Amazon Partners With 140 Universities and Colleges To Boost Employee Career Advancement Opportunities

Recently, Amazon announced its partnership with more than 140 universities and colleges in the U.S. to enhance career advancement opportunities for hourly employees. The partnership will also provide fully-funded tuition fees for the upskilling courses. Besides universities and colleges, four national non-profit educational providers — National University, Southern New Hampshire University, Western Governors University, and Colorado State University-Global — are also involved in the partnership. 

Amazon is partnering with Smart Horizons and GEDWorks to help employees complete their high school and prepare for GED tests. The company is further partnering with goFLUENT and Voxy EnGen to provide training in English language proficiency and with Outlier to offer college preparation courses.

Employees can qualify for the program after working at Amazon for just 90 days. Through the Career Choice Program, employees can earn certifications for in-demand jobs, develop proficiency in the English language, or take up a Bachelor’s degree.

See more: The Need for Reskilling and Upskilling in the Era of the Pandemic

Partnerships Part of the Company’s Career Choice Program

The partnership with universities and colleges is part of Amazon’s Career Choice program, where it intends to help its frontline workers upgrade their skills to succeed in the company or other organizations. With the partnerships, the company moves closer to its Ukskilling 2025Opens a new window pledge, where it intends to commit $1.2 billion to upskill over 300,000 employees by 2025.

Talking about the partnerships, Ted Mitchell, president of the American Council on Education, saidOpens a new window , “The expansion of Amazon’s Career Choice program and the partnerships being forged with a wide range of colleges and universities is great news for nontraditional learners seeking new paths to career success. Higher education is our nation’s most powerful engine of social and economic mobility, and this initiative will both expand access to postsecondary education and increase the number of learners who succeed in completing their degrees.”

As part of its Career Choice program, Amazon has also built classrooms in some of its facilities. Staff members can take classes at a local campus, online, or in a Career Choice classroom situated in Amazon’s fulfillment centers in the country. The Career Choice program was launched in 2012, and since then, over 50,000 employees have made use of it. 

With the new partnership with 140 universities and colleges, the total number of education providers partnered with Amazon stands at more than 180 across the U.S.

“We’re committed to empowering our employees with easy access to the education and training they need to grow their careers, whether that’s with us or elsewhere. We’re thrilled today to be adding more education partners to our Career Choice program, which we hope will give our team access to the educational paths that fit their passions. Whether someone is looking to build their English proficiency skills, prepare for GED testing, or earn their Bachelor’s degree, we’re working to meet our employees wherever they are on their educational journey,” said Alicia Boler Davis, senior vice president, Global Customer Fulfillment, Amazon.

Why This Matters

The business world has been going through a digital transformation over the last few years. The digital transformation was accelerated during the previous two years due to the COVID-19 pandemic. New technologies and a few existing technologies, such as the cloud, machine learning (ML), virtual reality (VR), and augmented reality (AR), suddenly became essential for businesses to thrive and gain a competitive technology. 

See more: Over 75% Organizations To Invest in Personalized Learning and Training Tools: CompTIA Study

While companies are seeing new technologies driving the business world, they also need employees with the right skills to work with these technologies. As such, they will need to either directly invest in employee upskilling programs or will have to work with educational institutions to make the incoming workforce industry-ready. Amazon’s partnership with universities and colleges is one of the moves in this direction. In fact, the Career Choice program is one of the nine free education and training programs by Amazon for its workforce as part of the Upskilling 2025 pledge. 

Further, besides Amazon, a few other companies have been building partnerships to help working professionals and students get industry-ready. For example, UiPath recently partnered with Coursera to offer programs in robotic process automation (RPA). Last year, HanesBrands invested $2 million in HBCUs as part of its DE&I commitment and its efforts to provide the necessary industry skills for students.

In the future, we can expect more companies to invest in employee upskilling or getting university students future-ready.

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