2023's Challenges Creating Critical Need

2023 has been an especially challenging year. Our 2023 graduates have faced the longest slow-down in software developer hiring in our 11 year history. With longer job seach times, the number of graduates repaying their Opportunity Tuition has dropped. Since Opportunity Tuition graduates don’t start to repay us until they land their first job in tech, our ability to pay it forward to new Opportunity Tuition students has been reduced. Amplifying this impact is the number of our graduates who have been laid off and paused their repayments.

Meanwhile, 2023 brought unprecedented challenges for prospective applicants and our graduates. Our applicants are navigating layoffs, inflation, the return of student loan repayments, rising rents, and higher daycare costs. This has made it harder or impossible for individuals to find the money to pay for the education to change their career – leading in turn to fewer regular tuition applicants and more students needing Opportunity Tuition or a scholarship. 

Since we mainly self-fund deferred tuition and scholarships, the combination of low numbers of full tuition students and delayed placements means we’re under cash flow stress and unable to accommodate all of the qualified applicants who need our support.

Your donation today will help us rebuild our scholarship fund so we can continue to provide scholarships to deserving students.

With more need than we can satisfy, we have had to make some difficult decisions, including canceling or delaying a couple of cohorts and reducing staff salaries for 6 months. Despite all the challenges we’ve faced in 2023, we are seeing some recent signs of improvement in the job market and the number of applicants to our programs. But even if the market has reached bottom, the recovery for NSS is going to take a while.

Your donation will help rebuild our scholarship fund and propel us into 2024. Donate below.