Apple’s App Course Runs $20,000 a Student. Is It Really Worth It?

Two years ago, Lizmary Fernandez took a detour from studying to be an immigration attorney to join a free Apple course for making iPhone apps. The Apple Developer Academy in Detroit launched as part of the company’s $200 million response to the Black Lives Matter protests and aims to expand opportunities for people of color in the country’s poorest big city.

But Fernandez found the program’s cost-of-living stipend lacking—“A lot of us got on food stamps,” she says—and the coursework…