A message from Jean-Philippe Courtois, president of the mission commitee
Mission
Foreword
“The purpose of business is to produce profitable solutions to the problems of people and planet, not profiting from producing problems,” said Colin Mayer in his book Prosperity: Better Business Makes the Greater Good’.
That’s what a mission-driven business (entreprise à mission in French) is all about and this is the reason why I was delighted to accept Pierre Dubuc and Mathieu Nebra’s invitation to become the new OpenClassrooms Mission Committee President back in June 2023.
In this role, I’m eager to bring my 40 years of experience in the software, cloud, and AI industry, as EVP and President at Microsoft Corp. and also as a founder and President of Live for Good, an NGO empowering young impact and mission-led entrepreneurs in France.
I’m excited to lead a diverse Mission Committee that represents OpenClassrooms’ stakeholders across its employees, students, mentors, shareholders, and customers. Recently, I had the pleasure to appoint two great new members: from the corporate world, Anne Lebel, Group CHRO at Capgemini and from the Public Sector, Patrice Guezou, Skills Strategy Director at Semaphores. It’s wonderful to have them on board.
Working together and in a close partnership with the OpenClassrooms executive team and board, we’re committed to make education accessible, including by scaling online apprenticeships in France and expanding the model in the US and the UK.
The report you’re about to read is the result of hard and meaningful work from the entire OpenClassrooms team and our Mission Committee.
Their daily dedication to their students’ - who come from all walks of life - success, from diploma to employment, is a testament to the amazing purpose of this very special company.
OpenClassrooms explained
As a mission-driven company, our goal is to Make Education accessible. We empower individuals and employers to meet, learn, and work together. We do this through flexible online reskilling and apprenticeship programs with a platform to connect and learn. Our pedagogy is designed to suit each individual’s and company’s specific needs.
OpenClassrooms is the result of 25 years of work, from a passion project by founders Mathieu Nebra and Pierre Dubuc that started in 1999 at the age of 13, to an award-winning company training thousands of individuals in France, the UK and the US.
OpenClassrooms provides 600 + high quality free courses, all licensed under a Creative Commons license to encourage reusability. The courses are video and text-based on topics such as IT, dev, marketing, data, design, pedagogy and more. Each course lasts a few hours and delivers a certificate through quizzes. Almost 300,000 students come to learn for free every month from over 200 countries.
600+
high quality free courses
300,000+
students come to learn for free every month
OpenClassrooms invites its many free users to enroll in a training path. The company has built a unique technology to identify and connect students with employers (or other third-party financing bodies). Every month, thousands of free students become candidates to a training path and apply to join a company in apprenticeship, thanks to its apprenticeship job board and talent marketplace.
OpenClassrooms provides over 50 training paths. 85% of our students benefit from third-party funding covering 100% of the tuition: the objective is to keep education accessible, including through apprenticeships.
Paths at OpenClassrooms offer a comprehensive training experience, focusing on practical skills through real-world projects. Students engage in hands-on projects based on actual business cases, ensuring they acquire skills directly applicable in the workplace. Additionally, each path includes personalized guidance from a professional mentor, providing expertise in the student's field. Finally, paths lead to State-endorsed degrees in France, with accreditations in progress for the UK and the US.
11,000+
students choose to enroll in a training path Each year
OpenClassrooms’
“north star”?
To help half a million students
get a positive career outcome
every year.
Business update
2023 was a pivotal year for OpenClassrooms. As we explained in last year’s report, after years of continued growth, the company went through a challenging transition period. During the Covid years, OpenClassrooms benefited from a large shift towards online education, with people, companies, and public authorities massively investing in large-scale online reskilling programs. The number of OpenClassrooms paying students doubled in a very short amount of time. To provide new students with the necessary help and support, the company had to hire a large number of new team members. However, the end of the Covid period prompted a market adjustment in higher education. OpenClassrooms had to restructure its operations, including the departure of employees and the implementation of budget reductions measures. Despite a challenging period, this led to efficiency improvement shifts and helped us focus on the areas where we could have a bigger impact.
OpenClassrooms pivoted its product offering to invest in what we consider the future of higher education: apprenticeship.
In late 2022, we conducted strategic initiatives to align with this priority, particularly focusing on the student admission process.
We revamped our enrollment funnel, creating an innovative and thorough process designed to tailor training and funding recommendations for our students while seamlessly connecting them with prospective employers in our talent marketplace. Through this pioneering initiative, we guarantee that 90% of them will find tailored training and funding solutions. In 2023, we began reaping the benefits of this lean admission funnel, with prospects and candidates more than tripling over the year.
The company has invested significantly in tools to bring prospective apprentices and employers together:
→ a talent marketplace that allows employers to browse and filter thousands of candidates, and hire them in apprenticeship with a few clicks, at any time of the year ;
→ an apprenticeship job board that lists thousands of job offers, with several filters available. It allows candidates to find their future employer more easily.
Both services aim to significantly increase the number of online apprenticeship students as the company focuses on becoming a leading apprenticeship and reskilling provider. The marketplace and job board have the double benefit of being technologies that work:
→ in France, the US, and the UK ;
→ for apprenticeship candidates now, and for all graduates in the future.
2023 has also been a special year that saw the rise of AI with Large Language Models (LLMs). We have made significant investments to build the foundations of an AI-powered platform that is capable of delivering additional help to students 24/7 through a specifically trained AI companion that will supplement mentors to allow students to learn better and faster.
Meanwhile, teams are increasingly using new AI tools to assist in product development, engineering, student support, marketing and learning. The learning team, in particular, has published one of the very first white books on AI usage for instructional design (in French), along with an updated introductory course on AI and a new course on ChatGPT for beginners. The implementation of AI tools is an exciting and innovative endeavor. We aim to approach it with careful consideration of the legal and ethical implications, while also moving swiftly to capitalize on the positive outcomes that this technology can bring.
Finally, despite complex circumstances, changes in product offering, and challenging market conditions, OpenClassrooms stayed true to its mission of making education accessible. The company’s impact metric (career outcomes) steadily increased from 2022 to 2023, rising from 40,000 per year to a new record of 52,330.
The learning team updated our introductory course on AI and released a new course on ChatGPT for beginners.