New Specialized Career Certifications Created by 'Grow with Google' Through University-Industry Partnerships

In 2017 Google committed $1 billion to a program called "Grow with Google," and in 2018 launched "Google Career Certificates."

Fortune looks at the success of those programs — and their newest evolution: These online educational programs are focused on helping learners land jobs that are in high demand, including in digital marketing, IT support , data analytics, project management, and UX design. More than 300,000 people have graduated from Google's Career Certificates program, and 75% of these grads report they've found a new job, higher pay, or a promotion within six months of completing of the program.

Today, Grow with Google takes this program a step further by developing university-industry partnerships. Grow with Google tells Fortune exclusively of the launch of its partnerships with top universities to offer specialized career certificates. These specialized programs build on Grow with Google's existing programs, but offer more industry-specific take on the material....

The specializations include:

- Fundamentals of Data Analytics in the Public Sector with R by the University of Michigan
- Construction Management by Columbia Engineering
- Financial Analysis — Skills for Success by the University of Illinois' Gies School of Business
- Sustainability Analyst Fundamentals by Arizona State University.

"This is really a tipping point for higher ed," says Lisa Gevelber, founder of Grow with Google. "Educational institutions have always been the place that people went from the world of classroom learning to the world of work. But what we're seeing here is higher ed really adopting more innovative, flexible models to make sure that students of all sorts have access to the knowledge to be successful in the workforce...."

The courses were developed by industry experts at Google, along with faculty at the hosting universities. Industry employers were also asked for input on important course content.
After finishing courses, students gain access to an online list of the jobs that the program qualifies them for. This includes listings from Google's 150-employer consortium that specifically hire graduates of Google Career Certificate programs — including Google itself.

Gevelber explains to Fortune that "At the end of the day, no one is taking a class to take a class. They're all taking this class to get a real economic outcome for their family. We want to ensure they have the skills they need and employers are laying and waiting to hire them."

Google support for certs will probably

[hdyoung]

Last exactly as long their hardware support does. 18 months.

I acknowledge the need for short-term, immediate-need education. But I question if universities are the places to offer these. Universities specialize in a product that has a 4-year cycle (bachelors). One could argue that MS degrees are a 2-year cycle, but that isn’t really true.

Universities are big, and slow, and they offer products that are meant to prep a person for decades. And they fill that role really, really, really well. To a

the trades system well out side of universities!

[Joe_Dragon]

the trades system well out side of universities! Now I can see that big parts of tech can use that or maybe trades + an extended HS that is mixed with an 2 year CC.

but some HR now want masters / PHD for base jobs

[Joe_Dragon]

but some HR now want masters / PHD for base jobs.

and why do you need an bachelors to work the car rental desk?

Re:

[OneOfMany07]

Prove you can follow orders, show up on time, will do mundane grunt work, etc for 4+ years.

There are also people with MS or PhD waiting tables because it pays better than jobs in their industry would.

Current training and jobs processes are broken, and everyone knows it.

Re:

[hdyoung]

A MS in engineering is not the same as a MS in the literature of southwestern Italy between 1575 and 1615. One of these careers is very likely to pay less than a barista.

Re:

[invictusvoyd]

You should become HR . Much more fun there

Re:

[SeaFox]

and why do you need an bachelors to work the car rental desk?

Because people somehow manage to get high school diplomas without leaning how to write properly, and businesses want folks with a minimum of skills.

Are these useful jobs?

[glitch!]

Just reading the summary, I wonder if those jobs are really useful in the big picture. I know that IT is important, and companies need people who can manage their ZFS, backup, database, and "cloud" systems. But is "analytics" really more than marketing shit?

On the other side of the employment coin, I have decades of experience with assembly and C and have trouble getting interviews. Supposedly, the embedded market is good. Well, except for the "chip shortage".

Re:

[Opportunist]

And I was under the impression we have enough web "programmers" to handle the whole node.js demand. I mean, wasn't that why node.js is a thing in the first place? Because we had a bunch of useless web devs that only know JS and no sensible programming language, so we had to find a way to push that atrocity into the backend?

Re: Are these useful jobs?

[Anonymouse Cowtard]

The old fogies trying to code in assembly to fit something in 128 kb of RAM is an art nobody needs anymore

Depends who you want to work for. Large employers have moved on from legacy infrastructure but there's small to medium sized enterprises where that's not the case.

128kb is an exaggeration. There's a whole segment deploying microcontrollers at the edge. Much of that is single case and done in house.

The old fogies need to adapt, not necessarily reskill.

Re:

[OneOfMany07]

"Are these useful jobs?"

Useful to who? Management want cogs they can shuffle around. And the less training and experience they have, the less the company must pay out.

We have people who can't do a job supposedly managing and hiring people who can. In part I don't blame them. After a couple years it's easy to get behind on best practices. To forget how the automation you wrote works. For servers to get retired for a new product/method.

And as dumb as it is... Location matters a lot. Even though remote

Re:

[ctilsie242]

One thing to try is to do some stuff on Raspberry Pi and Arduino boards, and toss the stuff into a public GitHub repository. That way, on your resume, you can point to that and show off what stuff you do.

Embedded stuff has opened many doors for me. Being able to make a Raspberry Pi Nano do a number of things is quite useful. Yes, many companies want the "full stack" devs, but that is more of a commodity.

As for ZFS and such, don't discount that. Being able to set up ransomware resistant backup systems us

Re:

[i.r.id10t]

Not sure about other public sector type stuff but the college I work for does a TON of data analytics to generate reports for internal use, to send to the state, etc. So yeah, for someone who has plenty of development experience but hasn't really worked with statistics since they took the one required course in college college who gets a job that has reporting requirements could benefit from this course. Even if you are learning your 10th programming language, having someone give you a path through learni

Re:

[sursurrus]

>> But is "analytics" really more than marketing shit?

Yes in theory, no in practice.

Real analytics is the ability to simplify a huge amount of data into a (true) story. It requires an incredible number of skills, of which solid computer programming is just one (and not the most important one).

However in the corporate world, a small army of people have realized that they can talk about analytics in the sense that it's code for "Fudging the numbers to say whatever we want." These people generally craf

Re:

[glitch!]

Thanks for the explanation.

Don't they mean...

[Sebby]

called "Grow with Google,"

Don't they mean "Grow with Privacy Rapists"?

Re:

[TwistedGreen]

Grow with Google, until it's time to get Reaped by Google.

Re:

[i.r.id10t]

What can the harvest hope for other than the care of the reaper man?

Re: Don't they mean...

[TuballoyThunder]

I think part of the certification is to groom them to think monetization via harvesting private data is normal.

Pricing

[sonamchauhan]

For me, data analytics course is free for 7 days on Coursera, then Coursera fees of around US$ 40 per month kick in.

Grow with Google

[Opportunist]

Anyone else had an immediate first association with cancer? As in, an unhealthy growth?

Alternative would be better

[Errol backfiring]

Given how many privacy invading services are mandated by schools today, I would rather have a way to let kids grow up without Google.

Certifications are a good foot in the door

[Tony Isaac]

For entry-level tech jobs, a certification can get a foot in the door. For more advanced roles, there is no substitute for experience.

Is it worth using the program

[lexidiaz724]

I currently work as an author https://essaymap.org/ [essaymap.org] and I have over 5 years of experience in my past positions and I just wanted to add something to my resume to stand out more, I just got in and I have already experienced an increase in calls from recruiters just because I am enrolled in a course and I have this on my resume. It also counts as a good experience when completing the course. I definitely recommend this to anyone who already has a background in IT and wants to continue their career, especially