Over the last three years, the free 42 Urduliz campus, promoted by Telefonica Foundation and the Provincial Council of Bizkaia, has received more than 350 companies interested in learning about the most innovative methodology in the world.
42 Urduliz, the free programming campus promoted by Fundación Telefónica and the Provincial Council of Bizkaia reaches its third anniversary and has become a training benchmark in Bizkaia. Since its opening in April 2021, 42 Urduliz has received more than 7,300 applications and has organised 11 “pools”, the so-called access selection process that consists of a 26-day immersion in its disruptive learning model. More than 1,400 people have passed through these pools and have rated their experience with an average of 9.3 out of 10.
Currently, 42 Urduliz has more than 300 students, with an average age of 33. Of these, around 22% are women, three percentage points more than just a year ago. This figure, moreover, is twice as high as the figure for computer science degrees or higher training cycles, 13% and 10% respectively, according to the Ministry of Education and Vocational Training.
Fundación Telefónica’s commitment to promoting digital talent, with a focus on reducing the gender digital divide, has materialised in the creation of free, five-day training experiences aimed specifically at women. These initiatives have significantly increased the presence of female talent on the campus, where almost a quarter of its students are women.
42 Urduliz, an educational benchmark thanks to a transformative model
One of the key features of the 42 Telefonica Foundation project is the updating and evolution of the training itinerary to train its students in the skills that the labour market demands due to the lack of professionals with qualifications in digital competences.
As a novelty, in this last year, and with a focus on employment, 42 Urduliz has launched a free training itinerary, 42 ZIP, aimed at people over 45 years of age who either need to adapt their professional profile with digital skills or are unemployed. This modality is designed for people who, in view of the unstoppable transformation of all sectors of activity by technology, require training in this area.
For Estíbaliz León, Director of 42 Urduliz Telefonica Foundation: “42 Urduliz has consolidated its position as an educational benchmark in learning the most sought-after skills today. The students, who have passed the core training and were in employment, have found work thanks to 42 Urduliz. The employability rate of our educational model is 100% because, in addition to learning about technology, in 42 you acquire skills as necessary as communication, tolerance to frustration, adaptation to change and teamwork”.
Ainara Basurko, Deputy for Economic Promotion of the Provincial Council of Bizkaia, highlights that “42 Urduliz Bizkaia contributes to responding to the development of the technological and digitalisation challenges of the SMEs of Bizkaia, which demand professional profiles with these skills. 42 Urduliz responds to this concern of the business fabric: it connects digital talent with the demand made by companies in the territory”.
The aforementioned employability rate in 42 reaches 100% among those who complete the core training itinerary made up of eight levels of knowledge on programming developments and challenges. All the students who have passed them at 42 Urduliz are currently working in jobs where they apply the skills learned on campus. This learning path is completed with another 13 levels of specialisation, where students acquire digital skills according to their interests: artificial intelligence, big data, systems, quantum, internet of things, cybersecurity, etc.
In addition, 42 complements this training itinerary with other learning alternatives, of short duration and free of charge, which give people the opportunity to try out, first-hand, the learning model of 42 Telefonica Foundation as well as acquiring basic knowledge about web programming, artificial intelligence or cybersecurity.
The Basque Government’s Department of Education, in collaboration with the Basque Innovation Agency-Innobasque, has awarded the STEAM Euskadi seal to two of these calls, the ‘Piscine Discovery Web Women’s Edition’ and the ‘Introduction to Artificial Intelligence Workshop’, for their promotion of vocations in science, technology, engineering and mathematics, in connection with the arts and humanities.
A centre for the promotion of talent and innovation
The disruptive and innovative model of 42 Urduliz has led it to become a real pole of attraction both for the educational sector, interested in learning about its learning methodology, and for the business and industrial sphere. During its existence, 42 Urduliz has been visited by around 80 educational centres, universities and vocational training centres with around 3,600 attendees who have visited its facilities to find out what one of the most innovative programming campuses in the world is like, according to the WURI ranking.
In addition, with a focus on boosting technological talent in Bizkaia, more than 350 companies from the Basque Country have visited to see how people learn at Campus 42, given that, thanks to alliances and collaboration agreements with companies such as IBM or Amazon Web Services 42 Urduliz offers the possibility of learning about quantum computing or becoming certified and specialising in AWS, respectively, or going deeper into the field of cybersecurity or artificial intelligence.
This positioning reinforces the launch of this project that Telefonica Foundation and the Provincial Council of Bizkaia promoted with the aim of providing everyone with access to quality training that will ensure them a job in this digital era.
