Trilogy Education Services

Last updated
Trilogy Education Services
Company type Subsidiary
Industry Education technology
Founded2015;9 years ago (2015), in New York City, New York, US
FounderDan Sommer
FateAcquired by 2U in 2019
Headquarters,
United States
Key people
Dan Sommer (CEO)
Services
Parent 2U
Website trilogyed.com

Trilogy Education Services (often shortened to Trilogy Education) is a New York City-based technology education company that offers non-credit technology training programs, colloquially known as coding bootcamps, through affiliate universities. [1] In-person courses are held on the affiliate university campus. [1] Revenue from the tuition is shared with the affiliate university. [1]

Contents

Program graduates receive a non-credited professional certificate from the partner school and career advisement. There is no job placement guarantee and no third-party verified jobs reports have been released, though outcome data is privately shared with partner universities. The partner schools do not regard program graduates as university alumni, nor program enrollees as university students. The programs cost US$10,000 to US$13,000 [2] and are not eligible for federal loans, nor do students receive a Form 1098-T.

The company was founded in 2015. [3] In June 2017, the company received US$30 million in a Series A funding, followed by US$50 million in Series B funding in May 2018. It was bought by Maryland-based education technology company 2U in April 2019 for US$750 million. [4]

History

Trilogy Education was founded in 2015 by Dan Sommer, whose father was a trustee for State University of New York. The younger Sommer had previously worked for an OPM, an acronym for companies which help universities bring their courses online. [1] Rutgers was the company's first university partner. [5]

In June 2017, the company received $30 million in a Series A funding round led by investment firm Highland Capital Partners. [6] By then, the company had 250 employees. [3] In September, the company announced it was partnering with Monterrey, Mexico-based Tecnológico de Monterrey (ITESM), to create a tech training program on ITESM's Mexico campus. [7] Trilogy Education also started working with the University of Toronto in Canada. [8]

In May 2018, the company received an additional $50 million, in a Series B funding round co-led by Highland Capital Partners, Macquarie Capital and Exceed Capital. [9] At the time, the company reported it had 7,500 current students currently enrolled, and 2,000 graduates of its programs. [1] As of July, the company was working with 37 universities. [10] It also announced it was looking outside of North America for additional partnerships. [8]

In October 2018, Trilogy acquired The Firehouse Project, an online coding bootcamp, and JobTrack, an online career services customer relations management system. [11]

It was bought out by 2U in 2019 for $750 million, with $400 million in cash (in part with a short-term $250 million loan) and $350 million in newly issued shares of common stock. [12] [13] The acquisition was managed by Citigroup and Morgan Stanley. [14] The acquisition increased 2U's number of university partners from 36 to 68, expanded its reach into the Mexican, German, Australian, and Canadian markets, and will allow for the company to reach a projected $1B in revenue in 2021. [12]

Prior to the buyout, Trilogy had planned an initial public offering. [15]

Business

Universities share their brands and facilities with Trilogy Education, and provide oversight of the curriculum, instructors, and student experience, in exchange for a share of the tuition revenue. [5] The courses are not taught by the university's professors, but by industry professionals with at least three years of experience. [2] The company produces programs in areas such as web development; user interface/user experience; data analytics and visualization; and cybersecurity. [9] Students train in coding languages such as JavaScript, jQuery, Node.js, Java, HTML, CSS and Python, and the curriculum is developed centrally in GitHub. [9]

Revenue from the tuition is shared with the affiliate university. [1] Though the exact revenue split has not been publicly shared, similar programs have a 50/50 split. [1]

Partner schools included Rutgers, ITESM, and the University of Toronto, the University of Pennsylvania, [10] the University of Washington, Columbia University, the University of Texas-Austin, [16] Georgia Tech and the University of California at Berkeley. [17]

Program graduates receive a professional certificate (non-credit) from the partner school and career advice. There is no job placement guarantee and no third-party verified jobs reports have been released, though outcome data is privately shared with partner universities. The programs cost $10,000 to $13,000, though discounts may be available for partner university alumni. [2] Trilogy's non-credit programs are not considered "eligible educational institutions" by the United States Department of Education and do not qualify for federal loans nor do students do not receive a Form 1098-T. Trilogy does not offer Income Share Agreements and there are no money-back guarantees. [2] The affiliates schools do not regard program graduates as university alumni, nor program enrollees as university students.

