2U, Inc. is an American educational technology company that contracts with non-profit colleges and universities to build, deliver and support online degree and non-degree programs.

[6] Katzman recruited colleagues including Chip Paucek (former CEO of Hooked on Phonics), and technology entrepreneur Jeremy Johnson to be co-founders.

Prior to starting up the company, Katzman pledged to donate $1.5 million for an endowed chair at the University of Southern California (USC).

[13] In February 2014, 2U announced that Sallie Krawcheck, a former executive at Bank of America Corp. and Citigroup Inc., and Earl Lewis, president of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, were nominated to join the board of 2U.

[16] In March 2015, Yale University and 2U announced that they were partnering in order to offer a full-time, online master of medical science degree.

[21] In early 2019, 2U announced that it had entered a partnership with EGADE Business School at Tecnológico de Monterrey in Mexico to offer an online MBA program.

[25] In 2020, Senators Elizabeth Warren and Sherrod Brown called for 2U and four other online program managers to disclose the terms of their contracts with colleges and universities in order to determine whether they were violating laws meant to safeguard consumers from predatory enrollment practices.

[27] Later that year, 2U announced a partnership with Netflix and Norfolk State University, to offer free online tech bootcamps to current students and alumni.

[28] 2U strongly benefited from the shift to online learning brought on by the response to COVID-19, with a large growth in gross revenue in 2020.

[30] Also in 2020, the London School of Economics agreed to expand its scope business with 2U to include two additional undergraduate degrees in mathematics and finance.

[31] Before the start of the 2020–2021 academic year, Boston, Massachusetts-based Simmons University announced that it would be delivering hundreds of courses online in order to cope with the COVID-19 crisis.

[32] The same year, 2U purchased massive open online course (MOOC) provider edX for $800 million cash.

[35] In November 2021, a Wall Street Journal exposé found that 2U often used aggressive means to recruit students for the University of Southern California masters in social work and that "USC social-work graduates who took out federal loans borrowed a median $112,000.

"[36] In 2022, the company was criticized for its online program manager contracts in which it licenses its courses, through a revenue-sharing agreement, to participating colleges and for its student recruitment practices.

[41] In December 2022, a class action suit was filed against 2U and the University of Southern California "defrauded students by using misleading U.S. News & World Report rankings to promote the courses.

[58] Trilogy Education Services is a New York City-based 2U subsidiary that offers non-credit professional training programs, colloquially known as coding bootcamps, through affiliate universities.

In the journal Science, Justin Reich and José Ruipérez-Valiente state that "MOOCs 'will not transform higher education and probably will not disappear entirely either."

Instead, they predict that the field will coalesce 'around a different, much older business model: helping universities outsource their online master's degrees for professionals.