Is Google’s IT Certificate Program the Post-Secondary Education Of The Future?

Google’s certificate programs at community colleges provide a snapshot of how future corporate-academic cooperation could better match college curricula with needed job skills.

Despite the stock market’s doing well and low unemployment, Millennials are still underperforming relative to previous generations, despite being better educated. No generation in history has wasted more money and time taking college courses and learning skills that do not translate into earnings.

This owes largely to the fact that universities aren’t teaching students the skills that companies want.

For decades, colleges did their thing, companies did their thing, and students did their thing (made good grades, graduated, got jobs, and moved up the corporate ladder). Before the internet, it mostly worked out because the skills companies demanded in employees didn’t change much from decade to decade.

But unless a student plans to become a professor, universities are training students to work for other employers in an internet world with changing technological demands.

Why should universities, taxpayers, and future employees foot the entire bill for training conglomerates’ future workers? Corporations too should have some skin in the game…