{"id":16098,"date":"2023-10-03T05:34:27","date_gmt":"2023-10-03T05:34:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mysourcefunding.com\/leadership\/the-flaw-behind-coding-bootcamps-attempt-to-disrupt-higher-ed\/"},"modified":"2023-10-03T05:34:29","modified_gmt":"2023-10-03T05:34:29","slug":"the-flaw-behind-coding-bootcamps-attempt-to-disrupt-higher-ed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mysourcefunding.com\/?p=16098","title":{"rendered":"The Flaw Behind Coding Bootcamps Attempt To Disrupt Higher Ed"},"content":{"rendered":"
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In the 2010s, coding bootcamps caught the higher education world\u2019s imagination. The movement sparked both excitement and fear.<\/p>\n

General Assembly, Galvanize, Flatiron School, Dev Bootcamp, and more were written up in media outlets like Forbes, the New York Times and Tech Crunch and attracted venture capital and heady valuations.<\/p>\n

At the Christensen Institute, we wondered if they might disrupt universities\u2019 master\u2019s degree programs. In some cases, they may still be well positioned to do so, as several coding bootcamps have evolved to now work directly with companies to upskill and reskill their employees or added apprenticeship programs.<\/p>\n

Yet the initial bootcamps model was predominantly direct-to-consumer. These entities were created during the same period that business guru Rita McGrath described recently in her post, \u201cThe Rise, and Fall, of the Direct-to-Consumer Model\u201d:<\/p>\n

There was a brief period in the early 2010\u2019s when a new business model \u2013 dubbed \u201cdirect to consumer\u201d emerged and threatened to upend established incumbents<\/em>. A decade or so in, the assumptions underlying the model are in tatters and we\u2019ve come to realize, as we always should have, that Strategy 101 still applies.<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/fbs-ad><\/p>\n

Companies like Casper and Harry\u2019s epitomized the trend. McGrath\u2019s analysis of why companies like Casper lacked enduring disruptive value also reveals the central flaws in coding bootcamps\u2019 initial direct-to-consumer models.<\/p>\n

As she wrote:<\/p>\n

\u201cLet\u2019s start with strategy basics. In order to create a profitable business, you need to have customers who are willing to pay more than it costs you to create whatever they are buying. To scale and keep that profitable business, you need some way of staving off imitation and matching on the part of competitors, in other words, a barrier to entry, as Michael Porter told us decades ago. If you don\u2019t have a barrier to entry, competitors can offer something similar, often undercutting your price, particularly if they didn\u2019t have to make the investments in learning or R&D that allowed you to create the business in the first place. In novel circumstances, it\u2019s easy to forget that this iron law applies.\u201d<\/p>\n

What ended up happening in the bootcamp space? In McGrath\u2019s words about the direct-to-consumer space more broadly\u2014words that happen to also describe what happened in the bootcamp sphere:<\/p>\n

\u201cCompetition everywhere. Few entry barriers. Rising customer acquisition costs. And, interestingly, a resurgence has occurred among incumbent, traditional competitors who have learned how to operate direct to consumer themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n

The bootcamp industry exhibited the same pattern.<\/p>\n

There were few barriers to entry. The underlying instructional models of many weren\u2019t all that innovative, nor did they have a clear and enduring competitive advantage. And although the regulatory landscape posed some problems, it wasn\u2019t enough to keep new bootcamps from appearing rapidly across the country in nearly every major city. A specific site, Course Report, emerged to keep track of the fast-evolving space.<\/p>\n

And then customer acquisition costs became a sticking point\u2014a direct outgrowth of bootcamps\u2019 central value proposition: that they were \u201cfaster and cheaper\u201d than a traditional degree. The result of the speed of the programs was that they churned through students faster, which meant that coding bootcamps frequently needed to fill new seats\u2014particularly if scale was a goal. Which meant paying to acquire students amidst growing competition.<\/p>\n

But for the models to retain their value proposition and be profitable, the acquisition costs had to remain low enough, never mind the importance of making sure there was enough margin so the bootcamps could also invest in the actual programs themselves\u2014the education and career support.<\/p>\n

And then universities began to enter the space. Rarely were the colleges able to stand up their own entities; universities arguably struggled to hire the right types of faculty members with industry expertise as opposed to academic chops and the up-front marketing expenses could be challenging. So they instead partnered with start-up companies like Trilogy to white-label coding bootcamp programs out of their continuing education and extension schools and take advantage of their brands to lower student acquisition costs.<\/p>\n

In the words of McGrath:<\/p>\n

\u201cThe DTC flurry is a vivid representation of the transient advantage phenomenon. Even dramatic early success doesn\u2019t guarantee a lasting advantage. It turns out, strategy 101 was a prescription that shouldn\u2019t be ignored.\u201d<\/p>\n

This wisdom is just as true in the world of education as it is in the broader universe of direct-to-consumer businesses.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Read the full article here<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the 2010s, coding bootcamps caught the higher education world\u2019s imagination. The movement sparked both excitement and fear. General Assembly, Galvanize, Flatiron School, Dev Bootcamp, and more were written up in media outlets like Forbes, the New York Times and Tech Crunch and attracted venture capital and heady valuations. At the Christensen Institute, we wondered […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16099,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[76],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-16098","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-leadership"},"yoast_head":"\nThe Flaw Behind Coding Bootcamps Attempt To Disrupt Higher Ed | Brandiary<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"In the 2010s, coding bootcamps caught the higher education world\u2019s imagination. 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