While it may seem like coding bootcamps have always been a part of the tech economy’s source code, they are actually a relatively new addition to the education sphere. As alternatives to traditional degree programs, bootcamps are well on their way to becoming a $1.2 billion industry by 2026, according to estimates by Technavio.
Bootcamps allow students to learn tech skills (often coding or programming) over an intense, short period of time—and then immediately get plugged into the tech job circuit. They’re often viewed as a relatively quick way to make a career change, upskill, or land a high-paying job.
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There are many of them, too, offered by both public colleges and universities, and private organizations in tech-heavy cities like New York City, Seattle, and San Francisco. In short, a big bootcamp circuit has developed over the years, even though each individual bootcamp provider varies in terms of course offerings, price, and the career possibilities that open up to graduates.
Meanwhile, fluctuations in the economy—caused by the pandemic, layoffs in the tech sector, and the advent of tools powered by artificial intelligence (A.I.)—have added further complexity to the bootcamp space. As such, many coding bootcamps, and the bootcamp model more broadly, have evolved and will continue to do so. In fact, some experts say the next big shift is already underway.
The state of coding bootcamps in 2023
The COVID-19 pandemic was perhaps the largest driver of changes in the bootcamp space, says Roger Lee, chief sales and marketing officer at General Assembly, which offers a handful of bootcamps, along with dozens of courses and other programs. “Like most companies, the pandemic forced us to rethink how we show up for our students and partners—starting with the decision to close our physical campuses and invest more heavily in our online capabilities.”
But perhaps the larger, or more critical, new development at General Assembly has been a general shift geared toward reaching more specific outcomes for both students and employers that hire General Assembly’s graduates. “We’ve made updates to our courses to offer more personalized and accessible experiences to our students while prioritizing more individualized career mentoring services that better reflect the work they’ll be doing on the job,” says Lee.
General Assembly also has a couple new programs and initiatives to help it better serve students and employers. It launched GA Talent this month in partnership with global talent solutions provider LHH, which is a new division created with the goal of closing tech skill gaps across industries. Part of that initiative—what they’re calling a Recruit-Train-Deploy solution—is designed to “help employers build stronger, more diverse tech talent pipelines to create more direct pathways to tech careers for our students,” Lee says.
General Assembly also launched an apprenticeship program earlier this year, utilizing a “learn-and-earn model.” Apprenticeships are perhaps the headliner here, and, as other experts say, they may be the next big thing for bootcamps. That’s because they’re not only being implemented by General Assembly, but also by a number of other bootcamp providers.
The primary reason why apprenticeships are gaining in popularity is that bootcamps often can’t follow through on their promise—either explicit or implied—to land graduates jobs.
Bootcamps were designed as a sort of “last-mile training—to bridge the gap between the skills employers need and the skills colleges and universities are equipping students with,” says Ryan Craig, managing director at the private equity firm Achieve Partners, which focuses on EdTech. He’s also the author of College Disrupted, A New U, and the forthcoming book, Apprentice Nation.
“Where bootcamps fall down is around employability,” Craig says. As such, a number of the portfolio EdTech companies that Achieve Partners works with are moving to apprenticeship-based models that they believe will be more effective for both students and employers.
‘The apprenticeship is not just a training program. It’s a job’
The next big evolution for coding bootcamps will be the adoption of more apprenticeship models, according to Craig. That’s because, as an investor in bootcamp providers and EdTech companies, he believes the bootcamp model has effectively run out of steam.
“Five or six years ago, we were heavily invested in [bootcamps], but we didn’t see them scale like we thought they would,” he says. “If a student is seeking to be upskilled in an area where there is a clear talent gap—and the provider is seeking to charge the student tuition and assume a financial risk—then they have a bad business model,” he adds. “We moved from a tuition-pay model to an employer-pay model, the foremost of which is an apprenticeship.”
The apprenticeship model works better, he says, because much of what students to learn in bootcamps is often better taught in a real-world professional setting, rather than a classroom. By becoming an apprentice, employers can better control what students or apprentices learn—such as programming tools—in conjunction with other software and platforms, allowing them to mesh easier with their workflows. “It’s a much easier way to solve the labor skills gap,” Craig says.
Apprenticeship models can also offer a better chance of landing a full-time job, as apprentices are already working for employers. “The apprenticeship is not just a training program. It’s a job, and you’re being paid on day one,” Craig says.
Craig says that Achieve Partners portfolio companies that are switching to apprenticeship models are seeing huge interest from students, with between 200 and 500 applicants for each seat in a given cohort. Given the advantages, Craig says that he thinks “most [bootcamps] will migrate in this direction.”
That’s not to say that bootcamps are on their way out completely, however. Plenty of bootcamps still provide thousands of students with quick-turnaround career training options, and many employers rely on them to keep the talent pipeline stocked. For that reason, bootcamps—though they may be entering a new state of their evolution—can be viable options for many prospective students.
And bootcamps can be one of the quickest ways to establish a career in the tech sector, says Lee. “Know that if you put in the work,” he says, “this is an opportunity for anyone wanting to enter the field.”
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