The Google Career Certificates are 6-months courses certified by Google and hosted online on Coursera.

The Google Career Certificates have the aim to help people acquire practical skills for job positions where the demand is high.

In details, they prepare people for the following three positions:

  • Data analyst
  • UX Designer
  • Project Manager

This initiative partially sounds like a Google strategy to disrupt an educational system which is in many cases too theoretical and out of date.

At a point that for Google, these certificates will replace a university degree, as Kent Walker, senior vice president of global affairs at Google, succinctly put it in a blog post:

“We will consider our new career certificates as the equivalent of a four-year degree for related roles.”

Is Google acting as a university?

Is Google acting as a university? Maybe the Google certification won’t replace a university education but maybe it will encourage universities to think in a way more practical and closer to the market needs. 

In addition, this opportunity will help many students or employees who want to integrate their educational or professional path with more technical skills.

With this initiative, Google is trying to solve the gap between the jobs demanded by the market and the people who need them. 

Therefore the Google Career Certificates program can be a way to close this skills gap quickly (6 months), effectively (practical program), and affordably (49$/month) via an online offering. 

How much will Google Career Certificate cost?

For $300 you, your students or your employees will be able to take from your home a professional certification which is taken into consideration for job positions in Google and in other companies which agreed to test this practice. Google has established a consortium of over 50 employers who can tap into graduates of Google’s certificate program, inviting graduates to share their information directly with said employers. These employers include among the others Walmart, Intel and Bank of America.