Austin Community College students will be able to dive right into a new app-programming partnership with Apple this fall, CEO Tim Cook announced Friday.
“All ACC students will be able to enroll in a one-year, full-year course designed by Apple engineers and educators,” he said at an event at Capital Factory. “They’ll learn to code fully functioning apps. And more importantly, they’ll gain a set of skills and experience that are so crucial and increasingly valuable in today’s fast-changing and fast-moving economy.”
Cook went on to discuss the importance of working with community colleges and the opportunity they can provide.
“Everyone has the right to an education, but not everyone gets equal access,” he said. “But community colleges can do a lot to address that, and they can do even more. Everyone here believes that. Everyone at Apple believes that.”
ACC President Richard Rhodes said he is looking forward to the partnership.
“The Swift coding curriculum is a great example of Apple’s commitment to economic development and will help create more career opportunities for students across the Central Texas area,” he said. Swift refers to the coding language for applications used on Apple products running macOS, iOS, watchOS and tvOS.
Austin Mayor Steve Adler said the partnership is part of a city initiative to help fortify the middle class.
“We said we’re going to move 30,000 people into new middle-skill jobs, new training,” he said. “Ten thousand of those people live in poverty today.”
Apple is also rolling out the program to 29 other community college systems nationwide.
It has been 25 years since Apple opened up shop in Austin. With 6,000 employees, the Austin campus is the largest outside of Cupertino, Calif. It is the most valuable company in the world by market capitalization.
