IBL News

Author: IBL News

  • Google Issues New Certificate Courses Oriented to Entry-Level Jobs on IT

    Google Issues New Certificate Courses Oriented to Entry-Level Jobs on IT

    IBL News | New York

    Sundar Pichai, CEO at Google and Alphabet, announced in a blog post three new online, self-paced, certificate courses in Data Analytics, Project Management, and User Experience (UX) Design.

    These courses—currently developed on Coursera.org at $39 per month—prepare learners for an entry-level, well-paid job in under six months. The certificates don’t have any prerequisites.

    • Data Analytics Professional Certificate – This seven-course certificate explores analytical skills, concepts, and tools used in many introductory data analytics roles – including SQL, Tableau, RStudio, and Kaggle.
    • Project Management Professional Certificate – This six-course certificate prepares learners to launch a project management career. It covers industry-standard tools and methods, including the agile project management system, and key soft skills, such as stakeholder management, problem-solving, and influencing.
    • User Experience (UX) Design Professional Certificate – This seven-course certificate explores UX principles, UX terms, and industry-standard tools, including Figma and Adobe XD. By the time they complete the program, learners will have three portfolio projects to use in their job applications.

    Each certificate includes resources to help learners enhance their resumes and prepare for interviews.

    Upon completion, learners can share their information with 100+ partners committed to sourcing talent from Google certificate programs, including Deloitte, Anthem, Verizon, SAP, Accenture, Walmart, Infosys, and Google. The employers are “eager to hire people who have earned these certificates,” according to Pichai.

    Google is also launching apprenticeships in the certificate fields of data analytics, project management, and UX design, with applications opening in April.

    To make its Career Certificates more accessible, Google is offering 200,000 scholarships to learners across the U.S., Europe, Middle East, and Africa. They will be distributed through organizations such as Merit America, Per Scholas, NPower, Goodwill, Futuro Health, and Generation USA.

    Additionally, Sundar Pichai announced a new Associate Android Developer Certification.

    The search giant said that since launching Grow with Google program in 2017, it has already helped 6 million Americans get training in digital skills and nearly 170,000 Americans get a new job and increase their income.

    With more businesses embracing digital ways of working, it’s estimated that 50% of all employees will need reskilling by 2025.

     

     

  • Study States that Conservative Academics Experience Peer Pressure and Discrimination

    Study States that Conservative Academics Experience Peer Pressure and Discrimination

    IBL News | New York

    A new study that investigates authoritarianism and political discrimination among colleges and universities, shows that a “majority of conservative academics experience a hostile environment for their beliefs in U.S., Canadian, and British universities.” 

    “A significant portion of academics discriminate against conservatives in hiring, promotion, grants, and publications. Over 4 in 10 US and Canadian academics would not hire a Trump supporter, and 1 in 3 British academics would not hire a Brexit supporter.”

    However, most professors do not back “cancel culture” in its most authoritarian forms.

    The study, titled “Academic Freedom in Crisis: Punishment, Political Discrimination, and Self-Censorship”, was authored by Dr. Eric Kaufmann, professor of politics at Birkbeck College, University of London.

    According to the data of the research, in the U.S., “over a third of conservative academics and Ph.D. students have been threatened with disciplinary action for their view, while 70% of conservative academics report a hostile departmental climate for their beliefs.”

    • Summary of the Report
    • Full Report (PDF)

     

  • Harvard’s Commencement Will Be Virtual for the Second Year

    Harvard’s Commencement Will Be Virtual for the Second Year

    IBL News | New York

    Harvard University’s 2021 live commencement—scheduled for May 27—will be virtual for the second year due to the pandemic.

    “The delay of our Commencement Exercises for two years running is deeply disappointing, but public health and safety must continue to take precedence,” said Lawrence S. Bacow, President of Harvard University.

    “We will gather as a community online on Thursday, May 27, to award degrees and celebrate the achievements of our graduates. After degrees are conferred, each School at Harvard will follow up with its own special virtual event and afterward deliver diplomas through the mail.”

    Ruth Simmons, the president of Prairie View A&M University, a historically black college near Houston, will deliver the principal address.

  • Tech Conference Cancels Google as Sponsor after Two Female Scientists Were Fired

    Tech Conference Cancels Google as Sponsor after Two Female Scientists Were Fired

    IBL News | New York

    The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) canceled Google as a sponsor for the fourth annual Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency (FAccT), which takes place online March 3-10, 2021.

