2022 Coding Bootcamp News Roundup

Table of Contents

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• 2022: Course Report in Numbers
• 2022 in Coding Bootcamps – The TL;DR:
• Our Predictions for 2023

We’re looking back at a very eventful 2022, and rounding up the most impactful news we saw in the coding bootcamp space. Follow along as we call out the top trends in 2022 and break down this year’s biggest coding bootcamp acquisitions and fundraises. Plus, we’re sharing our predictions for 2023 – from transparency in ISAs to Web3 bootcamps! 

2022: Course Report in Numbers

• We added 121 schools to our directory – 15 of those in December!
• You (our readers) applied for over 450 exclusive scholarships on Course Report and we gave away over $100,000 in exclusive Course Report Scholarships! 
• We matched over 42,000 readers with coding bootcamps via our bootcamp matching tool.
• Jess: 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!
• And many thanks to the 11,000 of you came to Course Report to leave a review of your bootcamp experience! Your review is a huge help to others thinking of enrolling at a bootcamp!

2022 in Coding Bootcamps – The TL;DR:

1. There was significant federal investment in registered apprenticeships in 2022.
2. On the heels of 2021’s Great Resignation and a record amount of job openings, there was a new demand for skills-based hiring. 
3. We had long-predicted that regulation around ISAs and OPMs was on the horizon, and that actually came to fruition in 2022.
4. While Full Stack Web Development continues to maintain the largest market share in the bootcamp world and Cybersecurity is still the fastest-growing vertical, Web3 and Blockchain bootcamps gained steam in 2022.  
5. Accreditation is a slow/intense process so just a few coding bootcamps were able to announce that they had completed the process by the close of this year, but we know this trend will continue into the New Year.

January: Doubling Down on Apprenticeships

• Skillsoft acquired Codecademy for $525M.
• Ada Developers Academy received a $10M grant from Melinda French Gates and her investment company, Pivotal Ventures. This year, Ada Developers Academy expanded opened new campuses in Washington, DC and Atlanta, and tripled their staff.
• The U.S. Department of Labor reported that 4.5 million Americans quit their job in November 2021, and that there was a record high number of job openings in January. 
• The Department of Labor announced an $8M award for apprenticeships in pandemic-stricken sectors. 
• Crain’s announced it was funding a cohort at Grand Circus. 
• Zip Code Wilmington announced that it would receive $4.5 million over three years from the State of Delaware to provide tuition and living stipends to qualifying Delaware residents.
• Maggi Molina of Operation Code and Alicia Boddy from Code Platoon weighed in on everything today’s vets need to know about the GI Bill, VET TEC, and VRRAP. 

February: Pell Grants for Bootcamps?

• 2U announced it was integrating its operations with edX. 
• Elected officials propose different ways to have Pell Grants covering short-term training programs like coding bootcamps. While this amendment for Pell Grants in the America COMPETES Act passed the House, it did not pass in the Senate. By the end of 2022, Higher Ed Dive speculated that Pell Grants for short-term programs could be picked up by a new act or attached to a defense or appropriations bill.
• Employers lean into hiring for skills and not just degrees. 
• Google announced a $100 Million Fund that bets on scaling up tech training programs like Merit America that have proven effective in lifting low-income workers into middle-class jobs and careers. 
• Springboard announced they were committing $10M in scholarship funding to their Inclusion Scholarship Program.
• Course Report hosted a Live Q&A with 6 recent bootcamp grads who landed jobs during the Covid-19 pandemic. These grads had so many good insights on how they made career changes during a truly unpredictable time!

March: A Call for Skills-Based Hiring

• The Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey from February 2022 showed that there were a record 5 million more job openings in the US economy than the number of available workers. 
• In his State of the Union address, President Biden called on employers to hire for skills not degrees.
• Governor Larry Hogan of Maryland answered that call by eliminating the 4-year degree requirement for thousands of state agency jobs. 
• Anew accrediting body, Workforce Talent Educations Association (WTEA), debuted in March, driven by founding members like Ascent Funding, Nucamp, and Fullstack Academy.
• Michael Horn’s non-profit, Education Quality Outcomes Standards Board (EQOS) was acquired by Jobs for the Future.
• Higher Ed Dive did a recap on the growth of Strategic Education’s revenue. Strategic is the parent company of Strayer and Capella Universities, which owns coding bootcamps Hackbright Academy and Devmountain. 

