According to Wired, Apple’s Developer Academy in Detroit launched two years ago in 2021 as part of the company’s $200 million Racial Equity and Justice Initiative. The program has welcomed over 1,700 students, with about 600 completing its 10-month, half-day course co-sponsored by Michigan State University. The total investment over four years is nearly $30 million, with almost 30% of that funding coming from Michigan taxpayers and the university’s regular students. While the course is free, the cost to run it averages about $20,000 per student. Graduates have had mixed outcomes, with some praising the mentorship and others, like former student Lizmary Fernandez, finding it insufficient for landing a coding job.
The Heart and the Reality
Here’s the thing about big, well-intentioned corporate programs: the intent and the execution can be worlds apart. And this seems to be the case here. By all accounts, Apple‘s heart was in the right place. They wanted to create opportunity in a major city that’s been historically underserved. They brought in speakers, focused on inclusive app design, and provided a fully subsidized, in-person experience that experts say beats many for-profit coding bootcamps. For students like Min Thu Khine, it was genuinely life-changing.
But. There’s always a “but.” The program’s open-to-all model, while admirable for diversity, created a huge instructional challenge. You had everyone from 18-year-olds to a grandfather in his 70s, all with wildly different starting points. And the lack of a substantial cost-of-living stipend meant students like Fernandez had to get on food stamps. So you’re trying to learn a complex new skill while worrying about your next meal? That’s a brutal setup for success. It highlights a critical gap in these initiatives: covering tuition is one thing, but supporting someone’s actual life during the training is another.
Measuring Success Is Messy
So how do you even measure if a program like this “worked”? Is it about raw job placement numbers in tech? Is it about exposure and opening doors, even if those doors don’t lead directly to Apple Park? The academy leader, Sarah Gretter, pointed to the range of attendees—entire families, mothers and daughters—as a sign of community impact. And that’s valid. Changing one person’s trajectory can have a ripple effect.
But when you’re spending $20,000 per seat and millions in public funds, you’ve got to ask: what’s the return? For every graduate landing at an Apple Store Genius Bar or mentoring others, there’s someone like Fernandez who is now a flight attendant heading to law school. That’s not a failure—law school is great!—but it does mean the direct pipeline to coding jobs isn’t as robust as the hype might suggest. The program created coders, but it also created a lot of people who simply learned what the tech world is like and decided it wasn’t for them. Is that a win? It’s complicated.
A Cautionary Tale for AI Training
This story is popping up at a perfect—or maybe perfectly worrying—time. Tech giants are now starting to pour billions into AI-related job training courses across the country. Apple’s Detroit academy is basically a live-action case study for what they’re about to attempt at a much larger scale. The lessons are staring them right in the face.
First, curriculum matters. A focus on one company’s ecosystem (in this case, Apple’s tools) can limit broader employability. Second, student support is everything. Financial stress undermines learning. And third, “open access” is a noble goal that requires incredible teaching flexibility and resources to do right. You can’t just drop a standard course on a non-standard group and expect magic. As research on tech education often shows, context is king. If these new AI training initiatives ignore these on-the-ground realities, they’re doomed to repeat the same mixed outcomes. They’ll create some success stories, sure, but they’ll also leave a lot of potential on the table.
