Last month, Udemy announced its intention to unpublish content that “has shown little to no recent signs of new student engagement, and fails to meet certain marketplace best practices”.

Known as the The Marketplace Maintenance Program, Udemy’s goal is to “increase the discoverability of quality courses, improve site performance, and support overall marketplace health”.

Early this year, when I analyzed Udemy’s catalog of then 157k courses, I discovered that the median course enrollment was 188 while the average enrollment was 2700. Udemy’s top 20% courses by enrollment account for 90% of all enrollments.

A majority of the Udemy courses get very little enrollment. According to Udemy, three conditions need to be satisfied for a course to be unpublished:

• Has had little to no recent enrollments, revenue, and engagement, AND
• Has not historically had significant enrollments, revenue, and engagement, AND
• Has not been updated within the last six months.

Instructors will receive a notification before their course will be unpublished. Full details can be found on Udemy’s The Marketplace Maintenance Program FAQ page.