Educating Tomorrow’s Tech Leaders, Holberton More than Doubles their Learning Space with New San Francisco School Location

SAN FRANCISCO, Dec. 05, 2017 -- Having tripled their student population in just under two years, the Holberton School, a prestigious two-year higher education program for software capable of training up to 500 engineers, announced that they have moved into a more expansive location in SOMA. The building can eventually accommodate 1,000, graduating more qualified full-stack software engineers annually than Stanford and Harvard combined. 

Launched in 2016, Holberton’s curriculum combines project-based and peer learning where students help each other to learn and reach goals. There are no lectures and no teachers, but instead tech mentors. Students acquire practical skills and an understanding of theory through hands-on learning. This guarantees that students possess the skills necessary for the technology industry's most demanding jobs. Holberton students have attained prestigious positions at some of the top tech companies in the US and around the world, working at companies such as Apple, Tesla, NASA, Dropbox, LinkedIn, IBM and more.

In less than two years, the school has grown from 35 students in January 2016 to more than 150. With an expected January incoming class of 65, the previous space, even with a generous donation of space from tech neighbor Gandi could no longer accommodate the growth. In January, Holberton will graduate its first “cohort” of students, 90% of which are already working at companies like Apple, LinkedIn and Dropbox.

“Despite only accepting 2.58% of those who apply, our school was growing faster than the previous space would allow,” said Julien Barbier, co-founder and CEO of Holberton. “We are helping drive a revolution in education with the help of industry heavyweights like Docker CTO Solomon Hykes, Upwork CEO Stephane Kasriel and CloudNOW CEO Jocelyn DeGance Graham -- who just joined our Board of Trustees along with Grammy Award-winning recording artist Ne-Yo and LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner who is also an investor. Students come to us from all types of backgrounds, from cashiers to musicians to poker players, without the money, background and education needed to be ‘Ivy League material.’ With Holberton, they now have the same opportunity as the more fortunate and they leave with the skills to learn for a lifetime.”

Holberton students have received renown participating in a number of different projects and events, from a student meeting Linus Torvald to Vint Cerf giving his stamp of approval to the school. The school's numerous achievements include introducing highly qualified mentors from well-known companies, articles published under both students and founders, and even having one student receive a coveted internship at NASA's SETI Institute. Holberton is the winner of the EdTech Digest Awards Program 2017 and was featured in The New York Times emphasizing diversity.

The school is free until students find a job. Graduates are asked to contribute a percentage of their salaries to the school for the first three years of their post-Holberton employment, giving back to the next generation of software engineers. If not hired, students pay nothing to the school. Their success is the school’s success.

Located at Mission and 5th/6th in the SOMA district of San Francisco, the new location is close to tech companies including Slack, Eventbrite, Yahoo, Y Combinator and more. Location is critical because students are required to intern for as much as half of the school’s 2-year program. The 28,500 sqft is in a six story building (61,000 sqft), with an option to take over the entire building.

About Holberton School
Using project-based learning and peer learning, Holberton’s mission is to train the best software engineers of their generation. At Holberton, there are no formal teachers and no formal courses. Instead, everything is project-centered. Holberton gives students increasingly difficult programming challenges to solve and minimal initial directions on how to solve them. As a consequence, students naturally look for the theory and tools they need, understand them, use them, work together, and help each other. Holberton School teaches how to learn instead of teaching a specific tool or programming language. Holberton School is based in San Francisco and supported by leaders from the technology industry. Go to www.holbertonschool.com to learn more.

Editorial Contact
Joe Eckert for Holberton School
[email protected]