[languagewars]

I don't disagree that they had some students that would be otherwise difficult to reach as recruits, just that they would have had trouble getting enough money per student given that most of the market has low/no costs in providing anything to future employees. The need to provide personal tutoring for inclusiveness was really the nail in the grave for profitably and had nothing to do with that market of recruits.

Reasonably, they had a max of 5k per matched employee which would only be fraction of students that complete a program and even want a new job in one of a handful of places in the US. Competing recruiters would collectively take more than half those students, especially when the students were already in industry and not completing whole tracks.

I also think the sponsored courses backfire as these things are out of date immediately and/or completely irrelevant in most of the market; they probably had to turn most down to prevent alienating students that trust udacity to recommend learning paths.