Google Is Partnering With Howard University To Train And Recruit More African Americans

Google is teaming up with Howard University to launch something called Howard West. The Washington DC based university said on its website that;

“Howard West will produce hundreds of industry-ready Black computer science graduates, future leaders with the power to transform the global technology space into a stronger, more accurate reflection of the world around us,” said Frederick. “We envisioned this program with bold outcomes in mind – to advance a strategy that leverages Howard’s high quality faculty and Google’s expertise, while also rallying the tech industry and other thought leaders around the importance of diversity in business and the communities they serve.”

Starting this summer, between 25 and 30 students will spend 12 weeks at Google learning from Google’s senior engineers in an effort to recruit black and minority students into its ranks. It is said that more than a third of African American studding computer science in school attend such schools and they hardly get the juicy Silicon Valley jobs after that.

Diversity in Silicon Valley has been a topic of discussion for a long time now even though 51 percent of the billion dollar startups in the United States were founded by immigrants while immigrants have started more than half of the current crop of U.S.-based startups valued at $1 billion or more.

Google through this program wants to increase the number of African Americans on its work force and if you’re wondering why, it because African Americans represent about 1 percent of the Google workforce especially in tech roles.