Dive Brief:
- Udacity will make available 100,000 tech and analytics scholarships in the next five years to "equip America's workers with the skills they need to succeed in the digital economy," it said in a blog post by Udacity CEO Gabe Dalporto.
- The tech education for-profit announced its scholarship commitment as it signed the White House's Pledge to American Workers, which more than 350 companies have already signed.
- Through the scholarships, workers will develop skills in front-end web development, mobile app development and data analytics, Dalporto said.
Dive Insight:
When the Trump administration launched its Pledge to America's Workers in July 2018, it called on employers to create opportunities to "educate, train and reskill" working Americans. Since its installment, 362 companies have committed to providing more than 14 million opportunities in the next five years, according to the White House. Walmart, FedEx and IBM were among the first companies to sign the pledge, along with Apple, Lockheed Martin, Boeing and the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM).
The types of skills Dalporto said Udacity scholarship recipients will learn appear to be of high value. The demand for highly skilled tech workers is high, and so is the difficulty employers have in finding them, according to a Consumer Technology Association survey published last October. Ninety-two percent of respondents said they need more workers with technical skills, and nearly three-quarters said finding employees with these skills would be harder moving forward. Employers and workers alike may look to organizations like Udacity to find training to meet business needs.
