Udacity announces Open Education Alliance to prepare students for tech jobs
L to R: Sebastian Thrun and Gavin Newsom
SAN FRANCISCO–If you want to land a job at Google, a new industry alliance, not a fresh B.S. in Computer Science, may be the key to your future.
Sebastian Thrun, Udacity’s CEO, took the stage at Monday’sTechCrunch Disrupt conference alongside California Lieutenant Governor Gavin Newsom to talk about the future of higher education. While there, he announced the Open Education Alliance, a new venture that combines the efforts of online education with tech industry giants to form an alliance that helps to train more people with skills to succeed at tech companies.
Udacity’s partners in the alliance include tech industry giants like Google, Nvidia and Autodesk, as well as other players in the online education space like Khan Academy and Georgia Tech.
“So if you want to get a job at Google, if you want to get a job at Nvidia, if you want to get a job at Autodesk, come to us and that way you can learn the skills necessary,” Thrun said.
While Newsom remained a staunch proponent of California’s education system, he said that ventures like Udacity and other Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) are an important part of the future of education.
“You can’t educate my daughter like I was educated,” Newsom said.
Seattle non-profit Code.org, led by twin brothers Ali and Hadi Partovi, also is making efforts to raise the awareness of computer science education in the U.S. Hadi Partovi will provide an update on this efforts at the GeekWire Summit on Thursday.
Blair Hanley Frank is a technology journalist based in the San Francisco Bay Area. He has also worked for Macworld, PCWorld and TechHive. He can be found on Twitter @belril.
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