In brief: Last week Google announced that it's expanding its Career Certificate program. The program is now free for community colleges and career and technical education high schools across the US. The company is also partnering with four-year universities for the program.
Google said that community colleges and technical education high schools could add Google Career Certificates to their curriculum for free. That also goes for Schools that are part of the American Association of Community Colleges. The four-year universities Google is working with to accept credits from its program include Northeastern, Purdue Global, Arizona State University, and SUNY.
Google Career Certificates is a program of classes designed to offer students certificates in IT support, data analytics, Android development, project management, user experience design, and more. Through 150 hands-on activities, the program can get students ready for jobs in related fields with just three to six months of training. Google claims more than half of its graduates are underrepresented groups in tech, including Blacks, Latinos, females, or are veterans.
Connecticut on Friday became the first state in the US to approve all of the Google Career Certificates across its universities and state colleges. Next spring, the state will offer a four-credit course for Google's IT support certificate and non-credit courses for Google's certificates. According to the Connecticut State Colleges & Universities website, the non-credit certificate will be a minimum 150-hour online course, though It has not finalized the cost and schedule yet.