Frequently Asked Questions
Employers
General
Q: Who is ActivateIT’s training partner Per Scholas?
A: Per Scholas is one of the best IT training institutions in the country. Their highly successful, turnkey, scaled, and replicated model targeted toward under-represented populations has placed over 6,000 IT professionals with 500+ employers in 11 cities. Over $109MM has been invested in Per Schlolas’ program over the last 20 years.
Their model’s effectiveness has been proven in two large-scale, rigorous, longitudinal studies finding that Per Scholas enrollees are 50% more likely than equally qualified peers to find full-time technology jobs and are 50% less likely than peers to be relying on public benefits two years after enrollment.
Q: How do you determine what IT courses to offer?
A: We are laser focused on your business needs. We work with our employer partners to understand your hiring pain points and build customized curriculum to ensure you get the skills and talent that you need. Because of our training partner, Per Scholas, we have access to hundreds of training modules that can be tailored to your specifications. This library of modules is constantly evolving as the sector is evolving.
Q: How much does it cost a student to participate?
A: While the courses are offered at no cost to students, our students are investing their time and considerable effort to master a rigorous high expectation, high accountability curriculum. Courses run 8 hours a day, 5 days a week and require 2 – 3 hours of study in the evening.
Q: How do you find your students?
A: We recruit from a large network of 28 Colorado nonprofit partners like Denver Rescue Mission, Warren Village, CrossPurpose, Women's Bean Project, Colorado Uplift, and others that serve over 10,000 individuals per year. We will also do outreach through Indeed, LinkedIn, and Facebook. Our vetting process identifies job-ready individuals with an aptitude for IT, thus allowing us to help motivated students quickly train, then launch and succeed in long-term tech careers.
The program is designed to meet people where they are, specifically targeting those men and women that would otherwise remove themselves from IT training curricula due to limited educational or industry credentials, childcare needs, limited transportation, and other perceived barriers.
Q: How is ActivateIT funded?
A: Our program has launched with philanthropic seed funding, combined with industry support, similar to other Per Scholas' sites.
Our five-year goal is to develop a 50-80% self-sustaining, fee-based training program supported by the industry modeled after Per Scholas’ customized training platform. The first major customized training program was launched by Per Scholas in New York in collaboration with Cognizant Technology Solutions, which has hired 483 Per Scholas graduates since 2017.
Through the implementation of this fee-for-service model, we are able to create win-win-win scenarios for the IT industry, our employer partners, and our students.