what to do next regarding his coursework. He said he plans on writing a letter to Congress to let them know that veterans like him are “stuck and scrambling.”
Offering assistance
Offers to help students began within days of the news that Codeup was leaving them in the lurch. Coding bootcamps from across the country have reached out via social media with various offers, some promising discounted services, others pledging to complete training for no additional cost.
Gabriel Urbano, a veteran who was attending Codeup’s Dallas location, said he would be completing a program through Divergence Academy, another VA-approved coding bootcamp. He said he won’t be able to complete his full stack web development studies and instead will be completing a cloud administration course.
The Alamo Colleges District announced last week it would provide six-month scholarships to its UpSkill/Career Academy to students enrolled in Codeup.
Codeup sent out an email Monday to its students encouraging them to attend a happy hour in San Antonio to learn more about Turing, a nonprofit, all-remote accredited bootcamp.
On Tuesday evening, Laura Ruiz-Roehrs, a former coding bootcamp student and instructor who went on to found bootcamp alternative Code Flight, will host a free workshop at Geekdom (which is offering Codeup students a free three-month membership) on alternative ways to become a software developer. She’s also offering free mentorship packages to Codeup students.
A spokeswoman with the Texas Workforce Commission, which regulates nondegree-granting schools such as Codeup, said Monday via email that a representative with Codeup was scheduled to meet with TWC officials Monday. The school was founded by Straughan, Chris Turner and Michael Girdley, who serves as chairman of the board. None have spoken publicly about the closure.
TWC, she said, would be reminding the school “of its obligations, in addition to requesting several key documents to assist TWC as we support the impacted students.”
“It is Codeup’s responsibility to work with students to issue refunds,” she said in an earlier statement to the San Antonio Report. “If the school fails to meet the financial obligations, TWC will work with students and other stakeholders to seek suitable resolutions for the students affected.”
Before the refund option, however, TWC will attempt to create “teach-out plans,” which would allow students to complete coursework at another school without paying more tuition.
