Bootcamps are F*'d, so What's Next?

2023 has been a rough year for tech workers. The market has corrected. There have been over a quarter million layoffs by tech companies, and we've seen layoffs and closures across most of the big players in the bootcamp space, many impacting students in-flight.

This is not something new. Having been around this space for a decade, I can't help but notice that most of the original bootcamps (including mine) have been acquired, and many of those have been shut down.

DevBootcamp was acquired by Kaplan in 2014 and was shut down in 2017 for failing to "reach a sustainable business model". In 2015, Apollo Education Group invested in then acquired Iron Yard, which was shut down in 2017. WeWork acquired FlatIron in 2017 and then sold it at a loss in 2020. Zovio also had to shed its asset, Fullstack Academy, in 2022. Lambda school continues to have regulatory issues and lawsuits, and 2U/Trilogy... well I can just point you to their stock price, which has dropped from $74 pre-pandemic to $1 today, when being an "OPM" should have been a boon to their business.

In 2023 we've seen layoffs and closures hit App Academy, Turing, Tech Elevator, Hack Reactor, etc. etc. etc.

The (Existing) Model Does Not Scale

This is something I sounded the alarm about for years and was ignored. The majority of the bootcamps I encountered were playing copy/paste with their models, curriculum, and delivery. It basically looked like this:

1. Toss together some quick and easy content.
2. Hire some high-cost IT workers to deliver said content.
3. Spend a ton in marketing/customer acquisition.
4. Don't turn a profit, but tell your backers that market domination is just a few more investments away.

There are a lot of problems with this model, but chief among them is they resisted most regulation and measurement of outcomes. This meant the barrier to entry for competitors was very low, and the product (learning tech) was sophisticated enough that outrageous claims and big marketing spending were seen as the primary way to compete.

Eventually, investors started to demand better performance and as more camps flamed out, raising money became more difficult. But rather than rethink the business model, most programs:

1. Continued not investing in their learning experience.
2. Moved to cheaper, less experienced mentorship, like hiring their own students.
3. Continued to spend a ton of money on marketing/customer acquisition.
4. Failed to recognize the danger of oversaturating the market with graduates that had superficial, cookie-cutter skills.

2023 Exposes and Accelerates the Decline

Enter 2023, and hiring took one of the worst hits since the dot-com crash. This is a weird time for employers, as many overhired during the pandemic. For example, Spotify recently laid off 1,500 roles, saying they were "too ambitious in investing ahead of revenue growth".

The pandemic-induced shift to remote work sparked a hiring frenzy among companies eager to bolster their online presence. This surge played into the hands of bootcamps, the majority of whom taught full-stack JavaScript, making their one-size-fits-all approach temporarily effective.

With the bottom falling out of the hiring market, the boot camps suddenly found themselves saddled with high fixed costs and dramatically lower student demand.

Learners swiftly recognized that the primary advantage of paying steep bootcamp fees was a quick entry into employment. However, as job searches grew more challenging and protracted, the high cost of bootcamps was increasingly unjustifiable.

Thus, we've seen many bootcamps close, many more make cuts and I predict that closures will continue into 2024.

Microcredentials are not the Answer

What we do know is that the answer isn't Microcredentials. In a desperate move, 2U acquired EdX and inherited a model with a < 5% completion rate. For the most part, MOOC content is passive videos, a few quizzes, and a few assignments backed by a message board. There's little in the way of accountability.

Remember when Udacity offered a 50% refund to anyone who actually finished their NanoDegree?

So, What's Next?

To deliver a quality learning experience, you need three things:

• High-Quality Content - Great content is more than sticking a camera in the back of a college lecture hall and recording the professor. Content needs to be delivered in the most effective format for the topic (video, written, audio, etc.), it needs to be up-to-date (a challenge for some technical topics), and it needs to avoid shortcuts by building a foundation of understanding that can be applied to future, similar problems. (Bootcamps took way too many shortcuts due to time constraints).
• Hands-On Practice - This is more than following along with a tutorial. To learn a skill, you need to engage in deliberate practice of increasing complexity and difficulty, something that many of these providers skip.
• Feedback - Feedback is the secret sauce of mastering a skill quickly and effectively. Access to quality feedback provides reliable measurement and increases accountability and completion rates when done correctly. Feedback alone can increase completion rates by double digits.

The upcoming generation of educational programs must learn from the shortcomings of MOOCs and Bootcamps.

These new models should integrate the best elements of both, offering learning experiences that are flexible in intensity, providing ample feedback to maintain engagement and accelerate learning, and emphasizing hands-on practice for deeper skill development.

Graduates of these programs should possess a robust vocational skill set so that they can navigate a more challenging employment environment.

Will the Big Players Pivot?

For established players, transitioning to this new educational model presents significant challenges. Burdened by sunk costs and institutional biases, they will struggle to recognize and seize emerging opportunities.

Over the past few quarters, I've been on a journey of discovery: platforms, gig workers, AI/LLMs, communication, and feedback platforms. Combining these things creatively has a true opportunity to scale while keeping costs in check. I'm not talking about slapping a wrapper around ChatGPT. I'm talking about creating effective feedback loops that favor assisting and not spoon-feeding learners.

The decreasing barrier to entry into education should keep the big players up at night. Individual experts (like me) can go toe-to-toe with big brands at a fraction of the cost while delivering a better experience.

Providers are about to get squeezed. The people with real talent have no incentive to fork over 70+% of their revenue in the coming environment. This applies to education providers, music and book publishers (For an extreme example, see Taylor Swift), and anyone else whose traditional selling models are based on the historically limited ability to self publish.

2024 and beyond are going to be an interesting time for publishers, creators, and learners. Overall, this will be a very good change for the individual learner and it may finally force the low quality and mediocre providers to change - or get out of the market.