Google’s new ‘career certificate’ program is just the right thing, at just the right time.
Google’s new ‘career certificate’ program is just the right thing, at just the right time.
Google made waves recently by announcing its new program, “Google Career Certificates,” a collection of courses designed to help participants get qualifications in high-paying, high-growth job fields without attending university.
The courses should take about six months to complete, and will cost a fraction of a traditional college education.
Last week I described this as “Google’s plan to disrupt the college degree.”
The response was huge. The article has been shared thousands of times and has prompted thousands of comments. Additionally, tons of people have reached out to me personally to share their thoughts.
Most of the feedback has been extremely positive, but some readers have expressed skepticism. Let’s take a deeper dive into both of these responses to see just why Google’s new certificates are such a big deal–and why the plan is ingenious.
As Kent Walker, senior vice president of global affairs at Google, succinctly put it in a blog post:
“We will consider our new career certificates as the equivalent of a four-year degree for related roles.”