Google's Plan to Disrupt the College Degree Is Absolute Genius

I question the depth of education you can receive from a six-month course set as opposed to a full four-year undergraduate experience. This feels like the same kind of marketing you saw from Flatiron School or one of those other coding bootcamps, but with a larger name attached.<p>Cynically, I&#x27;d say that Google is just trying to increase the number of qualified individuals to fill grunt-work positions so they can pay each employee less.

The current offerings are:<p>- Data Analyst<p>- Project Manager<p>- UX Designer<p>- IT Support Specialist<p>I wonder how specific to Google products those courses are. It sounds like Google&#x27;s answer to Microsoft Certified Microsoft Product Fixer certifications.<p>It&#x27;s just courses on Coursera for $49&#x2F;month.

I don&#x27;t trust a company like Google to act in its students&#x27; and certificate holders&#x27; best interests. It&#x27;s not hard to imagine that the certifications will all be tied back to a Google account that they can terminate at any time, at their discretion. On a more Google-y note, I wouldn&#x27;t want to get an email in five years telling me that they&#x27;re sunsetting their online certificate verification portal, meaning no one can actually trust my claims as a certificate holder.

Is there such a term as &quot;edmill&quot;? A process of mass producing cheap labor for low-paid positions. This post just smells of hype and marketing for something like that.

A comprehensive implementation of something akin to the German vocational training system is what the US needs.<p>It has been discussed across the political spectrum. The US needs to finally take concerted action toward this, with big investment behind it.<p>It was widely floated as an approach a few years ago by Benioff (and countless others) and the government made some basic motions in that direction:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.inc.com&#x2F;suzanne-lucas&#x2F;trump-wants-to-create-5-million-apprenticeships-in-5-years-because-marc-benioff-.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.inc.com&#x2F;suzanne-lucas&#x2F;trump-wants-to-create-5-mi...</a><p>It&#x27;s not nearly enough. The government has to go a lot bigger to make a dent in a job market the size of the US.

The author seems to exist in a permanent state of enthusiasm, for mega corps and their corpy things.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;duckduckgo.com&#x2F;?t=ffcm&amp;q=Justin+Bariso" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;duckduckgo.com&#x2F;?t=ffcm&amp;q=Justin+Bariso</a><p>Just an observation.

College in the USA is an economic plague on young people. This most certainly can&#x27;t be as bad.

The author doesn&#x27;t seem to understand how supply and demand work. Unless there&#x27;s about to be a massive increase in the availability of these jobs, this is going to create a bubble that will reduce these salaries and lower the skill level in these positions.

I took the IT Support Specialist in early 2019 and it only took 1 week of dedicated video watching and test-taking to do (I did this so that I wouldn&#x27;t need to pay the Coursera membership fee) (but that was because I already had a strong background in IT support&#x2F;troubleshooting, software development, cybersecurity, and was intermediate in networking). I feel like the course is solid for explaining the concepts that it talks about, but I can&#x27;t attest to how well it works for people with very little experience in IT.

What I&#x27;ve been wondering is, if these kinds of programs succeed, how do we ensure a smooth transition to the new career paths at the high school level? I worry that we&#x27;re going to enter (or maybe have already entered!) a long period of bifurcation, where most schools continue to teach kids they&#x27;d better go to college even as college increasingly sets them up for failure.

Race to the bottom.

Great idea as the article notes, subpar execution.<p>I took a similar format course offered by IBM in data science on Coursera, and my goodness, I found a lot of pure junk work in the peer review process. Either that, or it was straight up copy and pasted from somewhere else online.<p>Online classes might definitely work, but they need more iterations to make it work.

I see a lot of negativity in this thread. What’s wrong with Google giving a bunch of people a taste and the opportunity to grow?<p>I prefer to believe in the ability of people to reach beyond their station in life. Sometimes all they need is inspiration. If Google can provide that it’s great.

Half the classes they make you take at universities are worthless anyways. They&#x27;re just there to keep you 4 years and get more money. A CS major doesn&#x27;t need to learn about Greek Mythology.

Yay more gate-keeping!

A new chapter in the SV Neofeudalism saga. More dependency on large corporations, on yet another aspect of life.