2023 Year in Review: Coding Bootcamp News

Table of Contents

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• 2023: Course Report in Numbers
• 2023 in Coding Bootcamps — The TL;DR:
• January: Tech Hiring Amidst Big Tech Layoffs
• February: New Reskilling/Upskilling Initiatives with Bootcamps
• March: Women in Tech Sound Off!
• April: The Generative AI Craze Begins
• May: Bootcamps Lead the Charge on AI Skills Training
• June: A Pressing Need for Cybersecurity Professionals
• July: Modernizing Apprenticeships & Corporate Training
• August: What “Working With AI” Really Looks Like
• September: Critical Funding For Veterans Approved!
• October: How AI Skills Affect Hireability
• November: $34M in Coding Bootcamp Fundraises
• December: Wrapping Up 2023
• Our Predictions for 2024

2023 was a bit of a rollercoaster year! We’re rounding up the most impactful news we saw about coding bootcamps in 2023. Follow along as we highlight 2023’s top trends and break down the year’s biggest coding bootcamp acquisition, fundraises, and initiatives. Plus, we’re sharing our predictions for 2024 — from tech hiring to AI skills to bootcamp tuition financing!

2023: Course Report in Numbers

• We added 113 new schools to our directory – 4 of those in December! 40 programs that we added to the directory were university bootcamps.
• You (our readers) applied for over $100,000 in exclusive scholarships on Course Report.
• We matched over 40,000 of you with coding bootcamps via our matching tool.
• We published ~140 new articles on our blog, 13 new podcast episodes (including this one), a bunch of YouTube videos, and even hosted 4 live webinars!
• Over 11,000 of you came to Course Report to leave a review of your bootcamp experience. We know how important Reviews are for students who are doing their research about coding bootcamps, so we’re building out more tools to help you find and read alumni reviews. For example, you can now search Reviews by keyword and see how each school on Course Report breaks down by Instructor rating, Curriculum rating, and Job Placement rating. We’ve added summaries of reviews for many schools as well!

2023 in Coding Bootcamps — The TL;DR:

• Skills-based hiring was a major trend in 2023 — Over the course of the year, we saw 15 states drop their degree requirements, and many corporations (including Walmart) followed suit. Even with Big Tech layoffs during the first half of 2023, the demand for tech talent is already rebounding.
• The creation and expansion of AI curricula in bootcamps quickly gained traction this year. While AI is not new (many data science bootcamps were already teaching machine learning!), but with new tools like ChatGPT and Github CoPilot, coding bootcamps quickly reoriented their programs to integrate AI tools that would make their graduates more hireable. This rise of AI also saw a major increase in new courses and programs that either focused on generative AI fundamentals and prompt engineering to more advanced AI/ML skills for anyone interested in AI engineering roles. 
• Support for tech apprenticeships grew over the year. We saw federal support for apprenticeships by way of modernizing the National Apprenticeship Act and the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA). There were also new partnerships between coding bootcamps and organizations like Americorps, YUPRO, Perficient, and Impact Miami in order to boost students’ credentials with apprenticeship opportunities.

January: Tech Hiring Amidst Big Tech Layoffs

• According to a New York Times report in January, a majority of the tech jobs in the first half of 2023 were at companies outside the tech sector in industries like banking, retail, healthcare and manufacturing whose operations were increasingly becoming digital.
• Starting in January, states like Utah and Pennsylvania dropped the degree requirements for most or all of their state government roles. Over the course of this year, we saw 15 states drop their degree requirements for state jobs! 
• Coding bootcamps participated in this year’s push for skills-based hiring by partnering with organizations to offer tech training at no cost to students. In January, BrainStation, App Academy, and Tech Elevator offered sponsored cohorts through organizations like Perficient, Impact Miami, and The Edie Windsor Coding Scholarship.
• Eleven Fifty Academy was acquired by Indiana Wesleyan University, which allowed Eleven Fifty to continue running bootcamp as a non-profit.

February: New Reskilling/Upskilling Initiatives with Bootcamps

• Coding Dojo was acquired by the education services company Perdoceo in February for $52.8M. 
• Lighthouse Labs received $21.2M in federal funding for their ICT Boost project, which offered 1,700 Canadians tech training at no cost. 
• Springboard reacted to the Big Tech layoffs with a pledge of $1M in scholarship funding for individuals impacted by tech layoffs through their Career Reboot Scholarship Program. 
• The majority of these layoffs were hitting software engineers, but the cybersecurity workforce seemed to be immune from these layoffs. 
• House Republicans introduced a new bill in February that would extend federal Pell Grant funding to skills-based education programs that were at least 8-weeks long.
• The Department of Education began to review guidance that allowed Online Program Management companies (OPMs) like 2U to strike revenue-share agreements with colleges. 
• Inside Higher Ed reported that the Department of Education would revise its guidelines on how colleges work with OPMs.

