Google Creates $100 Million Fund for Skills Training Program

Google is creating a $100 million fund to sponsor an ambitious project to expand effective skills training and job placement programs for low-income Americans. The initiative is targeting a big problem: how to find, train and create paths to good jobs in the modern economy for the nearly two-thirds of American workers who do not have a four-year college degree. Google is working with three nonprofit groups on the effort: Year Up, which focuses on upward mobility programs for the disadvantaged; Merit America, an organization that offers tech training programs for adults without a bachelor’s degree; and Social Finance, which designs student-friendly financing and repayment plans. The training organizations are paid a portion of their costs upfront and receive additional payments only if their graduates land and keep higher-paying jobs. The program will combine Google philanthropy with loan repayments from students. The loans will carry no interest, and students will begin repaying only if they get a job that pays at least $40,000 a year. The payments will be about $100 a month and continue for a maximum of five years. The Google fund will pay to start and support the program, since not all students will graduate and secure higher-paying jobs. But loan repayments from successful students will help support training for others in the future. The Google fund hopes to fuel total wage gains of $1 billion for 20,000 training program graduates.