College schooling in the United States is expensive, which puts students into massive debt.
The price tag has increased in coding boot camps and other schooling options for students to gain employment without taking on millions of debt.
In Europe, overall education is more affordable than that in the United States. The picture looks vastly different, as the majority of universities are either affordable or free. However, students have to shoulder the high cost of living, textbooks, and other externalities.
However, Berlin-based Strive School co-founder Tobia De Angelis said accessibility does not equate to effectiveness.
De Angelis launched Strive School to address the existing weakness with outdated STEM course material in European universities. The company is currently going through Y Combinator, which connects students to a six-month coding program and a job in exchange for income-sharing agreements (ISA) that allows them to access a portion of their future salary.
De Angelis told TechCrunch that the market demands universities to provide more high quality, job-ready software engineers.
ISAs are often used by companies to help students reduce the expensive price tag to a university or online degree. This means students only need to pay for their education once it leads to a job.
Strive School's aim is to make more software engineers
While it focuses on Europe, Strive School convinces students to pay for the education they could get at a low cost because of the job prospects.
It is hard to do, but Strive School has placed five out of seven students in its initial class. Its second batch is being placed, and the third one is currently in session while the company is currently accepting applications for its fourth class that will begin in September.
The company takes advantage of Europe's free education model by going to STEM faculties around the country to recruit talent and students.
Strive School programming focuses on web engineering, which looks and feels like a digital boot camp. "Strivers" learn to code in a team environment and within the scope of a project. They had to follow deadlines and are taught remotely with a combination of synchronous and asynchronous communication.
According to De Angelis, Strive's teachers are engineers, scientists, and coders, while the curriculum is more focused on soft skills such as applying code to real-life situations than hard skills.
After completing the course, Strive School will help students get placed and charge 10% of students' four-year salary for a maximum of $20,000 under its ISA terms.
The ISA program, which was launched in 2017, has grown considerably in recent years. Lambda School, another Y Combinator company, tackles the coding skills shortage through an ISA model. Since then, students complained about the quality of education a company can bring.
However, due to coronavirus pandemic, Lambda reduced staff and salary in April while Strive School experienced difficulty placing students into jobs.
Nevertheless, De Angelis is confident that Europe is big and diverse enough to need a platform specializing in finding employment for its students.
De Angelis worked at two early-stage funds in Italy and Denmark while his co-founder Diego Banovaz worked as a software engineer for startups and taught postgraduate courses in Trieste, Italy.
