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= Revature = Revature is an American information technology services company headquartered in Reston, Virginia with offices throughout the United States. Its unusual business model involves hiring recent U.S. college graduates, training them in specific software skills, and deploying them to work on information technology projects for Revature’s corporate and government clients.

Unlike coding “boot camps” and most other forms of information technology training, Revature does not charge its students tuition, instead paying them a salary during their training and project work.

History
Revature was originally founded (under the name Multivision) as a traditional staffing agency, but experienced difficulty finding prospective employees with the technology skills employers sought. Around 2014, it became a talent development company with the aim of supplying those unmet needs.

In its current form, the company’s clients have included Accenture plc, Capital One, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA), and Recreational Equipment, Inc. (REI). According to the company, it has trained more than 7,000 software engineers and is “the largest employer of emerging technology talent in the U.S.”

In April 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, Revature announced that it would “donate approximately 2,000 hours of instructor-led, virtual coding training to essential workers, their families and others who have been impacted by COVID-19.”

Business model
Client organizations approach Revature with a request for employees trained in software development using specific platforms, such as JavaScript, Salesforce CRM, Pegasystems, Microsoft Azure, or Amazon Web Services. Revature advertises these jobs online and prospective students apply to be considered for training and placement.

If accepted, students sign up for three months of training, either at Revature’s own Northern Virginia campus or on the campus of one of the company’s university partners, such as the University of South Florida, the City University of New York, the University of Texas at Arlington, or West Virginia University. Having completed the training, they spend two years working, as Revature employees, on an IT project for one of Revature’s clients, with the aim of securing permanent employment with the client.

Students do not pay tuition and instead are paid a salary during both the training and the subsequent project work.

Writing in the Wall Street Journal, the business journalist Kelsey Gee likened this service to companies that provide “last mile” logistics, noting that the final leg of a physical journey can be “the costliest and trickiest segment.”

Other initiatives
In September 2020, Revature announced the launch of a suite of new workforce reskilling services designed for companies seeking to retrain their existing employees.

Since 2020, the company has partnered with the Thurgood Marshall College Fund to offer scholarships to undergraduates at Historically Black Colleges and Universities that are members of the Fund.

Controversies
Revature has been criticized for the way it treats graduates who choose to leave the program within two years of their initial placement. In January 2021, the Medium tech publication OneZero reported that, according to contract documents, “associates [who] choose to quit within two years after the training… could be on the hook for a $36,500 quitting fee.”

The company defended the practice on the basis that students receive value from the training and placement. A spokesperson for the University of Maryland Global Campus (a Revature partner) agreed, comparing the “quitting fee” to the practices of the United States Reserve Officers’ Training Corps, which requires scholarship recipients to serve in the armed forces for a given period after graduation; otherwise, they must pay back the cost of college.