Thread by @kevincarey1

1/ Last week I wrote about 2U, a firm that semi-secretly helps run very expensive online graduate programs at elite universities, in exchange for 60% of tuition.

Today, 2U bought a company called Trilogy for $750 million.

Here’s why that matters.

huffpost.com/highline/artic…

2/ Trilogy runs private-label coding boot camps that last 12 weeks and cost about $10,000. They’re branded by the university and take place at or near campus, but Trilogy creates the curriculum, hires the teachers, and does all the work. Profits are split about 50/50.

3/ Trilogy clients include Harvard, George Washington, Northwestern, Berkeley, Penn, UNC Chapel Hill, Columbia, UT Austin, and many more.

4/ Look at GW’s boot camp home page, for example, and you’ll see, in fine print, a reference at the bottom that the program is being run “in collaboration” with Trilogy.

bootcamp.cps.gwu.edu

5/ But this is a collaboration in the same way that the university collaborates with whomever manufactures the GW sweatshirts sold in the campus book store. The university provides a brand and an affinity network. The contractor does all the rest.

6/ This works because boot camps are paid for out of pocket, not with federal Title IV aid, so colleges can outsource all the teaching. Boot camps are too short to qualify for Pell grants.

But guess what! People are trying to change that, as we speak.

google.com/amp/s/www.nyti…

7/ This is another step down the road of universities monetizing their brands by outsourcing the education. And another way that it’s harder and harder to tell where non-profit universities end and for-profit companies begin.

8/ It's instructive to compare @Trilogyedu to another tech boot camp company, General Assembly (@GA), which was bought for substantially less money, $412 million, a year ago.

Of the two, @GA has been around a lot longer and is more well-established.

9/ The difference is that @GA was just selling educational services in the free market. The sales strategy and tuition weren't leveraging a famous public or non-profit university brand.

Something to think about if you're ideologically market-oriented.