April: ISA Regulation Becomes a Reality

• The U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Federal Student Aid clarified that ISAs used to finance expenses for postsecondary education are private education loans under ED’s regulations. 
• In April, there was a new ISA lawsuit against Lambda School. Later in 2022, there were ISA lawsuits against Clever Programmer, Flockjay, and Prehired. 
• The New York Times looked at how companies were evolving hiring practices by eliminating college requirements. 
• An Arc.dev survey found that coding bootcamp grads earn 12% more than college grads. 
• A Cyberseek report found that there are 600,000+ cybersecurity jobs that need filling in the U.S. 

May: OPM Oversight

• Masterschool raised a $100 million seed funding round.
• Henry landed $10M in Series A funding.
• Web3 bootcamp Encode Club raised $5M. 
• There was more investment in the coding bootcamp space in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) area with more regional retraining programs. 
• The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a report on OPMs with the recommendation that the U.S. Department of Education has more oversight on colleges’ financial relationships with OPMs. 
• Gallup dove deeper into its Gallup-2U Boot Camp Graduates Study findings. 
• The White House made a statement that urged federal agencies to update their hiring practices and hire workers based on skills experience. 
• The US Department of Labor created a $3.4M funding opportunity called the Women in Apprenticeship and Nontraditional Occupations grant program.
• We heard about a Launch School graduate whose Income Share Agreement helped him make a career change into tech. 
• Lambda School rebranded to Bloom Institute of Technology. 
• Wall Street Journal took a closer look at if making a career change into cybersecurity is possible since many of the entry-level jobs require certifications. 
• (ISC)2 reported positive findings about employers who took on entry-level and junior-level cybersecurity hires.

June: A Gradual Return to In-Person Learning

• Multiverse closed a Series D funding round of $220M. 
• Flatiron School celebrated its 10-year anniversary. 
• In-person learning began to return: BrainStation opened its flagship campus in NYC. Codesmith announced it would be offering in-person learning in NYC again, too. 
• Black Professionals in Tech Network announced the launch of Obsidi Academy, a coding bootcamp for Black-identified individuals in Canada. 
• Coding Dojo partnered with City University of Seattle to offer bootcamp grads a guaranteed admission into the CS programs at the university. 
• The New York Times spoke with multiple tech recruiters about the continued tech hiring boom. 
• News outlets like Computer World addressed how the tech talent shortage was pushing organizations to hire through non-traditional approaches like coding bootcamps. 
• In honor of Pride Month, we updated our annual round up of coding bootcamp scholarships for LGBTQ+ folks. 
• In our webinar in June, we spoke with 5 recent bootcamp alumni who shared what they wish they knew before enrolling at a coding bootcamp. 

July: Diversifying Tech through Workforce Development

• The Job highlighted the results of The Missouri Chamber Foundation’s Industry Driven IT Apprenticeship, which had trained over 1,500 workers thanks to a $6M federal grant. 
• Code Fellows announced a partnership with the Washington State Department of Social and Health Services in order to offer free tech training to anyone who is also qualified to receive federal Basic Food Assistance. In November, Code Fellows partnered with tech talent provider, American Apprenticeships Work in order to create a DOL-approved apprenticeship program.
• Persevere Program launched to help women incarcerated at a South Carolina correctional facility certify as full stack developers. 
• Next Chapter, a new program that works with JPMorgan and Hack Reactor, helps formerly incarcerated individuals learn tech skills and then land their first tech job.  
• Coding Dojo received $10M from Eastward Capital Partners. 
• Holberton School announced that it had been acquired by African Leadership Group (ALG). Over the year, Holberton School opened campuses in Miami and Mauritius, while expanding its Tulsa, Oklahoma campus. 
• The Wall Street Journal article, “That Fancy University Course? It Might Actually Come from an Education Company,” took a critical look at OPMs. 
• Phil on Ed Tech offered a contrasting view to the WSJ article, saying that 2U has become a target for activists who want to take away the option of tuition revenue sharing as a primary business model.

