Nvidia is the biggest name in business this year. The 31-year old chipmaker has ridden the artificial intelligence wave to the top of the stock market.
Now, the company is hoping to ride into California community colleges.
Nvidia and the chancellor of the system have inked a deal to connect the company’s AI curriculum to community college learners.
The Big Idea: It’s one in a long line of partnerships between Big Tech and community colleges. And college officials, faculty, and experts all say they have high hopes it could help place students into well-paying jobs.
“We want to ensure that students are understanding this technology and have the opportunity to become credentialed and certified in the technology,” says Don Daves-Rougeaux, a senior advisor on workforce and economic development in the chancellor’s office. “We don’t just want them to be impacted by the technology.”
The Details: There are several different parts to the agreement between the system and Nvidia—but the one likely to be the most significant focuses on Nvidia training faculty members on its AI modules and curricula. Ideally, those faculty members will be able to teach the modules not only to their students, but to other faculty members in a “train-the-trainer” model.
Daves-Rougeaux says the first students to benefit from the partnership will likely be those inclined toward working with technology. But further down the line, he sees the potential for the curricula to benefit students with other interests. Given that many different kinds of jobs may be using AI in the future, students may still need to learn about the function, ethics, and development of AI even if they plan to go into other fields.
“We want them to interact with the technology in an informed way, where they can make conscious decisions and well-informed decisions about how they want to use the technology,” Daves-Rougeaux says.
The move is partly about equity, ensuring that the system’s diverse students—48% Latino, 11% Asian American, 5% Black, and 65% economically disadvantaged—have access to the same kinds of tools and training as students at places like Arizona State University and the University of Michigan. The chancellor’s office also is prioritizing equity in the rollout.
“We do not want to perpetuate those mistakes in the past in which we do not intentionally provide resources to our students and our faculty across the system,” Daves-Rougeaux says.
The Background: Nvidia already has an education and training arm that works with individual faculty members. Through the company’s Deep Learning Institute, academics can apply to take the company’s modules and then be approved to teach them to students. Teachers and professors need to demonstrate a certain level of computer science expertise to be approved for the courses.
Some of the exact details on the California partnership are still up in the air. The memorandum of understanding outlines many things Nvidia “may” do, but stops short of mandating Nvidia’s participation. Nvidia declined to comment for this story, but the company briefly addresses the role of the Deep Learning Institute and its college partnerships more broadly in its most recent annual report.
“We evangelize AI through partnerships with hundreds of universities and thousands of startups,” the report says.
On the Ground: The partnership in California builds on work already happening there to develop AI as a potential academic discipline. For one example, look to Laney Community College in the Bay Area, where Tuan Nguyen, a computer science professor, has been working to establish AI as an academic discipline and hopefully offer an associate degree in applied AI.
His intro to AI class, designed as a general class without too much math, is now in its third semester. It’s one of four AI courses that have been approved by the state, and one of 13 Nguyen says he’d like to offer. The first two semesters of his intro to AI course saw 28 and 22 students. This semester, the class has 18 students, a dip Nguyen suspects happened because the course was advertised later than initially planned.
Nguyen acknowledges there are many barriers between students and jobs at top AI firms such as OpenAI and Nvidia. Not only are those companies more likely to look to four-year universities for hiring, it’s also difficult to get students up to speed enough to develop their own algorithms and work in theoretical AI.
However, Nguyen says that he sees a future for his students in the other parts of the AI business, doing tasks like cleaning and preparing training data, as well as testing algorithms. That could help them get jobs at smaller firms, or they could manage algorithms at companies that are using AI but in a different line of business.
Nyugen is working to stand up a board of regional businesses that could benefit from students working to help their businesses with off-the-shelf algorithms.
Bringing in a Partner
Even with the work already happening in California community colleges, officials say bringing in a larger company like Nvidia will be helpful. Technology is changing rapidly, and it can be difficult for academic institutions to keep up.
Luke Koslosky, a research analyst at Georgetown University’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology, says the agreement appears strong, with Nvidia seeming highly involved. Since much of the tech industry is located in California, it’s a good place for a program like this, he says.
With so many partnerships lately, there’s been a range of success. On the lower end of the spectrum, Koslosky says, are partnerships where a company may develop a curriculum but drop it in an institution without much follow-up.
And there is still an open question about whether firms are willing to hire people with certificates in AI but no four-year degrees. A few years ago, researchers at CSET concluded after research that the answer was largely “no.” Today, with more of a conversation around skills-based hiring and more buzz around AI, that could be beginning to change.
Kenneth Lutchen, senior adviser to the president at Boston University, says it’s important to manage student expectations when starting any partnership program. It’s similarly important to make sure that programs being offered have the potential to help students who may work at a variety of different employers, not just one company, says Lutchen, who has written about tech partnerships. Students may discover they don’t want to work with just one firm their entire lives.
“Academia is not supposed to create degree programs for specific companies. It’s antithetical to the mission,” Lutchen says. “The university then works for the company.”
Overall, experts and educators say big tech companies are looking to partner with community colleges to grow their potential workforce—hopefully making it a diverse one. They also want to train students on their technology, so that they might be more likely to use it in the future.
“Having a trained workforce is to their benefit,” says Lee Lambert, chancellor of the Foothill-DeAnza community college district. “We’re the most diverse and we’re the largest. So that’s an easy way to tap into that pipeline.”
While the partnership with Nvidia will need to develop further before outcomes can be measured, officials and experts say they believe AI’s integration into the curricula can only increase from here.
“As we move into an unpredictable future with the rise of AI and future technologies that we may not even be aware of, we are uniquely positioned to provide those kinds of trainings and resources to the largest number of students across the country,” Daves-Rougeaux says.
“Community colleges are uniquely positioned to be at the center of driving the economy for the state.”