March: Women in Tech Sound Off!

• VentureBeat reported that 400+ tech companies had laid off over 100K workers as of March. 
• We spoke with Johnny Borchardt (a UI/UX Design Career Coach at Springboard) about how tech layoffs were affecting bootcamp grads this year. 
• General Assembly released a survey about the state of tech talent acquisition, and found that — despite tech company layoffs — HR professionals were still having trouble finding and retaining tech talent.
• For our first Live Q&A of 2023, we spoke with four women who broke into tech through a coding bootcamp on International Women’s Day in March. These bootcamp grads had a lot to say about the mentorship and community they received at bootcamps like Sabio, Skillcrush, General Assembly, and LearningFuze. 

April: The Generative AI Craze Begins

• OpenAI officially launched ChatGPT, and soon AI became the buzzword of 2023, with so many new initiatives to teach AI and generative AI.
• For Earth Day, we released a post about greentech jobs you can land after a coding bootcamp, plus 22 greentech companies with a mission to save the planet.
• The biggest fundraise of April was Careerist, which closed an $8M Series A funding round. 
• 2U filed a lawsuit against the Department of Education alleging the department radically redefines the definition of what it means to be a third-party servicer. 

May: Bootcamps Lead the Charge on AI Skills Training

• A Goldman Sachs article predicted that two-thirds of US occupations could be transformed by AI. 
• Bootcamps like Flatiron School, Code Fellows, General Assembly, and BrainStation announced either new AI courses or integration of AI into their curriculum. Over the rest of the year, this movement to reiterate bootcamp curriculum and create new AI programs for all kinds of technologists would grow. 
• Google launched its own Cybersecurity Career Certificate through Coursera in response to the pressing need for trained and certified cybersecurity professionals. 
• The staffing company, Lightcast, highlighted in its report how demand (and salaries!) for IT jobs have actually increased for tech talent outside of Big Tech companies in the U.S. 

June: A Pressing Need for Cybersecurity Professionals

• The Italian coding bootcamp Develhope closed a fundraising round of 6 million euros.
• Wiley announced that it would be selling its OPM business, Wiley University Services. 
• In a Live Q&A, we spoke with 4 bootcamp experts about how to break into a cybersecurity career in 2023. Our expert panel included a CEO, a lead instructor, a bootcamp alum, and a careers team leader from Springboard, Code Fellows, Evolve Security Academy, and DigitalCrafts who shared their insights on cybersecurity bootcamps, certifications, entry-level roles, and more. 
• The staffing firm, ManpowerGroup, found that 74% of IT employers in the US said they were having difficulty filling open roles. 
• Lighthouse Labs released its 2022 Outcomes Report, which found that its cybersecurity bootcamp students were landing more jobs after graduation than its web development and data science students.
• In honor of Pride Month, we updated our annual round up of coding bootcamp scholarships for LGBTQ+ folks, which includes full and partial tuition scholarships as well as automatic tuition discounts. 

July: Modernizing Apprenticeships & Corporate Training

• V School raised an undisclosed amount in growth funding from Decathlon Capital Partners. 
• CyberWarfare Labs received a seed funding deal with UK-based angel investor and cyber entrepreneur, Sumit Siddharth. 
• Axcel announced it was acquiring online IT training provider, ExitCertified.
• A new bipartisan bill aimed at modernizing the National Apprenticeship Act was presented in July.  
• Coding Temple became an AmeriCorps School of National Service, which means that students can leverage their AmeriCorps Education Award to attend a Coding Temple bootcamp.
• An Emeritus study showed that 80% of survey respondents said upskilling would help them stand out in their workplace, and that most of the 6,600 people across 18 countries that they interviewed said their interest in upskilling has increased due to recent economic conditions. 

August: What “Working With AI” Really Looks Like

• The Wall Street Journal wrote about the absurdly high salaries that big companies were willing to pay AI engineers. 
• In our Live Q&A with expert panelists from Code Fellows, Springboard, General Assembly, Tech Elevator, and Flatiron School, we dove into what “working with AI'' can actually mean. 
• The cybersecurity training platform, Pistachio landed €3.25M in funding. 
• Edtech company Noodle acquired corporate training provider Meteor Learning for an undisclosed amount.  
• Just two years after being acquired by SNHU, Kenzie Academy was closed this August.
• In Scotland, CodeClan announced it would be closing.

