Apple has officially brought the Developer Academy to the US. The company announced on Oct. 7 that its Detroit program, which it launched in collaboration with Michigan State University (MSU), has accepted the first batch of participants looking to learn more about developing apps.
The Detroit Apple Developer Academy is located in “a new, custom-designed space in the First National Building in downtown Detroit,” Apple says. It will host programs of varying length that the company says it expects to reach up to 1,000 people each year as it continues to expand.
The first of those programs was a four-week Foundation course designed to “introduce the basic concepts of coding” that was offered to “a smaller cohort of community partners” earlier this fall. Now the academy has accepted the first class of students for a more in-depth offering.
The Detroit Apple Developer Academy will offer “10 months of comprehensive app development and entrepreneurial training” to an initial group of 100 students between 18 and 60 years old, Apple says, “giving them the tools to create the next generation of cutting-edge apps.”
Enrolling in the academy is free and doesn’t require previous coding experience. Apple says the course is “designed to ensure graduates have the full suite of skills to find and create jobs in the iOS app economy, which supports over 2.1 million jobs across all 50 states,” per its statistics.
This academy was announced in January as part of Apple’s Racial Equity and Justice Initiative. More information about the academy is available via the MSU website, and for people outside Detroit curious about learning iOS app development, Apple offers a variety of resources.
It’s worth noting that maintaining the supply of iOS developers is also in Apple’s best interests. The company receives between 15% and 30% of revenues from software sales and in-app purchases made via the App Store, and it’s willing to fight to maintain that arrangement.
The company has faced increased scrutiny over how it manages the App Store, too, and it often responds to that criticism by noting how much it’s paid out to developers (some $200 billion since 2008) and citing the availability of its educational resources for aspiring programmers.
That doesn’t mean those resources, including the Detroit Apple Developer Academy, aren’t valuable. But it’s important to remember this is an investment for Apple that helps its business directly via revenues drawn from the App Store and indirectly via the availability of leading apps.
