Dive Brief:
- Following Dev Bootcamp's announcement earlier this month that it would close its doors for good in December, another coding bootcamp, The Iron Yard, last week revealed that it will also cease operations.
- The South Carolina company, which operates 15 campuses in cities including Atlanta and Houston, plans to shut its doors by the end of the year, once it teaches out its summer cohorts.
- A post from the company linked the decision to the relative youth of the bootcamp marketplace and the challenges that come with that, in addition to challenges facing higher ed in general.
Dive Insight:
With the boom in popularity coding bootcamps saw in recent years, the herd was inevitably bound to thin sooner or later. Data from Course Report showed 91 full-time coding bootcamps in 2016, and around 426 total. For the most part, both The Iron Yard and Dev Bootcamp's closures can likely be chalked up to the growing pains of a still-nascent market. It remains to be seen how the prospect of more federal financial aid could impact the sector should it live up to its potential as the future of for-profit higher ed. Pilots overseen by the U.S. Department of Education began last year under the EQUIP program and could open the door for further federal funding in the sector, which would likely carry conditions to maintain quality and weed out some more providers, leaving the best among them in a stronger position to serve students seeking specific job skills in a quicker, more cost-efficient model than a traditional degree program.