2U Abandons Bootcamp Business, Announces More Layoffs
Five years after its $750M Trilogy bootcamps acquisition, the troubled ed-tech company pivots to “microcredentials”
Nothing has gone right for 2U since its disastrous acquisition of edX for $800 million (which I called The Triple Failure). Since then, the company has been plunged into a cycle of layoffs, reorganizations, and strategic pivots one after another, eventually culminating in Chapter 11 bankruptcy a few months ago.
Unfortunately, the cycle didn’t end there. Today, the company’s interim CEO Matt Norden made a bombshell announcement: 2U will transition away from traditional bootcamps to what they’re calling “innovative technical microcredentials,” and layoffs have followed, according to posts on LinkedIn and industry forums.
2U got into bootcamps through its $750 million acquisition of Trilogy Education about five years ago. Today’s announcement essentially means 2U is shutting down its Trilogy division.
A couple of years ago, 2U rebranded Trilogy bootcamps as edX bootcamps. Currently, edX.org lists 104 bootcamps from universities including Rice, Columbia, Rutgers, and many others.
Trilogy runs the bootcamps under different universities’ names. For example, the same AI bootcamp is offered through three different universities: Case Western Reserve, Rice, and Columbia.
Several major coding bootcamp providers across the U.S. have faced significant challenges in student enrollments, with widespread layoffs, restructuring, and some unexpected closures.
edX Bootcamps, part of 2U’s Alternative Credential Segment, were no exception. In its last filing before bankruptcy, 2U reported a $23.9 million revenue decline (23.3%) in its Alternative Credential Segment, driven largely by a 40% drop in coding bootcamp enrollments. This significant downturn highlights ongoing issues within the edtech industry, including the sustainability of the coding bootcamp business model.

Marcus
Forseeable in my view. Why? If you visited the 2U website in the last weeks after the corporate restructure and going private, we can recognize 2U is start focussing only on edX brand. No bootcamp programs, no trilogy, nothing! Maybe GetSmarter could be the next.
My conclusion is now 2U try a “back to the roots” with the acquired edX platform as core business.
ex-edX
You can watch the final meltdown on Reddit.
https://www.reddit.com/r/codingbootcamp/comments/1h6wdus/boot_camp_provider_2uedx_is_officially_pivoting/
PG
Dhawal, you might have the wrong link in the “bombshell announcement” above. It links to the launch of edX bootcamps rather than the shutdown news
Dhawal Shah
Thank you! Fixed it.
Perry
They were taking people’s money for Bootcamps as of 3 weeks ago! My wife joined in December and it was clear after 1 class that the instructor never taught before. We immediately requested to cancel. Fortunately she was able to drop BUT THEY STILL KEPT $1,000 of our $8,000 we paid. Now seeing they knew all of this was going on seems very unethical.
Henry Li
Aged and over priced courses compared to competitors, once-off enrollment and deadlines. Not designed for providing values to the customers but making money for stockholders and lost its key of success at the beginning. It’s a total different product after the acquisition. The business model seems like a gym subscription service, you enrolled, you lose momentum, well, I take the money from those who cannot complete the courses. Smart but not wise.