Coursera, the world’s leading online education platform, announced today its partnership with the Philippines Department of Science and Technology (DOST) and moocs.ph. The partnership is part of a massive national government initiative to prepare citizens for a rapidly evolving workforce.
The program marries the best of Coursera with moocs.ph to bring high-quality education on Data Science and its related fields to citizens of the Philippines as the country continues to shift towards a knowledge-based economy. As the program evolves, there are plans to add training tracks for cybersecurity, artificial intelligence, and other emerging fields. DOST has already received over 1,000 applicants for the training program, and will open a second cohort in January 2018 to meet the high demand.
“The DOST has embarked on a massive training program in the emerging fields involving Data, Connectivity and Intelligence. The fourth in the series of trainings in 2017 is an online program in partnership with Coursera and moocs.ph. From this training, we hope to jumpstart the careers of the next generation data scientists of the country,” said Dr. CP David, Executive Director, DOST-PCIEERD.
“Coursera is excited to partner with such a forward-thinking government agency to address a critical gap in the country’s workforce potential,” said Leila Makarechi, Coursera’s Head of Government Partnerships. “This program demonstrates the Philippine’s government commitment to future-proofing their citizens and we look forward to growing the partnership over the coming years.”
Coursera partnered with moocs.ph – a Filipino technology company that works with local entities to support wrap around services for online courses and degrees – to bring quality education to the Philippines at scale.
“Our partnership with Coursera ensures that the DOST scholars are given access to the highest quality Data Science content available from top tier educational institutions. With this project the DOST has taken a great step towards a more scalable and inclusive approach in upskilling the Philippine workforce – utilizing massive open online courses from top universities all over the world,” said moocs.ph CEO, Allan de Venecia.
Coursera has helped millions of learners worldwide succeed and grow in their careers. Over the last year, Coursera has partnered with more than 50 governments and nonprofits across 4 continents to bring 21st century skills in business, technology, and data to more than 300,000 underemployed people around the globe.
For more information about Coursera for Governments & Nonprofits, visit Coursera.org/Government.