August: ISA Transparency

• Zovio announced it was selling the OPM segment of their business to the University of Arizona Global Campus. By November, Zovio had sold Fullstack Academy to Simplilearn for an undisclosed amount after Simplilearn had just raised $45M. 
• Web3 bootcamp ChainShot was acquired by crypto developer platform Alchemy. 
• A new bipartisan ISA bill was introduced. Overall, this bill would create a separate regulatory system under consumer protection law that is specifically designed for ISAs, and require that ISAs must follow consumer protection laws such as the Fair Credit Reporting Act and the Equal Credit Opportunity Act. 

September: WANTO Grants Spur New Bootcamps

• The Biden-Harris administration announced the Apprenticeship Ambassador Initiative, a national network of more than 200 employers and industry organizations, labor organizations, educators, workforce intermediaries, and community-based organizations committed to strengthening and diversifying Registered Apprenticeship.
• The ISA provider, Better Future Forward, reached a final compliance plan with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and updated the disclosures it will make to students who enter ISAs.
• Fresh Start Women received a $500,000+ grant as part of the Women in Apprenticeship and Nontraditional Occupations (WANTO) grant, which will be used to help at-risk women train for non-traditional occupations to become self-sufficient.
• Non-profit coding bootcamp, Reskill Americans, which provides tuition-free, online tech training to those underrepresented in tech, announced a second cohort.
• In a live Q&A, we spoke with admissions reps from 5 different coding bootcamps to learn what it takes to get into their coding bootcamp! 

October: New Reskilling for Veterans

• A Deloitte report focused on what is actually happening at organizations who are leaning into the skills-based hiring push. 
• Tech Elevator celebrated its 7-year anniversary as a tech training provider this year. Tech Elevator also announced a new campus in Washington, DC. 
• Marcy Lab School was touted as an alternative to college since it’s a 1-year, tuition-free, full-time fellowship in software engineering that includes a liberal arts curriculum. 
• Galvanize announced a new partnership with the US Armed Forces called Operation Level Up where active duty military can learn how to be software engineers. 

November: Impact of the Midterm Elections

• After the results of the U.S. midterm elections, journalist & analyst Paul Fain pointed out that workforce development and job training mostly have bipartisan support, so those trends should continue. 
• The global economy began to slow in November, and tech was no exception as FAANG/MAANG companies started to announce layoffs.
• India-based tech provider Masai School raised $10M. 
• NYC-based Web3 company Buildspace raised $10M.
• Detroit-based coding bootcamp Grand Circus was acquired by tech consulting firm, Digital Intelligence Systems (DISYS), which hopes to expand the bootcamp’s reach. 
• Codeup became officially accredited by the Middle States Commission on Secondary Schools of the Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools. 
• Operation Spark in Louisiana is in the midst of applying for initial accreditation with the Commission of the Council on Occupational Education. 

December: Wrapping up 2022 

• Forbes reported that CareerFoundry raised €5 Million. 
• Eleven Fifty Academy was acquired by Indiana Wesleyan University.
• According to TechCrunch, Bloomtech (formerly Lambda School) laid off half of its staff.
• The Salt Lake City Tribune reported that Pluralsight laid off 20% of its workforce.
• Per Scholas and the SkillUp Coalition published recent findings that show that learners who receive a stipend while completing their skills training have better outcomes. 
• HR Dive interviewed a former tech recruiter and recent General Assembly grad to hear their thoughts on bootcampers’ chances of landing tech roles. 
• In our last Live Q&A of 2022, we asked four experts from different bootcamps for their thoughts about what’s on the horizon for tech bootcamps in 2023. 

Our Predictions for 2023

Our 2023 Predictions:

1. The labor market will remain tight in the first half of 2023, so it may take longer to get a job but people will continue to re-train, upskill, and break into careers in tech. Use this time as an opportunity to learn!
2. There will be more in-person learning opportunities in 2023, but coding bootcamps will work on making the hybrid learning experience better and higher-touch while remaining flexible.
3. Web3, blockchain, and coding literacy courses will be on the rise in 2023, but cyber security will keep gaining steam.
4. With 2022’s regulatory environment around ISAs and OPMs, we’ll see Income Share Agreements become more transparent and fair for students. We may see a decoupling of universities and bootcamps but a continued focus on skills-based training and hiring in higher ed. 
5. VRRAP and VET TEC will become even easier to use in 2023 and you’ll see more bootcamps announce workforce development partnerships, so get that money!
6. Pell Grants may finally include short-term education programs like coding bootcamps.
7. Coding bootcamps will continue to seek accreditation.

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!