Students will study computer technologies taking information from open sources and sharing it with one another.
The project was initiated by French billionaire Xavier Niel who works in IT. He invested $100 million to repeat the experience of a French coding school in Silicon Valley on a larger scale.
Like the coding school in France, the university is called 42, which is a reference to Douglas Adams’s The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, where 42 is the answer to the “ultimate question of life, the universe and everything”. Xavier Niel’s schools use an open approach to education – there are no teachers, textbooks, lessons and grades. Both the school and the university are absolutely free.
The university in California, which opens at the beginning of November, is located in a former DeVry University campus in front of Facebook headquarters. Students from poorer families can apply to one of 600 free dorms.
42 welcomes students between 18 and 30. The university doesn’t require any diploma or coding experience, but the selecting criteria are strict. A potential student must register on the website and complete tests. About 3,000 people with the best scores are invited to an intensive four-week training programme. Candidates study 10-15 hours a day seven days a week. The approach is called “piscine” (swimming pool) – even if you know nothing about programming but have strong motivation, you we will learn how to code by the end of the course, otherwise you will drown.
This year, three training camps were organised, each attended by 1,024 people, the number symbolic for IT specialists. As a result, 1,024 best students were selected to start studying at the beginning of November. The programme is divided into 21 levels, which students can complete in 3 to 5 years. Like programmers, students carry out projects.. Students are required to present in the campus in person to develop skills of working in a team.
Students are given excellent conditions to develop their talents. The university is open 24/7 and offers modern technologies, 2,000 top-of-the-line iMac computers, high-speed internet and large capacity storage servers.
The approach will help satisfy the demand for software engineers. According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, the country will need about 1.4 million specialists by 2020, but only 400,000 graduates will have the skills to apply for those jobs. Demand for IT specialists is expected to grow further.
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