According to a news release, the university has partnered with CompTIA Apprenticeships for Tech, a workforce development initiative funded by the U.S. Department of Labor, to give students a foundation of core tech concepts and help companies and organizations recruit new talent as several industries struggle to fill vacant IT positions. The announcement said DeVry’s tech programs, along with CompTIA Apprenticeship for Tech, aim to give students real-world on-the-job experience while addressing workforce needs.
“This partnership demonstrates, once again, DeVry’s commitment to closing the opportunity gap while preparing learners for a workforce that is shaped by continuous technological change,” Shantanu Bose, DeVry University’s provost and chief academic officer, said in a public statement. “It’s paramount for us to continue creating shorter, agile forms of education, and working closely with partners to provide a hands-on learning experience.”
The announcement said the new apprenticeship program’s instruction and training will be based on National Guideline Standards created by CompTIA, in collaboration with the American Institutes for Research and approved by the U.S. Department of Labor. It added that these standards work to detail the competencies in technical and employability skills needed to join the IT workforce in occupations such as tech project coordinators, tech support specialists, network support specialists, cybersecurity support technicians and data analysts.
According to a CompTIA Tech Jobs Report this year, job postings for technology positions reached 484,000 in July, with U.S. companies listing approximately 3.1 million job postings over the last seven months for tech positions, representing an increase of 49 percent for the same period last year. Additional research from the National Center for Education Statistics notes that Black, Latina and Indigenous women make up only 4 percent of students obtaining bachelor’s degrees in computing, despite representing about 16 percent of the total U.S. population. What’s more, a recent report from the National Science Board notes that the number of women and Black workers in tech must double, while the number of Latinos must triple, for it to reflect the true demographics of the country.
“We can demonstrate to employers of any size and from any industry that by investing in training through apprenticeship, they can gain access to a diverse pool of candidates and create a predictable pipeline to meet their tech-hiring needs,” Amy Kardel, vice president for strategic workforce relationships at CompTIA, said in a public statement.
The launch of the DeVry program comes as several other higher ed institutions are devoting resources to IT workforce training to enlist more students under-represented in IT-related fields. For example, Western Governor’s University recently received over $900,000 in grant funding from the tech industry consortium Reboot Representation Tech Coalition to boost graduation rates among Black, Latina and Native American women in IT-related programs; and California’s University of La Verne announced plans this year to use a $1 million donation from the Fletcher Jones Foundation to prepare students for in-demand careers and diversify the IT workforce.
