It’s been whispered about since last year, but now it’s official: the famous Parisian computer programming school, 42, is to open a branch in Quebec City.
It was the Quebec organization Québec Numérique that turned to 42 to ask them to set up a school in our province. Sophie Vigier, the school’s director since October 2018, explains: “We are extremely solicited by many cities around the world to open international branches. We chose Quebec City because we were attracted by the people behind the project, as well as the common values we share.” Québec Numérique will choose the location and the school’s directors, as it is they who are financing the project. 42, for its part, is providing the curriculum, the expertise and, above all, the famous brand. The director explains that because teaching is based on the individual rather than the culture, each person decides on his or her own advancement, making the experience exportable to any country. The Quebec City school will follow the same guideline as the 10 other cities where campuses will open around the world. The 42 network encourages the mobility of its students, who will be able to apply to any school in the network, while continuing to benefit from the same pedagogical approach.
42 is not your average IT school. It has no teachers, doesn’t award degrees and is open 24/7. Training is based on teaching methods that include peer and project-based learning. Students must complete an intensive four-week training camp called “the pool” to join the cohort. Anyone over the age of 18 can enroll in the pool after completing the on-site logical reasoning tests, which are reputed to be extremely difficult. Several Silicon Valley gurus sing the praises of 42: Evan Spiegel the co-founder and CEO of Snapchat, Brian Chesky the co-founder and CEO of Airbnb, Jack Dorsey the co-founder and CEO of Twitter, or Paul Graham, co-founder of Y Combinator. Students often don’t even have time to finish the course before they’ve been hired by tech companies all over the world.
But if 42 looks like a technologist’s dream, it’s also caused quite a stir, particularly in 2017, when numerous scandals were revealed within the school. A student’s testimony: “The school corridors are like a soccer locker room. This atmosphere literally eats you up. (…) I was chased up one and a half flights of stairs – which I had to walk backwards up – to see under my skirt. We don’t feel safe here.” On the Slack messaging system accessible to all students, students denounce pornographic messages posted for all to see. Despite all this, the school management didn’t react at the time: the principal had also been part of a sex scandal when he was filmed having sex with a student in the school.
The director of 42 has managed to increase the percentage of female students from 15% to 26% in 6 months, which is huge, considering that the school had 5% women when it opened in 2013. Let’s see what the numbers look like for the Quebec City school…
