Latin America´s first coding school seeks to consolidate in Argentina and Chile

Coderhouse, a company that calls itself the first coding school in Latin America, is planning to consolidate in Argentina and Chile, taking advantage of what it sees as a lack of technologically qualified workers in the region in relation to demand.

¨Coderhouse has more than 200 students in Argentina and we expect to double that number this year. In Chile we have already graduated 30 students and we expect to triple that number,¨ said Pablo Ferreiro, co-founder of Coderhouse.

The school started operations in Buenos Aires two years ago with a different model compared with traditional schools. Coderhouse offers an intensive 10-week program based on project completion, he said. Before joining, students are expected to have exhausted their potential for learning to design web pages, mobile development, web applications and UX as well as interface design in other places including online schools.

Opportunities to teach technology careers do exist in Latin America because it lags behind other regions of the world as far as technology teaching, Ferreiro said.

´´In Chile, so you have an idea, every year some 5,000 students graduate in technological careers,¨ but this covers only a fraction of total and potential demand, he said. In Chile about 35 percent of the talent in technology fields comes from other countries, Ferreiro added, citing figures used by Coderhouse.

According to other studies Coderhouse has received, more than six out of 10 CEOs cannot find enough qualified technologically trained employees to fill their openings in Lain America, he added.

Learning technological skills like coding can have important benefits for students both in terms of the speed in finding a job as well as in salaries, he said. Salaries in technology fields in Latin America can be 35 percent higher than those in other industries and jobs are being created quickly, he added. Students of traditional universities can sometimes get their degrees after four years but graduate without having hands-on experience or having learned outdated skills.

At Coderhouse, students spend two and a half months of the program in projects, both individual and in groups, and they graduate with a portfolio, he added.

E-learning as an industry is growing at a 14.5 percent rate annually and organizations involved in teaching technology in the region are already earning some $1.6 billion annually, according to data used by Coderhouse, which Ferreiro provided. These organizations are not just from Latin America but also include those which are U.S.-based or from Spain, he said.