Amazon is expanding its commitment to education with the AWS Education Equity Initiative. Building on years of collaborative efforts with partners, the company is investing up to $100 million in cloud technology and technical resources. The goal is to empower established learning organizations to create innovative digital learning solutions and reach more students.
A History of Commitment
AWS and Amazon have a long-standing dedication to education and learning. Notable initiatives include:
- AWS AI & ML Scholarship Program: This program has awarded $28 million in scholarships to approximately 6000 students.
- Machine Learning University (MLU): MLU offers a free program that assists community colleges and Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) in teaching data management, artificial intelligence, and machine learning concepts. The program aims to address opportunity gaps by supporting students from underrepresented groups in technology.
- Amazon Future Engineer: Since 2021, this program has provided up to $46 million in scholarships to 1150 students. In the past year, over 2.1 million students benefited from more than 17 million hours of STEM education, literacy, and career exploration courses. I was able to speak to one such session last year and it was an amazing experience.
- Free Cloud Training: Launched in late 2020, the company aimed to help 29 million people develop their tech skills with free cloud computing training by 2025. Amazon met this target a year early!
Expanding Educational Reach
Despite these accomplishments, there’s still a significant need for additional progress. Currently, over half a billion students lack access to digital learning opportunities. Amazon believes generative AI can boost the effectiveness of socially-minded edtech organizations, non-profits, and governments. The aim is to enable them to construct new and innovative digital learning systems, allowing them to broaden their reach.
With the AWS Education Equity Initiative, Amazon wants to help educate future technology leaders as they build powerful tools, train foundation models at scale, and develop AI-powered teaching assistants. The company is committing up to $100 million in cloud technology and comprehensive technical advising over the next five years. The selected organizations will gain access to AWS services and technical expertise that support development and scaling of learning management systems, mobile apps, chatbots, and other digital learning tools. Applicants will be required to demonstrate how their proposed solution will benefit students from underserved and underrepresented communities.
Partnering for Success
Amazon’s partners are already achieving remarkable results in this field. For example:
- Code.org has used AWS to scale its free computer science curriculum to millions of students across more than 100 countries. As part of this initiative, they will expand their use of Amazon Bedrock to automate the assessment of student projects. This will free up educator time that can be redirected to individual instruction and tailored learning.
- Rocket Learning focuses on early childhood education in India. They intend to use Amazon Q in QuickSight to improve learning outcomes for over three million children.
“I’m super excited about this initiative and look forward to seeing how it will help to create and educate the next generation of technology pioneers!” – Jeff