September: Critical Funding For Veterans Approved!

• VET TEC received a new round of funding as of this September!
• CodePath, which offers tech training and career support that is aimed at diversifying the tech pipeline, received a $15M gift from Mackenzie Scott.
• 4Geeks Academy announced that it was merging with coding bootcamp Boca Code in South Florida.
• Per Scholas rolled out new upskilling programs for its alumni to help them land second and third roles after graduation.
• IBM announced a free generative AI upskilling program that will be offered through its IBM Skills Build program.

October: How AI Skills Affect Hireability

• Per Scholas was given a $20M investment by the philanthropist Mackenzie Scott. 
• A new report from the Oxford Internet Institute and the University of Copenhagen found that employees with artificial intelligence skills are paid 21% more on average, and certain AI skills could bump up pay by 40%.
• A report from the Kenan Institute of Private Enterprise estimates that 21% more women’s careers are exposed to AI automation than men, even though men outnumber women in the workforce. 
• Janna Salokangas, the CEO of Mission Impact Academy, wrote a guest post in BuiltIn about the need to recognize how AI could affect women’s careers and the importance of creating upskilling programs for women.
• Walmart announced that it was dropping college degree requirements for some corporate jobs. 

November: $34M in Coding Bootcamp Fundraises

• Earlywork, a sales training bootcamp based in Australia raised $1.5M in a seed round.
• In England, the skills-based workforce management platform, Spotted Zebra, announced a £7.7M Series A round. 
• MacKenzie Scott continued to support tech training by awarding $5M to Skills for Chicagoland’s Future and $20M to Jobs for the Future. 
• A survey by AWS found that 73% of employers are prioritizing hiring workers with AI skills.
• There was a new Udemy report that showed employers are opting to focus on skills over degrees, especially when it comes to the growth of generative AI.
• Cognizant announced its new program, Synapse, which aims to train 1 million people worldwide in basic digital literacy and generative AI. 
• Merit America launched its new Skills-to-Staff program, which is an apprenticeship program for its alumni through the job staffing firm, YUPRO.
• Academic Partnerships bought Wiley University Services for $110M. This sale included an additional $40 million if they hit revenue targets and 10% of the common units of Academic Partnership’s parent company.

December: Wrapping Up 2023

• According to the Whiteboard Advisors, there is a new Bipartisan Workforce Pell Act in the House that includes for-profit programs and online programs. 
• The House of Representatives has renewed its interest in updating WIOA through a bipartisan bill that would require states to spend more of their WIOA funds. 
• HR Dive reports that the Department of Labor has proposed to modernize the National Apprenticeship System.
• Higher Ed Dive highlighted a survey from the American Association of Colleges and Universities where employers believe college students are lacking skills like critical thinking and complex problem-solving.
• A November 2023 study from Intelligent.com found that 55% of employers dropped their degree requirements in 2023, and 45% of companies plan to eliminate degree requirements in 2024.
• SkillsFWD awarded 6 grants to organizations across the country with the intention of creating and adopting a better system of skills-based learning and employment records.
• Lighthouse Labs announced a partnership with Upskill Canada to help organizations reskill employees into cybersecurity professionals.
• A report from Dynatrace showed that nearly 9 in 10 tech leaders expect AI to expand data analytics access to non-tech employees via natural language queries.
• CNBC dove into the increasing number of AI courses out there now, ranging from university courses to online short courses through Udemy.
• Our recent Live Q&A with four bootcamp alumni from Coding Temple, Springboard, General Assembly, and NYC Data Science Academy demonstrated how bootcamp grads are actually working with AI on the job. 

Our Predictions for 2024

Our 2024 Predictions:

1. We will see continued investment in AI upskilling and integration. “AI courses” are incredibly broad right now, but the market will become more clear on the skills people need, and that includes learning software and data fundamentals to have a lasting career. 
2. There will be more competitive lending for bootcamp students. That could be 0% loans from the major bootcamp lenders or even more in-house financing from bootcamps. We predict that bootcamps will get better at helping students afford tuition.
3. Compared to 2023, getting hired by the big tech companies in 2024 will get easier and more predictable.  
4. As for regulatory predictions, if the Department of Education releases new guidance around third-party service providers, then we may see a decoupling of universities and bootcamps but a continued focus on skills-based training and hiring in higher education.

And if any of our predictions come true, you’ll hear about them in exactly one year when we’re back to wrap up 2023!