Apple now has a fully-year app dev course in 20 universities

Today's world runs on code, be it on the smartphone you're using to read this or the hidden servers that make the Web go round. Unsurprisingly, the biggest tech giants are pushing for coding to become as common in schools as the traditional three R's. Apple's Everyone Can Code initiative is one such program that targets institutions of higher learning. Today, Apple is pushing that program to more than 20 colleges and universities around the globe to ensure that the next generation of programmers will have a solid foundation in making apps for iPhones and iPads.

There is a never-ending debate about whether the iTunes App Store or the Google Play Store is the better app marketplace in the mobile industry today. Android users might not want to admit it, but iOS has a larger roster of premium apps, many of which cost money. In other words, iOS is arguably a more profitable marketplace for app developers.

Leveraging that, as well as the ubiquity of iPhones and iPads, Apple has partnered with schools of higher learning to offer its App Development and Swift Curriculum to students. The full-year course has been designed by Apple itself to help get students started on iOS app development, specifically using Apple's own Swift programming language.

Australia's RMIT University boasts of the curriculum's broadest international offering, available both through its online program as well as an on-campus vocational course. Other new members of the club include Denmark's Mercantec, the Netherlands' Hogeschool van Arnhem en Nijmegen, New Zealand's Unitec Institute of Technology, and the UK's Plymouth University.

SOURCE: Apple