Class Central, yet again, came across a 2U employee’s layoff post on LinkedIn.
This is its sixth layoff (that we know of) since 2U acquired edX in 2021. The first one happened in 2022 for profitability’s sake.
Since then, the company filed for bankruptcy (mostly due to the debt it took to acquire edX for $800M), took down its bootcamps, exited many university partnerships, and even got delisted from the stock market.
The previous layoffs were framed as strategy shifts, realigning operations, or restructuring, but were all about cutting costs.
The last round, its fifth round since the acquisition, in March 2025, was also after 2U had filed for bankruptcy.
| Date | Employee Count | Nature / Reason |
| August 2022 | Not disclosed (20% of personnel spend cut) | Platform strategy shift for profitability |
| October 2023 | Not disclosed (12% of workforce cut) | Realign operations with new platform strategy business model |
| January 2024 | Not disclosed | Following disastrous Q3 2023 results and CEO change |
| December 2024 | Not disclosed | Abandoned Trilogy bootcamps due to falling enrollments |
| March 2025 | Not disclosed | Continued financial distress post-bankruptcy |
| August 2026 | Not disclosed | Align costs and operating model with current business |
When we covered Coursera’s recent layoff, Dhawal Shah, founder of Class Central, found a WARN document with the exact number of cuts. For 2U, no such documentation is on record.
But in an anonymous chat thread on Layoffs.com, a user (based on hearsay) said it could be around 100 employees. The chatter about this round of layoffs had already started in July.
The news comes over a month after Anant Agarwal, founder of edX, left his role as Chief Academic Officer at 2U, but remains Senior Advisor to edX.
While the company hasn’t officially announced the layoff, one spokesperson said 2U is reducing roles across the business to align costs and operating model with the business today: so again, it boils down to 2U’s survival.
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