Google has announced its plans to extend its partnership with Udacity to offer 75,000 Android scholarships for aspiring developers and data scientists seeking to pursue careers in the digital field.
The initiative builds on the company’s two-year long collaboration with Udacity, which granted 1,000 and 10,000 scholarships for passionate newbie coders in 2015 and 2016, respectively. German media giant Bertelsmann will also be contributing to this effort.
“We were humbled by the overwhelming demand for these courses, so I’m happy to announce that together with Bertelsmann & Udacity we’ll be offering 75,000 more people the opportunity to benefit from free developer courses,” said Google’s EMEA President Matt Brittin.
With this campaign, the Big G is hoping to close the growing digital skills gap and alleviate the European Union’s concerns that half a million ICT openings will remain unfilled by 2020.
The first 60,000 scholarships are already open for applications. The courses will focus on both Android and web development. For more details, you can visit Udacity here. Unfortunately, it appears the first batch will be available strictly to residents of Europe, Russia, Egypt, Israel and Turkey.
The remaining 15,000 scholarships will be offered by Bertelsmann and will include courses in the field of data science for both beginners and intermediates. More information on how you can sign up will be available in the coming weeks.
Meanwhile, those ineligible for a free scholarship can resort to Google’s new $99 mobile web specialist track – but chances are you’ll be better off finding an alternative with more focus on practice than certificates.
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