Sundar Pichai, the CEO of Alphabet and Google, has announced the launch of a new $100 million Google Career Certificates Fund to train a competent workforce for high-paying, high-growth occupations in disciplines such as data analytics, IT support, project management, and user experience design.
He stated that the goal is for ‘Social Finance’ to reach over 20,000 American workers.
“This investment in America’s future has the potential to drive $1 billion in wage gains,” Pichai said in a statement late on Thursday.
To date, about 70,000 Americans have received Google Career Certificates.
“They are available to anyone, no college degree required. Seventy-five percent of graduates report seeing a positive impact on their career within six months, including a raise or a new job,” Pichai added.
He unveiled the fund at a press conference with Alejandra Castillo, the US Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Economic Development, and the CEOs of Social Finance, Merit America, and Year Up.
“A sense of purpose and optimism is what brought me to America nearly 30 years ago. And it’s what drew me to Google and its mission to organise the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful,” said Pichai.
Google’s digital skills initiative has also aided in training 8 million Americans across all 50 states.
“We’ll invest Google capital and Google.org grants and provide our Career Certificate programme. We’ll connect students to an employer consortium of more than 150 companies who are looking to hire workers with these skills,” Pichai noted.
It’s all designed around student success, and they will receive all of this at no upfront cost, “and will only pay it back once they find a job earning at least $40,000 a year”.
