RMIT joins more than 20 international universities who are also offering the curriculum to students this year, including Mercantec in Denmark, Hogeschool van Arnhem en Nijmegen in the Netherlands, Unitec Institute of Technology in New Zealand and Plymouth University in the UK.

“We launched the Everyone Can Code initiative less than a year ago with the ambitious goal of offering instruction in coding to as many people as possible. Our program has been incredibly popular among US schools and colleges, and today marks an important step forward as we expand internationally,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO. “We are proud to work with RMIT and many other schools around the world who share our vision of empowering students with tools that can help them change the world.”

“App Development with Swift will play a crucial role in helping RMIT’s students use their creativity and entrepreneurship to prepare for success in the 21st century workforce,” said Martin Bean CBE, RMIT University vice chancellor and president. “These are the sort of skills Australians need for the jobs of the future, and we’re thrilled to work with Apple to deliver this important curriculum.”

“I’m so excited to have the chance to begin learning with Apple’s App Development curriculum, and for the opportunities it could open for my future,” said Tenisha Fernando, fourth year RMIT student. “The Swift programming language is used by developers to create some of the world’s best apps, and it would be great to join them in sharing my own ideas.”

App Store customers have now downloaded more than 180 billion apps and Apple has paid out over $70 billion to developers since the store launched in 2008, making it the most vibrant software marketplace in the world. More than 500 million unique customers from 155 countries visit the App Store every week.