SAN FRANCISCO, CA–(Marketwired – Mar 22, 2017) – The San Francisco-based Holberton School, an alternative to college for training students to become highly skilled full-stack software engineers, announced today its founders, CEO Julien Barbier and Sylvain Kalache earned an EdTech Leadership Award in the category “School Leader” as part of the 2017 EdTech Awards from EdTech Digest.

Opened little over a year ago, the San Francisco-based Holberton school offers an alternative to college, online courses and coding bootcamps. It trains world-class full-stack software engineers in two years by using a system proven in Europe to scale to graduate thousands of elite engineers a year. The curriculum is based on the progressive education concept, a methodology that combines project-based and peer learning. At Holberton, there are no formal teachers and no lectures. Students learn theory and tools by building, which guarantees that they are fully prepared to take on the most demanding jobs and maybe even hunt for asteroids.

“From old school to new school, 21st-century education is in the midst of a paradigm shift. Chalkboards have given way to smartboards, desktop clutter to digital clean, disparate data to dashboard clarity, and isolated teachers to connected educators,” said Victor Rivero, who as Editor-in-Chief of EdTech Digest, oversees the program. “Yet while evidence of the power of technology’s transformative effect on matters of learning is all around us, the power to energize education still lies within us. Holberton is on the leading edge of providing a better learning environment for a new generation of learners, they are changing school culture with purpose-driven project-based collaborative learning and getting great results. We need more of this kind of energy and mission-driven leadership in education.”

Holberton, which accepts fewer than 2.5{4d24daa5a359aa22e51c71c531e935ff229d31c7c5eb0da4885e362fa152ead6} of applicants (making it more than twice as competitive for admissions as Harvard), attracts students often under-represented in the technology industry. Today Holberton boasts a 50{4d24daa5a359aa22e51c71c531e935ff229d31c7c5eb0da4885e362fa152ead6} class of women and nearly 50{4d24daa5a359aa22e51c71c531e935ff229d31c7c5eb0da4885e362fa152ead6} students of color. And Holberton offers students a debt-free education, they pay a percentage of their salary after they graduate and only after and as they are employed.

“EdTech Digest is a significant resource in the educational community so Sylvain and I are very excited to be recognized with such a prestigious award. It certainly makes all the hard work and sacrifice easier,” said Barbier. “Our mission is to open this high quality education to as many people, from as many walks of life, as possible.”

With less than half of their initial two-year program completed, the first class of Holberton students have already secured internships and jobs at top Silicon Valley companies, including Apple, Docker, LinkedIn, Dropbox and NASA.

Holberton students gained experience participating in a number of prestigious projects and events, from hosting the first ever international bots hackathon in July 2016 to being invited to talk at the Top Women in Cloud Award at Google in December 2016. Holberton was the first U.S. school to train software engineers through peer learning and project-based learning, and became the world’s first school to deliver secure academic certificates within the bitcoin blockchain. The students have also published many articles in a wide variety of publications, and one student received a coveted internship at the SETI Institute.

Join Holberton
Holberton is open to anyone — ages of 18 to 128, whether an experienced programmer or not. The selection process is based only on talent and motivation. Holberton enables students from every community and background to have the opportunity to become a software engineer. That is also why there is no upfront cost to join the school, that charges a percentage of students’ salary once — and only if — they find a job.

Applications are now open for the May and September batches: Apply now.

About EdTech Digest
The mission of EdTech Digest is to tell the story of 21st-century education transformation. By sharing cool tools, fascinating interviews, relevant trends and voices from the field, we hope to inspire learners and leaders everywhere, to get workable technology solutions for education widely known about and well thought of, to reshape the education culture and to create a new and better future for students.