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Indian developer educator Scaler moves to America with $11k online courses

MOOC dropouts, boot camp avoiders, and college-averse students sought

Developers in the US with $11,000 to spend, three spare nights a week, and a desire to level up to become an engineering manager or architect have a new education provider to consider: Indian company Scaler, which has made America its first overseas destination.

Scaler has already seen 18,000 students graduate from its courses, which deliver three two-and-a-half-hour lectures a week. The entire course takes between six and nine months to complete.

The company told The Register its instructors are former employees of major technology firms, and its curriculum focuses on both high-level system design and lower-level coding concerns so that students emerge with the skills needed to devise and manage projects. Soft skills and career development are also taught during the program.

Parminder Singh, who heads Scaler's US operations, said the company aims to deliver education that's more up to date than that offered by college curricula.

While Scaler's courses are long, Singh suggested they're more manageable than short coding boot camps, and also usefully broader than the short courses focused on single technologies.

He also feels that Scaler's courses are more focused, and better-delivered, than those offered by either universities paid online course or free Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs). Singh suggested both those forms of online learning suffer from very low completion rates.

Scaler apparently avoids that fate. He quoted KPMG research that asserts 95 percent of Scaler clients graduate, and the same number use their credentials to secure new roles.

The company told The Register it's currently signing up 2,000 students a month in India. For now, stateside ambitions are more modest but Singh sees potential as America's 13 million-plus software developers seek to develop their careers.

In India, the company has developed a Masters program it hopes to one day bring to the US. At present it's focused on its Advanced and Intermediate "Scaler Academy" programs, outlined here.

The Register asked Scaler execs how the company can get a foothold in the US given it must compete with many established education providers, plus vendors' certifications. We were told the company's practice of hiring instructors from industry, and ensuring curricula on industry's stated skills requirements, will help it carve out a niche. ®

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