Three Recommendations to Help Solve Tech’s Diversity Problem
Posted onBy: Stephanie Bravo, Forbes
From human resources to the executive suite, tech leaders have often decried that they can’t find qualified candidates from diverse backgrounds. They will often cite the “pipeline” as the problem, shifting responsibility to colleges and universities for not graduating enough STEM students to fill their open positions. Their argument is partially true, since most colleges do not recruit and graduate enough students in STEM to keep up with employer demand, and they are not the primary institutions of higher education and learning. However, with nearly 2.5 billion users on social media worldwide and over a billion people using Google search, tech companies are in fact “educating” the masses.
Read MoreAt San Jose State, building connections, no ‘rich uncle’ required
Posted onBy: Emily DeRuy, The Mercury News
Most days, Juan Rocha pulls away from his home 50 miles to the south in Watsonville around 6 a.m. and points his car toward San Jose State University.
“Strawberry fields, that’s it,” he said, of the landscape that surrounds him as the sun creeps up.
It’s a long, solitary slog to the gleaming tech campuses that make up Silicon Valley, but the 26-year-old hopes the drive will pay off.
Read MoreDisrupting Opportunity Gaps Will Hinge on Networks
Posted onBy: Julia Freeland Fisher, Clayton Christensen Institute
Last week, Stanford researcher Raj Chetty came out with yet another new study on the jagged landscape of opportunity facing America. Analyzing the relationship between young people’s exposure to innovation and the likelihood that they would go on to become inventors, the study highlights an alarming rate of what the authors dub “lost Einsteins”: young people who show promising potential but who, due to lack of exposure to innovation, appear far less likely to pursue careers as inventors. Perhaps unsurprisingly these gaps fall along demographic lines. Children from high-income (top 1%) families are ten times as likely to become inventors as those from below-median income families.
Read MoreNot Sure Where to Donate at the end of 2017? Here’s a List of Some of My Favorite Nonprofits
Posted onBy: Kathleen Kelly Janus, Social Startup Success author
As we near the end of the giving season, are you overwhelmed by the number of nonprofits doing amazing work out there? Not sure which ones are having the most impact or which ones to support? After having the pleasure of interviewing over one hundred phenomenal nonprofits for my forthcoming book, Social Startup Success, I can relate to the fact that these decisions are not easy.
To help you sort through the noise, I’ve compiled a list of some of my own personal favorites, whose stories I feature in the book, and which you might consider supporting through your end of year giving in 2017:
Read MoreBraven Prepares Students for Careers After College
Posted onBy: David Goll, SJSU Academic Spotlight Newsletter
At the age of 19, San Jose State University junior Nasheli Arce can already visualize how her business career could look.
The young woman who spent part of her childhood in a town near Mexico City with her eyes on a global career spends one night a week at Facebook Inc. as part of a course she is taking through SJSU’s College of Science and nonprofit Braven.
Read MoreWe Don’t Need More Alternatives to College
Posted onBy: Amy Ahearn, EdSurge
When MissionU emerged on the scene last year branding itself as an alternative to college, it ruffled feathers in higher education. The startup’s marketing pitch rightly pointed out that college debt was ballooning in the United States and that universities were failing to prepare the majority of Americans for the workforce.
MissionU is just the latest addition to a growing lineup of startups bypassing universities and building curriculum directly endorsed by employers, following in the footsteps of Udacity’s Nanodegrees, General Assembly, and bootcamps like Flatiron School. Even Coursera, which has historically partnered with universities, jumped on the employer bandwagon, announcing a new content partnership with Google this year.
Read More50 Black Women Founders To Watch
Posted onBy: Marquita K. Harris, Essence Magazine
These days it seems as if “wantrepreneurs” are everywhere, looking to claim their piece of the proverbial business pie. But if you want to know what it really takes to launch, run and grow a business, just watch Black women work. Despite the fact that over the past five years Black women have received less than 1 percent of all venture funding for their businesses, we still represent America’s fastest-growing entrepreneurial demographic, navigating hurdles with aplomb and paving our own pathways to success.
Read MoreBringing Career Support into the Undergraduate Academic Experience
Posted onBy: Aimée Eubanks Davis, New England Journal of Higher Education
Kaitlyn Iglesias is entering her senior year at Rutgers University-Newark ready to launch her career. She had internships at Ernst & Young in New York this summer and last. She is finishing up a degree in accounting and management information systems and is a member of Women BUILD (Business Undergraduates in Leadership Development). She’s beginning the semester with an offer from Ernst & Young in hand.
Read MoreThis Accelerator Empowers Low-Income Students to Jump the College-to-Career Divide
Posted onBy: Aimée Eubanks Davis, EdSurge
Jalil did all that we tell our young people they need to do in order to succeed. He graduated from the Fremont Unified School District and went on to attend De Anza Community College. He worked hard, got good grades, and transferred to San José State University. As a transfer junior, he spent three hours each day commuting back and forth to campus and paid for school with grants and scholarships. Jalil did everything right. But as a junior he had far fewer connections and career-related experiences than many of his more affluent peers. He wasn’t as likely to land the same fancy summer internship. He didn’t ‘know a guy that knew a guy’ that was a higher-up in Silicon Valley. He just worked incredibly hard and stayed incredibly focused—which we know should be enough, but isn’t.
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