Bootcamps: Giving Graduates what they want
Originally designed to allow students to teach in a subject (at a University level) or begin their PhD, the master’s degree has long since become the latest weapon in the arms race among graduates both to differentiate themselves from those with ‘just’ a bachelor’s degree and as the means to switch careers.
Universities have done well from this arms race, with Masters typically commanding a higher per year fee than undergraduate degrees and in particular Anglophone universities have benefitted from a vibrant market of foreign students topping up their CV with a prestigious UK, US or Australian Masters. MOOC platforms, having seen the demand among the same segment — graduates — for unbundled degrees are now starting to rebundle that into Masters or MicroMasters in the hope of making more money.
The question we need to ask though is, Is the master’s degree the answer to a graduate or professional looking to switch job or just the only tool to hand?
We are in the process of finding out and nowhere is the question being more rigorously answered that in the Bootcamp space. Coding bootcamps, the first of the bootcamps, emerged as a solution to the supply shortage of coders. This shortage emerged because University Computer Science courses, the primary and traditional source of coders, were unable to match the rapid shift in demand for coders driven by digitisation. Bootcamps emerged to exploit this gap and taught not to subject mastery but to job requirements. Since then Coding bootcamps have proliferated remarkably, 23K students graduated from bootcamps in the US in 2017 and have undergone growth rate close to 30% year on year and are forecast to grow 10% annually. They’ve branched out to other subject areas; Product management, Data Science and Design in short, the growth jobs and their presence is going global.
That success has already given Universities and policymakers food for thought. Columbia University announced its own bootcamp and New York City is currently partnered with Fullstack academy to provide low-income New Yorkers with coding school. Startling as these dynamics, are the real driver of change is the ruthless innovation occurring among bootcamps, with low margins in a highly competitive market, bootcamps are innovating on every part of the education value proposition in order to get graduates and other professional learners into them and in doing so are rewriting the value proposition for professional education at large.
What is the value proposition of a master’s, the goto for graduates and professional learners? A master’s typically takes 12 months, you get the university brand (ideally), the master’s degree (formal credential), in-depth subject knowledge, in-person teaching, a peer group and some general career support. It typically costs ~£20K which generally has to be paid up front.
Bootcamps do not offer the same depth (typically 3 months) and not taught by a professor. They do not offer a formal qualification and they lack the brand power of a university. Yet out of necessity they’ve made some of these constraints, strengths.
Take the curriculum, Bootcamps typically take 3 months, they need to do that because they are a volume business with fixed costs — the less time students spend there the more paying students can go through. The flip side though is that students pay a bit less (~£11k) but are in a position to look for jobs faster (after 3 months) reducing the 9 months of opportunity cost spend in amaster’s. Lacking access to professors, Bootcamps turned to professional coders looking to teach — who could teach courses that more closely aligned to what businesses were looking for.
It wasn’t just that they turned strengths into weaknesses, bootcamps rewrote the value proposition of professional education around the job. They made getting a job not an addition to the the curriculum but part of it. Students have to do interview practice, coding challengers and prepare their CVs and portfolios. Regular industry events are tailored not only for networking but also to allow students to tailor their learning to match jobs they might be interested in. This has tangible results, bootcamps typically boast a 90%+ placement rate and it’s this stat above all else — the probability of getting the job in coding — that makes their value proposition so compelling.
For sure, there have been lawsuits for bootcamps who have lied about their rate and it is very likely some are massaging placement rates but some Bootcamps have also put skin in the game. The first is in the tuition payment — some offer tuition back if students fail to land a job within 6 months, others offer tuition free and clawback the money through Income Share Agreements (ISAs) which are only activated above a certain pay threshold e.g. $60K. Another innovation, used most famously in Andela an African bootcamp, is to turn the bootcamp into an agency, hiring out coders to do basic jobs in return for lower tuition. It’s not clear how successful these approaches are but all 3 demonstrate willingness to innovate in previously unthinkable ways on financing while also removing barriers to entry (i.e. those who can’t afford upfront payment).
Bootcamps are not stopping there and as David Yang, co-founder of Fullstack academy argues, they need to in order to appeal to go mainstream. Bootcamps already foster strong cohort links, a byproduct of the intense 3 months of training yet their next area will be to develop and leverage alumni networks. They have several advantages here, first is location. Bootcamps are located where people live and work meaning their alumni network is accessible. By running events — including speaking and teaching opportunities — they become an excellent source of hires — furthered by the fact that unlike university alumni networks — bootcamps alumni are all tech workers. In the case of WeWork’s Flatiron coding bootcamp, what was a bolt-on for universities could be a core part of the bootcamp value proposition.
Do Universities need to be concerned? Yes, if they want to be part of this professional market and so too do MOOC platforms. It’s true MOOCs help universities better reach the job seeking segment of the market. MOOC platforms are beginning to offer master’s online allowing people to study part-time (less time out of work) and flexibly, some are also offering a degree of PAYG models that mitigate the upfront costs — a key barrier particularly for the indebted graduate market.
For sure, Bootcamps come with many problems. They are under-regulated, have been sued for lying about statistics on job placement and many have failed to create sustainable business models. There are also very legitimate questions about whether their MVP curriculum doesn’t short-change students later on in their career when the more advance subject material taught at universities can come into play and on top of that they don’t offer a real credential.
Yet the driver of the graduate and professional learning market — to which MOOCs owe their existence is at a monetary level driven by jobs. Without further emphasis on the end goal — getting the student into a job — they risk losing out on the premium segment of this market. Is an online master’s Degree in Data Science better than a Data Science bootcamp? That’s a choice lots of people will have to make and if the latter demonstrates a more certain road into a job, it may yet win out. This is why deal’s such as WeWork’s acquisition of Flatiron ought to be concerning, WeWork recognise the value of bootcamps in today’s anxious job market and allow them to scale. Bootcamps, even more than MOOC platforms are a response to a labour market problem driven by technological change and they are a more direct answer. Universities and MOOCs alike will need to develop their responses or risk coming up second.
Nevertheless, the intense competition of the market, rapid technological change that drives rapid spikes in skill demand will force through a rapid evolution in business models — which will define the expectations of the customers in the professional education market. Universities and MOOC platforms will need to meet these challenges or risk coming off as a the low-cost segment of the market.
