The state of coding bootcamps in 2020

My role at Pipeline Academy entails a variety of things I really love to do, one of them is setting up a strategy for the company and translating it into actionable operational steps.

It's pretty much like using any map:

1. Understanding the industry/market that my company is active in by analysing where we came from and where we are right now.

2. Define a desirable future state or an idea of the value you generate (use your preferred framework).

3. After that comes the fun part, finding the path that gets us there.

So here is my step #1, let's see how the world of coding bootcamps looks like from different perspectives (industry analyst, bootcamp organiser, participant) based on some of the key resources I've encountered during my never-ending voyage on the internet. If you'd like to get closer to understanding this fairly new educational format and you are looking for a non-comprehensive starting point, you might find the links below useful.

Field guide

One of the most important write-ups about coding bootcamps has been done by Quincy Larson, the teacher who founded freeCodeCamp.org: this very no-nonsense document called The Coding Bootcamp Handbook is a reality check and golden piece of advice for anyone who just recently fell in love with the idea of going to a bootcamp and magically upgrade their lives 'get-rich-quick-scheme'-style. The sobering reality is:

“Going to a bootcamp can be the best decision you ever made. Or it can be an awkward financial setback. Do your research. Save up your money. Learn coding fundamentals first. Bootcamps aren't magic. They aren't going to do the work for you. In the end, the experience is what you make of it. So make the most of it.”

The DOs and DON'Ts of this universe have been shared in a four-part story by Marco Morawec, Co-Founder of the Firehose Project that has meanwhile been acquired by Trilogy education (that has meanwhile been acquired by 2U Inc.). It presents solid evidence-based guidance for the makers of bootcamps and for aspiring participants as well, and makes you cut the bullshit and focus on what brings you forward:

• “Quality and depth of the curriculum

• Emphasis on the coding fundamentals – algorithms and data structures

• A bootcamp team that is technical and 100% focused on student outcomes, not marketing metrics

• Everything else a coding bootcamp focuses on is useless”

Here is the rub: whether you are planning to organise a coding bootcamp or you are considering participating in one, make sure you keep it real. While there are way too many buzzwords and promises floating around, what you put in is what you'll get out of it.

The coding bootcamp market

Most of the public information about the state of the market is based on data from the US and Canada. While the formal education system in Europe is different in many aspects, and it seems like there is very little structured and comparative data available on the current size and quality of the industry, the European countries face similar challenges in filling the competence-gap on the highly competitive and fast-paced job market. Therefore, any implications and assumptions need to be treated with caution.

The media loves to reference the latest market analysis by CourseReport.com, since this coding bootcamp review platform offers its readers the most basic, and at the same time the most crucial key performance indicators in a simple format. In the comprehensive Coding Bootcamps in 2020: Your Complete Guide To The World of Bootcamps report you get access to a lot of details about their research and the most important findings, that they've summarised like this (note: the data is self-reported by the participating schools):

1. “Coding bootcamps are intensive, accelerated learning programs that teach beginners digital skills like Full-Stack Web Development, Data Science, Digital Marketing, UX/UI Design, Cybersecurity, and Technical Sales.

2. The average bootcamp costs ~$13,500, and graduates report an average starting salary of $67,000. Bootcamps can vary in length from 6 to 28 weeks, although the average bootcamp is ~14 weeks long.

3. Coding bootcamps teach modern, widely used programming languages and frameworks like Ruby on Rails, Python on Django, JavaScript, and PHP stacks through project-based learning. Students graduate from bootcamps with a portfolio, an online presence, interview skills and more. Most bootcamps help graduates find an internship or match students with an employer network – in fact, in Course Report's most recent research, 83% of bootcamp alumni report being employed in programming jobs.

4. There are bootcamp campuses in over 85 cities throughout the US/Canada. Coding bootcamps are predicted to graduate 23,000 students and gross $309MM in tuition revenue in 2019.

5. The average bootcamper has 6 years of work experience, has at least a Bachelor's degree, and has never worked as a programmer. However, the number of students with degrees appears to be declining slightly over time.

6. A lot has changed since bootcamps launched in 2012: University Bootcamps are now competing with household bootcamp names, payment options like Income Share Agreements and Deferred Tuition have exploded in recent years, and many bootcamps are dipping into the corporate training market.”

CourseReport started releasing its Coding Bootcamp Market Size Study in 2017, and since then they have done it in 2018 and 2019 as well. In addition, a separate Coding Bootcamp Alumni Outcomes & Demographics Report has been issued 2018 and 2019 to share more transparency for (potential) students and manage expectations towards promised outcomes.

