The first round of the Udacity Technology Scholarship Program, which began last year, is now complete. More than 890 participants completed the program with a Nanodegree degree in the fields of Cloud, Data, and AI, including about 160 Bertelsmann employees.

With the Udacity Technology Scholarship Program, Bertelsmann is awarding a total of 50,000 tech scholarships through 2021 as part of its #50000Chances digital initiative. The first round of the scholarship initiative is now complete, and the final results once again underscore the high level of interest in upskilling opportunities around the world. After completing the three-and-a-half month Challenge Course, more than 1,600 participants qualified for a Nanodegree course in the fields of Cloud, Data, and Artificial Intelligence in the first round of the Udacity Technology Scholarship Program. Around 890 people, more than half of them, took advantage of this opportunity and successfully completed the program, earning a Nanodegree from the online education platform Udacity. The highest completion rate was for the Deep Learning Nanodegree, where 59 percent of participants graduated. The Data Analyst Nanodegree program was completed by 49 percent, and the Cloud DevOps Engineer Nanodegree by 48 percent of the participating scholarship recipients. Most graduates came from India (173), followed by Germany, the U.S., and Nigeria. Overall, the graduates were spread over 83 different countries. 

“We are very proud that our digital initiative is empowering people around the world to obtain a Nanodegree degree in these forward-looking areas,” explains Bertelsmann CEO Thomas Rabe. “The overall completion rate of 55 percent is once again well above the average that Udacity usually records in its scholarship initiatives. This shows how important it is for our scholarship recipients to be successful in the digital world and to receive appropriate training in order to be able to develop tech solutions for future-oriented businesses.” 

Of the Bertelsmann employees who started the Nanodegree program, more than half ended up with a degree. Besides Thomas Rabe, Bertelsmann’s Chief Human Resources Officer Immanuel Hermreck is also pleased with the high completion rate among employees:

“Of our 300 employees who started the Nanodegree program, around 160 successfully completed the Cloud DevOps Engineer, Data Analyst or Deep Learning courses. This shows our employees’ high levels of motivation to optimally prepare themselves for the future of the working world.”  

Some of the graduates from the first round of the Udacity Technology Scholarship Program are featured in this year’s #50000Chances campaign to launch the second round of the program (as already report). Anyone interested can now apply for the second round of the Udacity Technology Scholarship Program via a specially created landing page until November 16, 2020. In an interview, Bertelsmann’s Chief Learning Officer Steven Moran explains how the scholarships being awarded this year differ from those of the first round.