By Sonal Tulsyani
Staff Writer
While the coronavirus pandemic has created many struggles for students, there are many opportunities to continue to develop professionally and academically this summer.
Challenges in obtaining high-quality education in this disrupted time extend to technical training, where internships play a significant role. That too is being disrupted.
According to the National Association of Colleges and Employers’s Class of 2019 Survey, graduating seniors without internship experience received an average of 0.98 job offers, and graduating seniors with internship experience received an average of 1.17 job offers. This means that an internship experience increases a college graduate’s odds of obtaining a full-time job by about 19%.
In an article published by CNBC in April, Yello, an employment firm, conducted a survey that found that an estimated 64% of student internships have been canceled and 11% have been postponed. Some have been converted into virtual internships, which clearly do not provide the same experience for interns or organizations.
Fortunately, students have options to overcome the obstacles. According to Wharton Magazine, MOOCs (massive open online courses) can benefit college graduates during their job search. The article used an anecdote of someone who took a MOOC and used it to bond with an interviewer and land an internship at Google.
MOOCs provide an alternate form of education by allowing universities all over the world to record lectures and post them online for students to view on their schedule. While not all courses are self-paced, students can still watch the lectures, complete quizzes, projects and tests at any time of the day or night.
Get Your Tech Training On — for Free (in Many Cases)!
Coursera and EdX have a wide variety of courses for people with different interests, and people may audit them for free. In addition, creating an account is free. According to Class Central, Coursera offers 115 free online courses and certificates until July 31 help students during COVID-19.
There are more courses offered online, but be aware that not all are free. Some offer discounts or temporary free registration for courses because of COVID-19.
Tableau is offering three months of eLearning after signing up for budding data analysts in any field. This offer ends June 30. Rosetta Stone offers a three-month free trial for learning languages.
On the tech side, while innumerable online courses in programming and technology are available. Some websites that offer paid courses have started providing discounts to subscriptions or free trials lasting for months.
According to Class Central, Skillshare is offering a two-month free trial. JetBrains is offering 150+ hours of free courses. Oracle is offering over 50 hours of free cloud and database training.
For avid game programmers, Unity offers free full-platform access for three months after registering. This offer ends June 20.
The pressure to find alternative forms of educational experiences is increasing. Employers look for these educational experiences on the resumes of candidates they want to hire. Take advantage.
Graphic By Elizabeth Scalzo
Many summer courses are now free or discounted because of COVID-19.