The typical enrollee is a nontraditional student aged 31. [15]

Corporate training partnerships

Trilogy has corporate training programs for TEKsystems at Southern Methodist University and General Electric at Georgia Tech. [2]

Related Research Articles

John Katzman is an American EdTech pioneer. He has established a number of companies which assist students with their studies and career choices, including Princeton Review, 2U, and Noodle Partners. The last two companies are online program managers (OPMs). Katzman has also authored books on the subject.

A fitness boot camp is a type of group physical training program that may be conducted by gyms, personal trainers or other organizations. These programs are designed to build strength and fitness through a variety of types of exercise. The activities and format may be loosely modeled on aspects of fitness training used in the military and the trainers themselves may be former military personnel.

Highland Capital Partners is a global venture capital firm with offices in Boston, Silicon Valley, and San Francisco. Highland has raised over $4 billion in committed capital and invested in more than 280 companies, with 47 IPOs and 134 acquisitions.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Chegg</span> American education technology company

Chegg, Inc., is an American education technology company based in Santa Clara, California. It provides homework help, digital and physical textbook rentals, textbooks, online tutoring, and other student services.

edX Online education provider

edX is an American for-profit online education platform owned by 2U since 2021. The platform's main focus is to manage a variety of offerings, including elite brand bootcamps.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">2U (company)</span> Education technology company

2U, Inc. is an American educational technology company that contracts with non-profit colleges and universities to build, deliver and support online degree and non-degree programs. It is also the parent company of edX.On February 12, 2024, 2U announced "there is substantial doubt about its ability to continue as a going concern."

Dev Bootcamp was an immersive 19-week coding bootcamp founded by Shereef Bishay, Jesse Farmer, and Dave Hoover in February 2012. It is designed to make graduates job-ready by the end of the program. Dev Bootcamp was headquartered in San Francisco, California, with additional locations Seattle, Chicago, New York City, Washington, D.C., San Diego, and Austin. It was acquired by for-profit education company Kaplan, Inc in 2014. Dev Bootcamp closed in 2017.

Makers Academy (Makers) is a 16-week computer programming boot camp in London. It was founded by Rob Johnson and Evgeny Shadchnev in December 2012.

LaunchCode, headquartered in St. Louis Missouri, is a Non-profit organization, in 2013, LaunchCode was founded by Jim McKelvey that helps people enter the technology field by providing free and accessible education, training, and paid apprenticeship placements. 

For-profit higher education in the United States refers to the commercialization and privatization of American higher education institutions. For-profit colleges have been the most recognizable for-profit institutions, and more recently with online program managers, but commercialization has been a part of US higher education for centuries. Privatization of public institutions has been increasing since at least the 1980s.

Pluralsight, LLC is an American privately held online education company that offers a variety of video training courses for software developers, IT administrators, and creative professionals through its website. Founded in 2004 by Aaron Skonnard, Keith Brown, Fritz Onion, and Bill Williams, the company has its headquarters in Farmington, Utah. As of July 2018, it uses more than 1,400 subject-matter experts as authors, and offers more than 7,000 courses in its catalog. Since first moving its courses online in 2007, the company has expanded, developing a full enterprise platform, and adding skills assessment modules.

Lighthouse Labs is a tech education company that offers 12-week boot camps for web development and data science, as well as part-time up-skilling courses, with locations across Canada. In previous years, they organized an annual free learn-to-code event, The HTML500, in partnership with Telus.

Hack Reactor is a software engineering coding bootcamp education program founded in San Francisco in 2012. The program is remote-only and offered in 12-week beginner full-time and 19-week intermediate full-time formats.

Coding bootcamps are intensive programs of software development. They first appeared in 2011.

