What about those new industry certificates?

[polly_mer]

Amazon has announced it is spending $700 million on training for Amazon workers, which is another entry in a stream of options for credentials that are job-focused and aren't being done through the existing US post-secondary system.  Inside Higher Ed this week published two related articles:

https://www.insidehighered.com/digital-learning/article/2019/07/17/amazon-google-and-other-tech-companies-expand-their
https://www.insidehighered.com/digital-learning/article/2019/07/17/perspectives-field-amazons-big-dollar-entry-training-workers

Thoughts on how this might change the US higher ed landscape? 

For perspective, the research on MOOCs indicated that many people were likely just learning for their own benefit or to do better on a specific job-related task rather than replacing a traditional bachelor's degree (https://www.chronicle.com/interactives/moocs_stats) since many of those enrolled already had a bachelor's degree or even had finished a PhD.

[marshwiggle]

A couple of quotes that I think are relevant:

I foresee a more definitive long-term impact, however. What happens when Amazon decides to use credentialing and/or degree offerings as a revenue opportunity, as tech firms (Cisco, Microsoft) and hospitals have been doing for years? Where in the world could the average student get a better education on operations, supply chain, logistics, technology or pretty much any tangible business subject than at Amazon?

Are there better places to learn training and personnel management than at Uber or Walmart?

If you learn the material from the best companies in the field and can prove it objectively (à la NCLEX exam or a coding exercise), then will anyone care that you went to Amazon University as opposed to a local accredited college?

Credentials that verify concrete useful skills will be extremely valuable.  There's a bright future for organizations that can create the instruction OR do the testing. And it can be done in much smaller (and cheaper) increments than university programs.

[ciao_yall]

Very spinny article.

Companies do internal training and development all the time. Even experienced new hires at tech companies spend a few weeks learning the Google, Facebook, etc platform, standards, methods, etc before being sent to code.

Amazon is no different. They are growing, there is a large pool of people who they know are reliable and a good organizational fit, so yeah, train them to move up and around in the organization.

Cisco and Microsoft are established platforms so these are a valuable credentials for getting a job at places other than Cisco and Microsoft. As AWS grows, so will AWS certification. At my CC, we are getting requests for it and offer training, in cooperation with AWS.

The Google thing is not what it sounds like. All Computer Networking programs offer some sort of 1-800-HELPDESK training and certification. Like other Career Technical Education programs, all of these have some sort of advisory board made up of industry professionals advising on the programs. In fact it's a funding requirement. And I can assure you that those grads are in very high demand.

Google for some reason decided to take a standard curriculum, put their name on it, and try to convince everyone to adopt it with their name on it so they would look like they were doing some sort of good for the community. Basically getting in front of a parade and pretending to lead it.

Of course, is Google doing anything about making sure their "temps" and contractors are paid equitable living wages? Providing material support to programs helping underrepresented people get jobs as programmers which is where the REAL money is?

Nope.

[tuxthepenguin]

I have a couple comments:

1. The company pays for the training. Students pay for their college degree. There are a lot of issues involved here that go way beyond one company, even a very large one like Amazon, getting into training. This is not something I have interest in discussing because I've spent literally hundreds of hours doing so already.

2. Everyone I've talked with says industry training offering the same quality is more expensive than college/university training. Colleges and universities, particularly community colleges, have operated in low resource environments for years, and as a result they're pretty darn efficient producers of these services, no matter the stories you hear about administrator salaries (seriously, take a look at corporate executive compensation). Private sector training is terrible when it's cheap. You pay a ton for the good stuff, but you can buy it in small quantities.

I recently chatted with someone working at a company that paid $20,000 for a week of training for a team of 16 employees. $1250/student/40-hour week, with no real homework, tests, office hours, etc., just lectures and hands-on tutorials. What they get in return is a customized product exactly the way they want it. The skills provided to the employees are very specialized, so they'd only benefit from taking a job with a direct competitor, and appropriately-designed contracts can take care of that.

Edit: Here's a link to fairly standard training pricing: http://damian.conway.org/About_us/TrainingCost.html $5000/day plus expenses and travel costs for lectures.