Accessibility is at the heart of everything we do. We want the cloud to be available to anyone and everyone—particularly to those who never felt that an IT career was a real possibility for them. 

To make this happen, we pride ourselves on offering courses that fit naturally into everyday life—at home, at school, on the job—empowering people of all backgrounds to think differently, work differently, and build a brighter future. 

At the same time, we’re constantly asking ourselves: Can we do more? How can we make sure that everyone has a chance to become a cloud guru? There are a lot of different ways to answer this question, but today, I’m excited to talk about one. 

This month, we took another step to help bring equal opportunity to tech careers. We announced that college students are now eligible for 50% off on personal subscriptions to our courses, hands-on labs and sandbox environments, giving them the resources they need to learn the most in-demand cloud architectures.

Thousands of students are about to enter a competitive post-COVID job market, putting a critical group of people in a really tough spot. It’s impossible to ignore the fundamental role that upcoming grads will play in shaping the way businesses operate and innovate in the cloud. By the same token, they also have the power to change what the tech industry looks like. 

By making tech education more accessible to upcoming grads, we’re aiming to equalize the playing field and maximize the number of students—from all backgrounds and disciplines —equipped to fill the growing tech skills gap. 

Companies have a huge need for people who understand the cloud and have hands-on experience in cloud environments. These skills are hard to develop at most colleges and universities, and we want to fill this gap. More than that: we want to empower students to become life-long learners, and help each of them make a meaningful and immediate impact in their future roles.

We know that students aren’t the only group that needs better access to tech education. This is just the first of many programs we’ll be offering for groups who are historically underrepresented in the technology sector, including women and military veterans. 

We’re excited to get these programs off the ground. To see if you’re eligible for the student discount, click here. As usual, we’ll keep you in the know with updates as we have them.