    The association had been facing pressure to address a recent event at Google, which is the departure of two female computer scientists: Timnit Gebru and Margaret Mitchell (in the picture). Inside Higher Ed reported the story.

    Timnit Gebru, former co-lead of Google’s ethical AI team, abruptly left the company in December.

    She explained—see the tweet below—that she’d been fired after executives wanted to censor an unpublished paper she’d co-authored with academics about the ethical and environmental risks of large language model AI.

    Google argued that Gebru’s paper ignored important bias mitigation developments within AI.

    Many employees and computer scientists said that Google failed to live up to its stated values about diversity in firing, effectively or directly, Gebru, a Black woman who researched ethical technology.

    Last month, Google also fired Gebru’s former co-lead on ethical AI, Margaret Mitchell.

    Mitchell said on Twitter that she’d written an email to Google about Gebru’s termination and its relationship to sexism and discrimination — and then promptly had her own work email access cut off. Google later fired her.

    Google has said it terminated Mitchell, who is white, for violating company policies.

  • Universities Will Receive $40 Billion in Federal Aid; Half of It Will Go to Grants to Students

    Universities Will Receive $40 Billion in Federal Aid; Half of It Will Go to Grants to Students

    IBL News | New York

    The U.S. colleges and universities will receive nearly $40 billion in new aid as
    Congress approved the $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief bill, this week.

    Colleges and universities will be required to spend approximately half of the funds in the bill on emergency grants to students. Whether undocumented and international students can get the help, however, still hasn’t been decided by the Education Department.

    This is the largest infusion of help to higher education approved during the pandemic. President Biden called the bill “a giant step forward” in providing help to Americans during the pandemic.

    ACE (American Council on Education) President, Ted Mitchell, said yesterday this federal help “falls short of our most recent estimate of at least $97 billion in student and institutional needs.” 

    The measure also provides additional dedicated support to Historically Black Colleges and Universities, Tribal Colleges and Universities, Hispanic-Serving Institutions, and other Minority-Serving Institutions.

    The Senate approved several amendments to the House-approved version, including one that would exempt all student loan forgiveness from federal taxes for five years, in the event the president or Congress decides to cancel any debt.

     

  • Michael Bloomberg Gives $150M to Harvard University to Create a Center for Cities

    Michael Bloomberg Gives $150M to Harvard University to Create a Center for Cities

    IBL News | New York

    Billionaire Michael Bloomberg gave through his philanthropic arm $150 million to Harvard University to establish the Bloomberg Center for Cities. The announcement was made yesterday.

    This center will build upon the Bloomberg Harvard City Leadership Initiative, which worked with 159 mayors and 800 of their advisers since it was launched in 2017 with an initial $32 million investment.

    According to a press release, the Bloomberg Center for Cities aims to assist mayors and their teams in order to advance organizational practices in city halls and create new research and instructional materials.

    “Mayors are the most creative and effective problem-solvers in government — and that’s exactly the kind of leadership that the world urgently needs,” said Michael R. Bloomberg, 108th mayor of New York City and founder of Bloomberg L.P. and Bloomberg Philanthropies. “Building on our partnership with Harvard, this new investment will help more city leaders learn from one another and get even more big things done locally.”

    “The University is home to many people who are committed to serving the public and improving communities through deep expertise, useful knowledge, and wide-ranging research,” said Harvard President, Larry Bacow.

    “Bloomberg Philanthropies and Harvard University have created camaraderie among dozens of mayors from across the globe, allowing us to collaborate and find synergy as we all address our top priority — meeting the everyday needs of our residents,” said Randall Woodfin, Mayor of Birmingham, Ala.

     

  • Coursera Files for IPO. It will be listed on the NYSE as “COUR”

    Coursera Files for IPO. It will be listed on the NYSE as “COUR”

    IBL News | New York

    Coursera.org filed its IPO (Initial Publica Offering) prospectus with the SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission) yesterday. The Mountain View, California-based company will be listed on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) under the symbol “COUR” likely sometime next month.

    The number of shares and price range have yet to be determined. Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, and Citigroup will be the lead underwriters.

    Coursera was valued at $2.4 billion by private markets in October 2020. Other sources valued it at $5 billion. The start-up raised $443.1 million in venture funding since it was founded in 2012.

