“I was pretty dejected that whole night. I just couldn’t sleep because I was nervous about rent,” Juarez told Fortune. He was living alone at the time and paying $700 per month for rent. As he scrolled on Facebook to pass the time, he saw an ad offering free tech training.
“It said ‘free’, so I was like, ‘okay, I’m gonna do that,’” he said.
“I don’t really even know what [my life] would have been without Per Scholas,” he said. “They made me feel like a whole person unto myself.”
Last year, more than 5,500 people across the U.S. enrolled in Per Scholas, at a time where many Americans are turning to vocational training and deeply questioning the return-on-investment of a four-year college education. More than 60% of people believe college is not worth the cost because they graduate with high student debt and without specialized skills, according to a poll from NBC News.
The key to Per Scholas’ model is a rigorous training schedule to prepare students (whom they call learners) to take on jobs in about 16 weeks.
“I thought they were kind of exaggerating when they said, ‘it’ll be difficult,’ but they were not,” Juarez said.
Courses follow a 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. schedule, and students have hours of homework and studying after class. Four days per week are focused on technical skills, and one day is devoted to professional skill development, such as presentation and interview skills. By the end of the monthslong training, students who pass earn certifications and are prepared to enter the workforce.
“We have high expectations because we know that every single one of our learners can meet and exceed them,” said Per Scholas President Caitlyn Brazill, who has been with the nonprofit for more than eight years. “That’s what it will take for them to get to their own career goals.”
Per Scholas was started to bridge the digital divide, training people how to refurbish computers from Midtown Manhattan firms for schools, nonprofits, and families in the South Bronx. Soon, they saw the people they taught to refurbish companies move into higher-paying private sector jobs.
“We recognized that the really powerful tool that we had was not so much the hardware, but actually the skills that people were gaining,” Brazill told Fortune. “So, we pivoted.”
Per Scholas offers 12 to 15 courses at a time across the country, ranging from software engineering to cybersecurity to IT support. All of their courses include an AI training component because “we want them to have hands-on opportunities using AI and the specific tools that they’re likely to be using in the workplace,” Brazill said.
“We’ll recruit people in, we’ll implement the training, and then those employers can hire from that pool, recognizing that those folks are going to be so much more likely to be qualified for those roles,” Brazill said.
The Per Scholas median learner is 30 years old, has some college credits but no degree, though 40% of participants have a bachelor’s degree. About 85% of learners are people of color, mostly Black or Hispanic, and 40% are women.
The classrooms are diverse in age, circumstance and previous work experience, which offers “a clearer, more realistic replication of what a workplace is than most educational environments,” Brazill said. “[It’s] much more diverse than we typically see in technology roles in a typical workplace.”
Robert Davis, 38, said he “had been interested in tech my entire life, but life didn’t always lead me down a path where I could actively pursue it.” He previously worked in retail and as a railroad mechanic.
“I decided I wanted to kind of take a leap of faith and change my life,” he told Fortune, when he saw an ad for Per Scholas that featured a man he said looked exactly like him. “I took it as a sign that, you know, just was meant to be my next step in life.”
Davis took a 15-week full-stack development course and spent eight months looking for a job afterwards. Per Scholas doesn’t place their students into jobs, but has a team dedicated to helping learners with their job search. He found his current job as a software developer and consultant, after winning a hackathon hosted by international consulting firm CGI, which is a Per Scholas partner.
Per Scholas has a 85% graduation rate, and 80% of graduates find full-time employment within one year of completing their course. While some graduates don’t make on par with the industry average, they signficantly increase their income compared to previous jobs. Before attending Per Scholas, learners have an average income of $20,085; afterwards, they earn nearly three times more with an average of $54,606 a year. In total, Per Scholas alumni have increased their earnings by about $35 billion, Brazill said.
The alumni say economic impacts are transformative.
Kenetra Woods was working in health care and inventory management, where she said she could make a maximum of $20 an hour. She took a 12-week CompTIA A+ course, which is considered an industry standard for tech support jobs, and later took multiple upskilling courses with Per Scholas. Now, she works as a systems administrator for the Indiana State Office of Technology and earns $28 an hour, about $16,500 or 40% more than before. Her job lets her work from home and be closer to her son, who has autism.
“I honestly thought that I would be on like the help desk. I never thought that I would be kind of advanced and be able to secure a position beyond that,” Woods told Fortune. “I’m very, very grateful, because it makes things a lot easier for me. It gives me the opportunity to take care of my family better.”
Amber Braaten, a mother of seven in her 40s based in Arizona, was out of work and recovering from her fourth surgery in six months, before she took a remote IT support course with Per Scholas. Now she works as an infrastructure analyst at Master Electronics, an electronics distributor.
“It was hard having to have only one income at the time,” she told Fortune. “But then it definitely paid off, because I now make more money than my husband does.”
Braaten also took advantage of several upskilling sources Per Scholas offers, so their graduates can gain new skills to help them advance in their industries. Participants of the upskilling program earn about 32% more than they were earning in their first job out of Per Scholas training. The goal is to get graduates to “a thriving wage,” a place in which they make choices about how much they save, invest, or whether to go on vacation.
“It’s clear to me that we’re helping people get and stay on a positive upward trajectory,” Brazill said. “That’s what they’re looking for, and the reason they come to us in the first place.”
