[hysan]

I like the initiative as I think it can make for a positive push, but I have my misgivings as well. It feels like a push into the bootcamp space and with it, I immediately wonder about accreditation in the legal education sense.

- How will schools view these certificates?

- Do they count as credits in any form?

- Is this just Google’s play into the certificate space like Oracle, etc?

I wonder because of this line:

> ... at Google we will consider our new career certificates as the equivalent of a four-year degree for related roles.

This is coming not long after Google says that they don’t care about degrees anymore in their hiring process. A positive take on this statement would be that they are trying to signal to the rest of the industry that there are other ways for people to prove their skill other than university degrees. A negative reading is that Google is now simply moving towards using their own testing system as a signal for candidate screening.

As with many large companies, it’s hard to understand their motives underneath all of the PR.

[tylerhou]

Google already has their own testing system -- it's called the interview process.

This a move which aims to expand the pool of candidates, especially those from non-traditional backgrounds. There are a lot of smart people who weren't able to go to university. If Google limited its talent pool to just those who have graduated from four year universities, they would miss many candidates (including me!).