Harbour.Space University also known as Harbour.Space, is a private for-profit university for technology, entrepreneurship, and design, with campuses in Barcelona, Spain and Bangkok, Thailand. Harbour.Space offers foundation, bachelor's and master's degrees in technical and non-technical programes.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Woz U</span> Tech education company founded by Steve Wozniak

Woz U is a company founded by Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak that focuses on technical education for independent students, and offers curriculum to universities and organizations to upskill their employees.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Flatiron School</span> Educational organization

Flatiron School is an educational organization founded in 2012 by Adam Enbar and Avi Flombaum. The organization is based in New York City and teaches software engineering, computer programming, data science, product design, and cybersecurity engineering. In 2017, the company was sued for making false statements about the earning potential of its graduates. It was acquired by WeWork in 2017 and sold to Carrick Capital Partners in 2020.

As part of the EdTech boom, Online Program Managers (OPMs) provide bundled products and services on which educational institutions can run online courses. The two most notable OPMs are 2U and Academic Partnerships.

Bloom Institute of Technology, also known as BloomTech, is a for-profit massive online course. When it launched in 2017 under the name Lambda School, it gained attention for being a coding bootcamp that offered income share agreements as a method of financing. Following several layoffs and cost cutting measures, it transitioned from a bootcamp model to MOOC, and refocused on traditional student loans. It currently faces several lawsuits for deceptive marketing, allegedly lying about how many students find jobs, among other issues.

Make School is a private for-profit computer science college in San Francisco, California. Located in the Union Square neighborhood, Make School offers a Bachelor’s of Science degree in Applied Computer Science.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 "Trilogy Education's Unique Approach To Coding Boot Camps Helps It Raise $50 Million". Forbes. May 31, 2018. Retrieved January 19, 2022.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 "Do Your Homework Before Picking a Coding Boot Camp". U.S. News & World Report. 2019-05-28.
  3. 1 2 "Trilogy Education Services Raises $30 million to provide skill-based training". venturebeat.com. 2017-06-06. Retrieved 2018-09-12.
  4. "Online Enabler Aims for Lifelong Learning". www.insidehighered.com. 2019-04-09. Retrieved 2019-05-31.
  5. 1 2 "The Invisible Boot Camp". insidehighered.com. 2017-05-17. Retrieved 2018-09-12.
  6. "Trilogy Education raises $30M in Series A funding". NY Business Journal. 2017-06-06. Retrieved 2018-09-12.
  7. "As US Tech Companies Look to Mexico, Coding Bootcamps Follow". edsurge.com. 2017-09-28. Retrieved 2018-09-12.
  8. 1 2 "Trilogy Raises $50M to Bring Bootcamps to Universities Around the Globe". edsurge.com. 2018-05-31. Retrieved 2018-09-12.
  9. 1 2 3 "Trilogy Education gets $50M to build a market-driven bootcamp program for universities". techcrunch.com. 2018-05-31. Retrieved 2018-09-12.
  10. 1 2 "Penn's Boot Camp turns a gravedigger into a coder in 24 weeks". Philadelphia Inquirer. 2018-07-20. Retrieved 2018-09-12.
  11. "Trilogy Education Acquires Two Companies to Broaden Its Jobs Reach - EdSurge News". EdSurge. 10 October 2018. Retrieved 1 June 2019.
  12. 1 2 Symington, Steve (2019-04-09). "Why 2U Just Dropped $750 Million on a Tech "Boot Camp" Start-Up". finance.yahoo.com. The Motley Fool. Retrieved 2019-05-31.
  13. "2U to buy boot-camp provider Trilogy for $750 million". www.insidehighered.com. 2019-04-08.
  14. "Education Company 2U to Buy Coding Boot Camp Firm Trilogy for $750 Million". www.bloomberg.com. 2019-04-08.
  15. 1 2 Busta, Hallie (2019-05-03). "How boot camps are bringing skills training to college". Education Dive. Retrieved 2019-05-31.
  16. "UW offers coding camp for people looking to shift careers". seattletimes.com. 2018-05-10. Retrieved 2018-09-12.
  17. "Another alternative revenue model for higher ed?". educationdive.com. 2018-05-21. Retrieved 2018-09-12.