Google Career Certificates Program's Effect on Higher Education

Google recently made a major announcement aimed at disrupting the higher education space — specifically those career colleges and traditional schools with online offerings. The primary goal for the Google Career Certificates Program is to establish economic security for Americans who have recently lost a job due to the COVID-19 pandemic or who cannot afford the cost of a traditional education required to earn a secure job in high-growth fields. The news has generated considerable attention especially as the higher education industry continues to reel from the impact of the pandemic.

What We Know

Here’s what we do know about this program:

• Programs take approximately six months to complete
• No previous experience is required
• Google will offer grants and scholarships.
• All coursework is hosted on Coursera
• The median annual income for each certificate is provided on the website.

In fact, Google has already begun to market certificates for IT Support Specialists, as follows:

• IT Support Professional Certificate
  • Offered at $49 a month with a 1-week free trial
  • A total of five courses
    • Google states with a commitment of five hours a week, certificate can be earned in under six months.
    • Courses appear to be on-demand — has 340k students enrolled (we question if this is accurate)
  • You can also earn a CompTIA and Google dual credential when you complete the Google certificate and pass the CompTIA A+ certification exams.

The Impact

We believe that this program will pose potentially the greatest threat for those career schools that offer primarily certificate programs in information technology. Historically, Google has demonstrated that it will venture out into industries like healthcare and education when it sees opportunities. Because of this, we do not see Google limiting its career certificates to just the IT space. The search giant’s household name recognition and overwhelmingly dominant position in the search market lends itself to a level of trust in every market it seeks to disrupt. At the same time, we believe that there are some issues to consider with this program:

First, we have questions surrounding some potentially unsurmountable issues — namely Google owning the search platform to surface their certificate programs on — that allows it to dominate the market for those certificates it plans to offer. Along with this is the commitment Google has made to needs-based scholarships for this program. Google is funding 100k needs based scholarships to be used on any of their career certificates.

Secondly, the most noticeable difference between a certificate offered by independent schools and Google is going to be the cost of the program and the time required for completion. For the unemployed workers and career changers, both of these elements are extremely attractive, especially when they can see an approximation of what their educational investment is. In the case of the IT support certificate, we estimate the cost at about $300 to earn a certificate with a median wage in the US of about $56k. But, we are not confident the cost of programs will remain the same in the future, or if this is just an introductory offer, but it is definitely difficult to compete with.

Third, Google’s own success in disrupting the job-search market has a direct tie in to those students who complete their certificate program. It’s a built-in pipeline for those companies seeking qualified candidates and Google will already have their own pool of people who are ready to go to work.

What Schools Should Do

For schools who offer more advanced training and degrees, it may make sense to do at least one of the following:

• Determine how much credit to give to a student who has completed a certificate and wants to advance their education with a Bachelors or Master degree
• Establish what makes your own certificate program offerings unique and better than what Google can offer. This could include:
  • Endorsements from professional organizations
  • Feedback from corporate partners
  • Externship opportunities
• Depending on how Google markets their own certificates in search, it may be valuable to advertise competing certificates that might have a higher salary range for jobs associated with those certifications. Messaging for this might be tricky, but we suspect that students will try to realize their return on investment.
• Offer grants and scholarships for your own certificate programs

Finally, we can see a day where potentially Google would establish partnerships for certificates and higher degrees with other established universities. This is probably more than a year out, and whether or not existing schools would want to participate in a full partnership is up for debate.