Coding School Opens ISA Program to DACA Students
photo courtesy of Kenzie Academy
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As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe NowKenzie Academy in Indianapolis will expand eligibility for its Income Share Agreement program to include participants of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, also known as Dreamers. According to the academy, Dreamers are currently banned from applying for federal loans, and the offering aims to ease the financial burden for them to enroll in Kenzie’s in-person and online tech training programs.
The coding academy says students who use an ISA to enroll in the school only start making payments after they graduate and get a job earning $40,000 or more annually.
The Supreme Court has begun hearings to assess the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, a policy enacted in 2012 which protects undocumented immigrants who were brought to the U.S. as children from deportation.
The Court is deciding whether DACA protections will remain in place for the 800,000 “Dreamers” currently living in the U.S under the program.
Kenzie Chief Executive Officer Chok Ooi has a personal passion for this initivative. In a blog post, Ooi made the following statement:
“As an immigrant who came to the U.S. for college, my education transformed my outlook and options after graduation. In 1999, I attended Indiana University–Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI), and eventually transferred and graduated from the University of Texas in Austin, giving me the skills to launch my career as an engineer. I didn’t come from a wealthy family, and as an international student, I had limited access to work opportunities. My education changed all that, by giving me the skillset I needed to go out into the workforce. I worked hard to learn the technology skills needed to succeed during the financial boom of the 2000s and took risks later as an entrepreneur because of the confidence and skills my education gave me.
My engineering training gave me a shot at the American dream, and eighteen years later I founded a tech training school, Kenzie Academy, right down the street from IUPUI to help bring this same opportunity to Americans who simply can’t afford to re-skill for the technology jobs of today’s economy.
Like dozens of other post secondary institutions around the country, Kenzie leverages an innovative financing tool to make education attainable for nontraditional students: Income Share Agreement. ISAs are a financing option that requires students to pay no upfront tuition for education and only pay back once they land a job earning at least $40,000 annually. “