    The learning platform—which offers access to online courses and degrees from top universities—reported on its filing $293.5 million in revenue in 2020, a 59% growth rate from 2019. Net losses widened by roughly 20 million year over year, reaching $66.8 million in 2020. The net loss was $46.7 million loss in 2019.

    Registered users grew 65% in 2020. The company added 12,000 new degrees, at an average acquisition cost of under $2,000.

    “Our revenue significantly increased due primarily to an increase in the number of enrollments during the Covid-19 pandemic,” the company’s IPO prospectus stated.

    “Likewise, we have experienced a significant increase in our operating costs associated with our services, primarily driven by our freemium offerings and marketing efforts. As the pandemic made remote work and online learning more widespread, it is uncertain what impact the tapering of the Covid-19  pandemic could have on our operating results.”

    • Prospectus S-1

     

     

     

  • University of Florida Professor Facing Blame in a Student’s Suicide Is Put on Leave

    University of Florida Professor Facing Blame in a Student’s Suicide Is Put on Leave

    IBL News | New York

    A tragic story that exposes the ugly underbelly of Academia.

    Huixiang Chen, an international student from China and Ph.D. candidate, committed suicide on June 13, 2019 [In the picture above].

    Amid a lengthy investigation, the University of Florida has put the professor of computer engineering Tao Li on leave.

    Friends of student Huixiang Chen said that Professor Li pressured, threatened, and mistreated him, Inside of Higher Education reported.

    In the suspension letter to Li, the Department Chair, John G. Harris, prohibited him from engaging in “any activity that involves any aspect of your position, including business travel, consultation with faculty, staff or students.” The letter also commands Tao Li to cooperate with all ongoing investigations or be terminated immediately.

    “I feel my mentor has no academic integrity,” Chen—in the picture—wrote prior to his death.

    Many graduate students complain that their advisers and mentors have so much power and treat them unprofessionally.

  • Twitter Will Allow Content Creators to Charge $4.99/Month

    Twitter Will Allow Content Creators to Charge $4.99/Month

    IBL News | New York

    Twitter unveiled this month its new paid subscription service called “Super Follow”. It is due to be launched this year.

    This feature will allow account holders to directly monetize their audience on Twitter by charging a monthly fee. This service will compete with existing services like Patreon and OnlyFans.

    The “Super Follow” subscriptions will allow users to get exclusive content, deals, and community access to creators for $4.99/month. These subscriptions will include the option to “Cancel Anytime.”

    Launched in 2006, Twitter recorded its first profit in 2018 and it expects to double its revenue in 2023.

    Twitter also unveiled it was testing a live audio discussion service—similar to audio-only social network Clubhouse.

  • Newsela Raises $100 Million to Accelerate K-12 Schools’ Transition into Digital Textbooks

    Newsela Raises $100 Million to Accelerate K-12 Schools’ Transition into Digital Textbooks

    IBL News | New York

    American EdTech companies raised a record-setting up $2.2 billion in 2020, an increase of 30% over 2019.

    The latest VC fundraiser is Newsela, a startup taking on textbooks.

    K-12 instructional content platform, Newsela announced it raised $100 million in Series D investment funding. It gives the company the unicorn status associated with a billion-dollar valuation.

    The investment was led by new investor Franklin Templeton and existing investor TCV, with participation by Owl Ventures, Tao Capital Partners, Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, and Waycross Ventures.

    Newsela was founded in 2013 in New York City as a SaaS platform to shift from legacy paper-based materials and textbooks to digitally delivered content in K-12 schools across the country.

    Now it claims 37 million registered students and 2.5 million registered teachers in 90% of all U.S. schools. Its 2020 annual recurring revenue grew 81% over 2019, with new bookings surging 115%.

    Matthew Gross, Founder & CEO of Newsela, said: “Education leaders are breaking free from the limits of an antiquated marketplace; School administrators are taking this opportunity to future-proof their schools, and they’re not looking back.”

    Newsela has a catalog of 14,000 standards-aligned texts across 20+ genres, curated from 175 publishers, including the Associated Press, National Geographic, The New York Times, Scientific American, USA Today, Atlanta Black Star, Human Rights Watch, and Encyclopedia Britannica.

    All content is then made ready for classroom instruction by reproducing every text at multiple reading levels, adding assessments, lesson ideas, and professional development. Educators can remix, modify and bundle resources into comprehensive, engaging lessons, or choose from a wealth of pre-built collections.