An even more academic approach can be found in the RTI Press publication Alternative and Independent: The Universe of Technology Related "Bootcamps" by Caren A. Arbeit, Alexander Bentz, Emily Forrest Cataldi and Herschel Sanders. This 2017 report does a great job in highlighting the reasons behind the critique that feels almost like an overused cliche in 2020:

“While the bootcamp model holds a great deal of promise, it is currently an unregulated, unaccredited sector of higher education with little transparency and no independent outcomes data.”

My favourite and most comprehensive market research has been released on CareerKarma: written by James Gallagher, the State of the Bootcamp Market Report 2020 is a highly professional and extensive analysis. It is an attempt to cover all the aspects that belong in a proper market exploration while trying to redefine some of the standards of measuring the dynamics of this specific market (note: CIRR is one attempt to move towards a clear standard in reporting outcomes). He ends up with a significantly higher gross total market revenue for 2019 than CourseReport, which shows how intransparent the US market is - not to mention the rest of the world. In addition, the report includes a map of the ISA landscape, which will be subject to consolidation in the upcoming years similarly to the bootcamp business.

“If bootcamps continue to innovate and find success equipping people with tech industry-ready skills, the bootcamp sector will likely see significant growth over the next five years — both in the number of bootcamps and the number of students enrolling in them. There also may be a period of consolidation in the space, as existing players become more dominant and look to expand their influence. In addition, the growth of coding bootcamps and the increased diversity in their offerings suggests that the bootcamp model could have wider applications than solely within the context of programming instruction. As courses in digital marketing, technology sales, and other non-coding technical disciplines have become more common, it may be a signal that bootcamps are looking to expand outside of programming disciplines. This would allow the bootcamp model to be applied to a much larger market segment: post-secondary training in non-technical fields. Overall, bootcamps have proven themselves an effective pathway to a career in tech for thousands of people, and all signs indicate that the sector will continue to grow in coming years.”

Jay Wengrow, the CEO of a coding bootcamp called Actualize summarizes the state of the industry (as of 2018) based on his insightful experiences building up his company focusing on the challenges of the past years and the ones to come in the near future.

Organic growth is clearly visible, however not at the pace of software startups. Every time you encounter new data about the market or participants, you have to double-check the source and be cautious when basing decisions on them.

Business model and scaling

The latest analysis called Bootcamps and ISAs: Economics, Challenges, and Opportunities by Christoph Rindlisbacher looks at the coding bootcamp concept and business model from the perspective of a financial investor and comes to a conclusion that won't please VCs, but it ultimately shows a positive outcome, highlighting that the last decade was fairly turbulent:

“The structural obstacles to scaling a bootcamp identified by this report will make it difficult for any bootcamp to achieve venture scale returns. This does not mean that short-term education is not a worthwhile endeavor or a viable business idea. Affordable alternatives to four year degrees are good and needed, and it’s theoretically possible for bootcamps to turn a profit while providing high quality education. However, all the available information suggests it’s difficult for bootcamps to be both profitable and to provide high quality education while growing at a rapid pace. It’s difficult to imagine a scenario where a coding bootcamp is a good venture capital investment.”

One approach for scaling exercised by a lot of coding bootcamps is focusing on diversity and promoting (and often subsidising) female and minority participation in order to boost their ratio in the tech workforce. The events unfolding in 2020 have accelerated this notion radically.

According to StackOverflow's Developer Survey Results 2019, about 15.4% of all respondents have participated in a full-time developer program or training bootcamp. It should be noted, that bootcamps are not necessarily meant to be starting points for careers in tech, they represent an opportunity for reskilling and moving away from commoditised coding languages or unpopular fields.

Y Combinator intends to play a significant part in the future of non-traditional education, and has put their money where their mouth is attempting several promising tweaks to the business model... without any major success yet though. It seems like even their bootcamp called Modern Labor tried experimenting with connecting their educational business model with private sector projects through an ISA, but they had to realise that scaling education while keeping up the quality might be a more difficult task than anticipated. This leads us to our next point.

Seeing Silicon Valley's tendency to abuse their users in exchange for rapid company growth and in order to please their shareholders, the limits of scalability are both a challenge for coding bootcamp organisers and a helpful indicator for people searching for the right school. Reinventing the wheel did not work out for any school yet, but this does not mean that it won't in the future - you just need to make sure you are clear about the risks involved.

2020

I am not sure how this year is going to go down in history, but I am confident that we all will have some anecdotes to tell about it. Observing how the lockdown, the social distancing measures, the pandemic-caused rise in unemployment and the WFH trend are accelerating the overdue seismic shift in higher education, the way we approach education as a means of personal socioeconomic improvement changes significantly.