Per Scholas, Inc.

Per Scholas fuels economic and social progress in communities across the country through technology education, access, training, and employer connections for individuals in these communities. Our training connects people with jobs that can help them launch careers with personal meaning, opportunities for advancement, and the wages needed to invest in their futures and that of their families.

We believe that a diverse workforce is a strong workforce. That starts with equitable access to education. By providing skills training and access to employer networks to individuals often excluded from tech careers, Per Scholas envisions a tech workforce as diverse as the customers it serves. We also believe that in order to achieve diversity in the workplace, employers must be willing to recruit from nontraditional sources of talent. We help to build a more diverse technical workforce by creating educational opportunities for women and people of color—groups highly underrepresented in the tech sector today, and then providing top employers with access to our highly skilled and diverse talent pool.

The core Per Scholas model is simple: We partner with employers to design industry- and job-specific courses based on continually updated assessments of their technology staffing needs. We then teach cutting-edge technology and professional development skills to adult learners who have a strong potential to pursue tech careers but not enough access to them. Ultimately, we match these newly skilled graduates with employers and continue to coach and support alumni as they build their careers.

Our training is not just focused on hard technical skills, but a holistic approach that fully prepares graduates for employment in the tech sector--all at no cost to learners. This includes:
- Technical Training: Per Scholas teaches state-of-the-art technology skills tailored to business’ needs through a 12-15 week full-time, immersive course. Per Scholas graduates earn industry-recognized certifications that render them competitive in the local market.
- Professional Development: 20% of training focuses on communication, collaboration, continuous learning, giving and receiving feedback, and career navigation skills critical to landing that first job and moving up the tech career ladder.
- Employer Partnerships: At every level of our work, we collaborate with leading local tech employers to ensure our technical instruction, career development strategy, and employer connection services are aligned with market needs and emerging trends.
- Learner Support: Our Learner Support team, which consists of financial coaches and MSW-trained Navigators, provides both enrolled learners and alumni with generalized workshops as well as learner-led one-on-one coaching, in-house learner support services and referrals to partner agencies.
- Business Solutions: Our Business Solutions team works with 500+ employers nationwide to connect our graduates to entry and mid-level tech roles across 17 markets nationwide.

We have also emerged as a national leader in promoting tech workforce diversity and inclusion. In 2016, Per Scholas launched Diverse by Design (DxD) with the Information Technology Senior Management Forum, the premier U.S. association of African American technology leaders, and several tech hiring leaders to foster conversations about diversity and inclusion in the workplace, starting in tech. Over five years, DxD has hosted a dozen conversations about diversity, equity, and inclusion within tech, attended by more than 1,000 professionals, hiring managers and C-suite executives, representing scores of industries. In 2020, Per Scholas transformed DxD from a conversation series to an action-oriented movement.

DxD differentiates itself from other corporate DEI efforts by:
- Focusing exclusively on DEI in the tech/IT workforce
- Connecting employers with sustainable sources of diverse and nontraditional tech talent
- Sharing best practices to help tech employers build and create a more diverse and inclusive workforce

Per Scholas’ staff is led by President and CEO Plinio Ayala. Under his leadership, Per Scholas has incubated strong organizational capacities to respond to changing market conditions, pursue entrepreneurial opportunities and embrace rigorous measurements of impact.

Per Scholas is governed by a Board of Directors, on whom we depend heavily for experience and guidance in the development of the organization. They include representatives of significant employer and corporate partners (such as Accenture, Barclays, Bloomberg, and Cognizant) as well as individual Per Scholas supporters. In addition, we cultivate Advisory Boards for each training campus to ensure we are targeting our program and strategy to the specific needs of each region. These local boards include key regional corporate, employer and philanthropic partners, and their chairs occupy ex officio seats on the National Board.

We employ 330 full-time staff (including 50+ employees who are our own graduates) across our 17 campuses to manage and implement our programs. Our national team guides the vision and strategy for the organization as a whole, while local campus teams use their in-depth knowledge of the local community and markets to guide individual learner success. Per Scholas staff and instructors believe deeply in the Per Scholas mission and are committed to assisting learners as they navigate their career paths. Per Scholas’ commitment to diversity is also focused inward, and staff demographics represent the diverse communities in which we are located.

We are funded by a broad base of individual, corporate, foundation, and government partners—both at a national and local level across all regions. Additionally, we partner with community-based organizations, and public agencies across all campuses to build many additional services to promote the success of learners in our classrooms and graduates on the job.

Per Scholas continues to be one of the only tech workforce development agencies nationally whose outcomes have repeatedly been evaluated and proven in multiyear, randomized, and controlled research trials. In March 2020, the WorkAdvance study team at MDRC updated findings showing that after five years, Per Scholas program participants earned $6,300/year more than control group members. In addition, the direct economic return on investment over seven years (including higher after-tax incomes for participants, increased government tax revenues and benefits savings, and financial gains experienced by society as a whole) has now been found to be at least 8x the total training cost. These findings are validated by a previous randomized and controlled study conducted by Public/Private Ventures in 2010, which found similar levels of impact on employment and earnings.

Since 1995, we have enrolled more than 16,000 individuals, helping them build successful careers in technology and spurring economic development across their communities. Per Scholas’ track record for learner success includes:

- 85% of our learners graduate
- 80% of graduates land jobs, 90% of which are in the technology sector
- On average, in their first job post-graduation, our alumni earn 300% more than their pre-training wage. Nationally, Per Scholas graduates average starting wage is $21/hour or over $43,000/year in taxable income.

Our graduates contribute to the community in the following ways:

- Increased Tax Payments & Reduction in Public Benefits: MDRC’s Work Advance study concluded that for every $1 spent on Per Scholas training, $8 is returned to the local economy through reduction of public benefits, increased taxes, and increased spending. Per Scholas enrollees were 50% less likely than their peers to receive unemployment insurance, nutritional and income support in the two years following application to Per Scholas.
- Greater Investments in the Tech Workforce: Skilled workforces attract more business investment. Thriving wage technology jobs, in particular, have an even more substantial “multiplier effect,” helping create/sustain an estimated 4.8x other jobs for each IT services role that most Per Scholas graduates fill.
- Increased Personal, Familial, and Community Investments: For 2020, our employed graduates will represent about $19 million in earned wages that will add to their local economies. When individuals are earning a thriving wage, they have the opportunity to make active choices—and invest in themselves, their families, and their entire communities.

In the coming years, Per Scholas has an ambitious goal of training 289,000 learners between 2021-2035, working up to a rate of 50,000 trained annually or 75% of all available technology roles available to people without a college degree in the 30 cities Per Scholas will then serve. We will also deepen our work with the nation’s leading tech employers to dismantle long standing systemic barriers to inclusion, equity and advancement. Along the way, we will expand 17 existing in-person training locations, launch more than 10 new campuses, and scale new remote offerings to help us triple Per Scholas’ enrollment by 2023.