Last week we wrote about how 2019 brought the closure of a free course provider with little notice. Now, Udacity has done something similar and pulled its mobile apps from the iOS and Android store. A few students (presumably active mobile users?) were sent an email the same day and informed of the closure. Below is the mail that these learners received (src: Reddit).

Dear xxxx,

When we launched the Udacity app over 4 years ago, we were pleased to offer Udacity students our learning experience from the convenience of a mobile app. Ultimately, ten percent of Udacity students downloaded the app, and many enjoyed using it as an additional learning path.

In 2019, we are prioritizing massive upgrades to the Udacity classroom and service experience. We are focusing our efforts to support, motivate, and drive not only learning and career success for our students, but also to provide a world-class online learning experience.

Because the Udacity app has not significantly advanced students’ ability to achieve their learning and career goals, moving forward we will not support many of these product upgrades on the mobile app and will sunset the mobile app as of January 9, 2019. After this point you won’t be able to download or use the app anymore. The Udacity classroom experience, including Knowledge and Student Hub will remain supported on mobile web as it is today.

If you have questions, view the FAQ doc or reach out by responding to this email.

Your Udacity team

This move might also be related to Udacity’s cost-cutting process.  According to a post on Udacity’s Engineering blog back in July 2018, Udacity’s mobile team had employed 9 people. In fact, the author of the blog post is no longer working at Udacity, according to his LinkedIn profile. He stopped working in November 2018, which is when Udacity announced its massive layoffs.

they had their issues for sure, but a lot of passion, thought, time and energy went into these apps with the goal of helping others learn

sad to see them go 😢 pic.twitter.com/9u3amgjIw6

— Nate Ebel (@n8ebel) January 10, 2019

The company ballooned to 500 employees in 2017 and ended 2018 with 330 employees. This past year, Udacity also increased Nanodegree prices and cut the pay for mentors and reviewers. To learn more about Udacity’s 2018, read Class Central’s in-depth Year In Review.

A previous version of the article stated that Udacity was shuttering its career services mentorship program on Jan 31st. Here is a statement from Udacity PR:

The article incorrectly states that Udacity is shuttering its career services mentorship program on Jan 31st. Career services including resume, LinkedIn profile and GitHub portfolio reviews — as well as our 1:1 live career coaching — are live and will continue to be available to Nanodegree program students who have Career Portal access. Engagement with career services like LinkedIn profile and GitHub portfolio reviews have in fact increased in recent months. We notified the small number of students who have used the specific service that on January 31 we are turning off the third party Calendly platform for scheduling 1:1 live career coaching sessions. Online calendaring will only be on hold for a short time as we transition and make adjustments to improve the usability of the service and launch the new service. 

In the meantime, enrolled students who would like to book a 1:1 live career coaching session can email [email protected] for scheduling assistance. Udacity Careers team members will be providing career coaching services during this transition and no services have been terminated.