The slow decline of beginner Drupal training

Over the past couple of years, we have seen fewer and fewer training options available for  Drupal beginners.  Since we have just contributed to this issue with the sunsetting of our Drupal Career Online (DCO) program, it seems like a good time to review possible reasons and what the current situation means for Drupal's future - spoiler alert: none of this is good news.

If for no other reason than the sustainability of Drupal, alarm bells should be ringing in every corner of the Drupal community. In the past, we have often relied on our ability to execute technical tasks to have Drupal "rise above" our competitors to win projects; Drupal CMS is a great example of this. It is a fantastic solution for many smaller sites - and for those new to Drupal, but it's not enough. There is no technical solution to losing market share of new/young developers. The only solutions are broadscale awareness efforts and recruiting. 

A large, community-wide initiative to expose Drupal to new users and developers needs to be executed soon - with the full support of the Drupal Association (and therefore its Certified Partners) and Drupal community leaders at all levels. 

Possible reasons

First, and this won't be news to anyone who has been in the Drupal community for a few years:  the increasing complexity of modern Drupal (post Drupal 8.) This had the adverse effect of decreasing the "approachability" of Drupal for beginners and hobbyists. While the modern Drupal code base undoubtedly has numerous advantages for more complex Drupal sites as well as for attracting already experienced PHP developers, it hasn't been enough to offset the decline in folks new to Drupal. 

Next: the rise of commonly available AI tools over the past few years has only added fuel to the fire. AI is an amazing way to learn virtually any new skill - or take shortcuts to avoid having to learn the skill first. 

And third: relying on our technical acumen to attract new developers while virtually ignoring potential marketing opportunities for attracting new developers.

Repercussions

The difficult decision to sunset the DCO, our 12-week beginner-focused public Drupal training program is just the latest impact DrupalEasy has felt. This was our flagship training program for over 15 years and its closing was the end of an era for us. Over the past few years, the vast majority of our students for this class came from group sales. Moving to a private-only version of the course (Drupal Foundations) allows us to save a significant amount of what of late has been non-productive effort and overhead in the marketing (and required) state licensure of the class. 

Conversations with Rod Martin from DrupalHelps.com, another long-time Drupal trainer, mirror our experiences over the past few years. Until recently Rod routinely provided immersive, beginner-focused Drupal training workshops through numerous companies - over the past year, much of the demand has evaporated. Rod has also been publishing Drupal tutorials on YouTube for quite some time: "Where I used to get thousands of views, I now get hundreds, or even under a hundred - even on hot topics like Drupal AI. ie: my Drupal 8 course has 4.4 million views. (67 videos).  I'm lucky to hit 100 with Drupal videos now"

Drupalize.me, the long-time gold-standard for premium Drupal training videos and articles, has seen a similar decline in demand. Addison Berry, CEO, recently told me, "our revenue has been falling due to a significant decline in customers, which has forced us to [layoff some staff]."

Wayne Eaker from DrupalTutor.com is seeing the same decline in demand, "I’ve seen a significant drop-off in interest in DrupalTutor training classes at all levels over the last two years. It was a slow, steady decline until last fall, when it dropped off even more dramatically. The total number of students now is probably 25% of what it was three or four years ago." He feels that the rise of learning-by-AI is one main causes, but remains hopeful that Drupal CMS and Drupal Canvas will help bolster numbers in the future.

Ashraf Abed of Debug Academy and Drupito, another long-time Drupal trainer, told me that they have dropped to just a single semester of their beginner program each year - mainly due to the decreasing demand for new Drupal developers: "between government cuts, mass layoffs in tech, and AI amplifying what senior developers can produce, there are fewer (to put it lightly) opportunities for beginners across all tech stacks."

In addition, an AI analysis of survey results from DrupalCon Chicago shows that attendees are forming a "closed loop." While DrupalCon veterans have overwhelmingly positive experiences, new attendees aren't necessarily having the positive experiences that we think they are. There were many responses about not understanding what BoFs were, what contribution day was, and not feeling welcome into conversations with DrupalCon veterans. 

The analysis suggested a change in focus for future DrupalCons that is difficult to argue with:

Make DrupalCon the place where people become Drupal community members, not just where existing members gather.

Rather than limiting the previous statement to just DrupalCon events, perhaps we should include all community events - including camps - to change their focus to attracting new community members. No doubt that guidance to camp organizers in this regard would be of utmost importance. 

It should be noted that the DrupalCon Chicago survey was completed by approximately 25% of all attendees.

Finally, both Rod and I, as frequent attendees and trainers at Drupal events in the United States, have seen a precipitous drop in the number of attendees for (often free) beginner-level training days at most events.

The path forward

As I stated at the outset of this article, I feel that alarm bells are ringing in the Drupal community with regards to new developers, but we're not listening. To be fair, maybe we are listening, but we aren't reacting. 

This is where leadership at all levels is of vital importance to:

1. Establish the mission.
2. Identify key metrics to track and evaluate progress.
3. Provide high-level guidance.
4. Organize teams.
5. Find and provide resources to teams.

Luckily, the Drupal community already has some early stage initiatives that would fit nicely as part of a larger initiative:

1. Drupal Open University - a program designed to bring Drupal into the academic world. 
2. IXP - a program that rewards organizations for hiring inexperienced Drupal developers. Full disclosure, I am one of the organizers for the IXP program.
3. Promote Drupal - marketing initiative focused on increasing adoption of Drupal.
4. Expose Drupal to people at non-Drupal technical events - see blog post from Dries Buytaert and presentation from Alex Moreno for examples.
5. On the technical side, both Drupal CMS and the AI initiative demonstrate the Drupal community's technical acumen and ability to stay current - things that will no doubt have some level of impact in attracting new users to the community.

What will it take for the entire Drupal community to realize that attracting new people should be priority #1 for us? Time will tell. 

Thanks to Rod Martin, Ashraf Abed, Addison Berry, Alex Moreno, Meghan Harrell, and Wayne Eaker for their assistance (and review) of this article.

AI was not used in the authoring of the article.