LaunchCode founder Jim McKelvey said this morning that he already has office space in Miami and will move there temporarily in June to work on a Miami version of the training and job-placement program. Baltimore, Philadelphia and Denver also are likely destinations for LaunchCode, he said.
McKelvey, speaking at an Innovation St. Louis forum at the Missouri Botanical Garden, said officials of EdX, an education joint venture between Harvard and MIT, encouraged him to expand LaunchCode. In St. Louis, LaunchCode is using a free EdX computer science class to train programmers. The class is offered online, but LaunchCode is offering hands-on sessions to augment the coursework.
LaunchCode, which began last September, has placed 57 programmers in $15-an-hour apprenticeships with St. Louis companies. Twenty-seven of those have been hired for full-time jobs at an average salary of $55 an hour, McKelvey said.
He sees the combination of EdX and LaunchCode as something that could disrupt the model for computer science education. “The program is going to the world with the message that education doesn’t have to put you into debt, and it doesn’t have to take up four years of your life,” McKelvey said.