Around 60,600 people from 187 countries applied for one of the 15,000 places in the second round of the Udacity Technology Scholarship Program – including more than 1,700 Bertelsmann employees. The number of applications increased by 25 percent compared to the previous year.

The number of applicants already far exceeded the number of available places in the first round of the Udacity Technology Scholarship Program. However, the level of interest worldwide in Bertelsmann’s “#50000Chances” scholarship initiative increased once again in this year’s second round. More than 60,000 people from 187 countries applied for one of the 15,000 Udacity scholarships in the fields of Cloud, Data and Artificial Intelligence, a 25-percent year-on-year increase. And more than 1,700 applicants are employees from all eight Bertelsmann divisions. As in the previous year, Bertelsmann promoted the initiative with extensive image campaigns and reached a total of more than 54 million people via digital media.

“Bertelsmann is proud of the fact that last year’s already very high number of applicants has risen so steeply again,” says Bertelsmann CEO Thomas Rabe. “With the Udacity Technology Scholarship Program, Bertelsmann takes social responsibility and gives numerous people an opportunity for free upskilling in the important emerging fields of Cloud, Data and Artificial Intelligence. In addition, this strengthens Bertelsmann’s aspiration to become the world’s leading technology-based media, services, and education company. I wish all second-round scholarship holders every success in their studies.”

Chief HR Officer Immanuel Hermreck adds:

“The high level of interest worldwide in this year’s courses shows how important people feel it is to acquire knowledge in these fields and build new skills for the job market of the future. I am delighted that so many colleagues applied again this time. The Artificial Intelligence course is particularly popular, with the number of applications doubling year-on-year. Overall, the in-house response is a great start to the second round of the Udacity Scholarship, and a great success for our company’s forward-looking upskilling offerings.”

While in 2019, 20 percent of applications from Bertelsmann employees were for the Artificial Intelligence course, this year the figure is 39 percent. At 44 percent, the majority of in-house applicants were interested in a scholarship in the field of Data, and 17 percent in a course in the field of Cloud.

Challenge Course started at the beginning of December

The first phase of this year’s Udacity Technology Scholarship Program, the three-and-a-half-month Challenge Course in the given technology field, started at beginning of december. At the end of this course, 1,600 scholarship holders will be given the chance to earn a full-fledged Nanodegree in the courses “Cloud Developer with Azure,” “Predictive Analytics for Business,” or “AI Product Manager.”

With a total of 50,000 places over a period of three years, Bertelsmann’s Udacity Technology Scholarship Program is the largest scholarship initiative to date at Udacity. Compared to the learning platform’s projects with other partners, this collaboration is also one of the most successful (as already reported). (benet)