Dive Brief:

• Amazon is the latest big tech company to help graduate students with the skills that employers want, training some experts say private firms can most easily and effectively provide, according to the Los Angeles Times.
• Amazon Web Services is partnering with a group of community colleges in the Los Angeles region to offer a 15-credit certification in the broadening field of cloud computing program. Planners expect the program will be expanded to a two-year degree program soon.
• A pilot program was offered last year through a local high school and Santa Monica College, which helped write the curriculum. Amazon also has begun offering a cloud computing program at Northern Virginia Community College.

Dive Insight:

Facebook, Google and other big technology firms are also collaborating with higher education institutions to provide training in specific areas of computing in hopes of finding producing qualified workers.

Facebook has begun working with two-year institutions such as Des Moines Community College, Greenville Technical School in South Carolina and Central New Mexico Community College to train workers in in-demand tech skills. The social media company provides the curriculum and some scholarships. The company found that Greenville-area employers said graduates lacked certain skills and even the students said training was lacking--94% said the skills were important but only 16% said they were excellent.

Google, meanwhile, is working with Udacity to offer free tech and career development courses and with Coursera to launch the Google IT Support Professional Certificate Specialization with scholarships for 10,000 students. It is offering the tech support course through 25 community colleges in seven states. As of June, 40,000 students had enrolled in the course.

At the same time, some high tech companies are hiring college graduates who do not have the specific training their jobs require and instead having them complete an intensive apprentice program.