Edsurge has published six stories about coding bootcamp since the beginning of the month. That's probably as good an indication as any that ed-tech investors and ed-tech entrepreneurs continue pushing a narrative about "unbundling" and "disruption" and "everyone (still) needs to learn to code."

I have chronicled the growth of the coding bootcamp trend over the last few years, arguing that it's deeply intertwined with the history of the future of for-profit higher education. So I'm not surprised that for-profit universities have been acquiring bootcamps. Nor am I surprised that ed-tech investors are working to make these bootcamps eligible for federal financial aid. Nor am I surprised that private student loan companies, many of which have partnered with coding bootcamps, are raising a ton of investment themselves. Deja vu all over again.

Coding bootcamps also fit quite neatly alongside one of the dominant narratives about higher education: that it must become about "skills-training" (another trend I've documented again and again).

As I monitor the bootcamp trend over the coming months, I'm going to pay close attend to the narratives that Edsurge pushes (it's the mouthpiece for the for-profit education technology industry after all). I will build a network graph that connects investors, bootcamps, loan companies, universities, and policy makers. (I think I'm going to do this with all the trends I'm including in this year's "Top Ed-Tech Trends of 2016.") As with all my projects, I'll make the data openly available. (But all I've got for you so far is a list of 285 coding bootcamps. Two. Hundred. Eighty. Five. FFS. A JSON file is available in the "data" folder in the GitHub repo that powers this site.)

More to come soon...