General Assembly (GA), a global education-to-employment company specializing in the most in-demand skills across data, tech, design and business, is growing in a big way.
Today, the company announced itwill expand from 15 to 25 campuses by the end of 2016. GA also announced it has acquired Toronoto-based tech and design career accelerator, Bitmaker.
Bitmaker is Canada’s leading career accelerator, with over 15,000 community members and over 1,000 course graduates. Bitmaker’s team will continue to lead the accelerator as a subsidiary of General Assembly.
“We are incredibly enthusiastic about what this means for our students and community given General Assembly’s strong reputation and ability to deliver quality education and outcomes at scale,” said Andrew Mawer, CEO and founder of Bitmaker, in a statement.
General Assembly was founded in 2012 with a mission to bridge the gap between skills taught in traditional universities and the technical skills actually needed in today’s workforce. GA works with its students both online and in person and is currently present in six countries. To date, more than 350,000 students have attended an event or class at one of their 15 existing campuses. With the new expansion plans, the company will be setting up campuses in Arlington, Virgina, Brisbane/Sunshine Coast, Queensland, Dallas, Texas, Geelong, Victoria, Irvine/Orange County, California, Raleigh, North Carolina, San Jose, California and Brooklyn, New York.
“We are seeing incredible demand among employers — outside of the traditional urban hotspots more commonly associated with the tech sector — as they struggle to fill jobs that require 21st century skills like web development, data science and UX design,” said Jake Schwartz, co-founder and CEO of General Assembly, in a statement. “This demand outstrips the capacity of conventional education which is why we are scaling to an entirely new level, adding resources for people and companies in these additional cities around the world.”
Know of a company that deserves coverage? Let us know or tweet us @builtinnewyork.
