Steve Wozniak opened an online university Woz U

Legendary Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple, who once designed the Apple II — Apple’s first production computer, announced the launch of a technical university called Woz U. This unique educational institution is called upon to “reformat” the methods of teaching students in technical specialties, including engineers and programmers, because now their studies in higher educational institutions are fundamentally wrong and ineffective. At least, this situation in American universities.

Steve Wozniak believes that his initiative will help reduce the discrepancy between the level of education of graduates and employers' expectations - the so-called skills gap . It manifests itself in the fact that with a large number of vacancies even more people are looking for work. However, in their skills they do not correspond to these vacancies.

Woz U University will begin work as an online platform. More precisely, it will be like two platforms in one. The first is for training for students, and the second is for companies that are going to invite these students to work. The functionality of the second platform will allow to monitor students, invite them to work, train students and their employees with individual programs and training courses on a subscription.

The university office will be located in Arizona. In the future, Woz U plans to open 30 physical branches - not only in American cities, but also in other countries. The names of these cities will be announced in the next 60 days .
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At the time of launch, Woz U will concentrate on training computer technical support specialists and full-stack developers (.Net, JavaScript, Ruby and Java). Students receive 24/7 access to online programs and will be able to chat online with instructors and mentors. Video material for lectures will be laid out in high quality. In 2018, they promise to add courses in the subject of “data science” (data science), “mobile applications” and “information security”.

Online training allows you to set a flexible schedule that can be combined with full-time work or travel. In any case, such training is easier to fit into the usual daily routine than the obligatory full-time lectures at the scheduled time, as in full-time tuition in the standard university system.

A platform will be created for K-12 students, that is, for high school graduates. It should help in identifying talented schoolchildren under the STEAM program (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, Mathematics) - and encouraging these schoolchildren to choose further education specifically in the field of IT.

And among the talented students in Woz U will identify the most talented guys with signs of genius. For this elite will develop a special in-depth training program within the Woz U Accelerator. Here, the most talented students will be taught how to set up a startup, attract funding, or get a paid job as an intern in a large IT company. According to the description, the Woz U Accelerator "full immersion" program is designed for 12-16 months.

Tuition at Woz U University has not yet been announced.

The university has released a free iOS application for a kind of career guidance. With its help, each student can find out in which technological field he will best show his abilities, in which direction his education will be most fruitful. It is assumed that according to the results of vocational guidance, it is easier to choose the appropriate set of courses.

Studying at Woz U University sets the task not only to teach a person to write code, but to develop engineering skills that are always relevant - both now and in IT-professions that do not even exist yet.

In the modern education system, schoolchildren are rarely tested for their abilities. As a result, it often happens that a graduate goes to continue education not at all in the specialty where he could achieve the greatest success. A potentially good programmer can become, for example, a surgeon - and then you have to relearn and change your profession at the age of 40 . However, this is nothing complicated. In the words of AlxSI , who passed through the change of profession at this age, if you keep yourself in good physical shape, play sports and self-development, then you have enough concentration and strength to master a whole new field of knowledge.

“People are often afraid to start a career in the technology field. They think they will not be able to master it. I know that they can, and I want to show them how, ”said Steve Wozniak in a published statement .