Amazon has made a donation of 1.5 million dollars each to the Bellevue College Foundation and Seattle Colleges to support computer science education. This money will be donated over the course of the next three years and is meant to support BC students who are pursuing a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science, for the purpose of ensuring that students coming from backgrounds or communities that have been underrepresented in tech have opportunities for affordable higher education.
Computer science is a very in-demand field right now, with lots of jobs available with high wages. According to Code.org, there are currently 21,000 computing jobs available in Washington state. The average salary is $112,000.
Bellevue College was the first community college in the Washington State Community and Technical College System to offer this particular degree, and it’s hoped that this money will help the school have better financial support for people enrolling in this program and create opportunities for students. BC will also expand their capacity for 60 percent more students with this donation.
Amazon also recently donated $5 million to the University of Washington’s Seattle campus for the purpose of helping to construct a new engineering building. Amazon also funds robotics clubs, CS curricula, professional learning and career talks in almost 300 schools in Washington state. In Seattle, they opened the AWS Skills Center, which is a free training center made so that people can learn about cloud computing through the exhibits or take free foundational cloud classroom training.
