Written by Kristen Titus, Executive Director of the Cognizant U.S. Foundation

It’s no secret that the tech industry is facing challenges—challenges to build a diverse workforce and address a nationwide talent shortage. By 2030, it’s expected that 50 million people will be needed to fill open technology jobs, effectively making software development one of the fastest-growing professions over the next decade. 

To meet these demands, the economy will require deep technology training and more equitable education systems. Across the country, computer science (CS) curriculum is outdated and often irrelevant due to the difficulty of keeping pace with the rapid changes in technology. What’s more, schools lack the capacity to accommodate the number of students who want to pursue technology careers. And despite the fact that Black and Latinx students choose to major in CS at roughly the same rate as their white peers, just 7.4% of industry employees are Black and 8% are Latinx. 

Enter CodePath.org. 

CodePath.org is a nonprofit working to eliminate educational inequity in technical careers by transforming college CS education.

By working within existing educational infrastructure and through partnerships with major employers, CodePath.org has the potential to scale high-quality CS instruction across every college campus. Since 2015, CodePath.org has trained more than 2,500 students at nearly 50 colleges and universities. Of these participants, 40% identified as women or underrepresented minorities. 

In an effort to expand CodePath.org’s capacity to address educational equity and create stronger pathways into technical careers, the Cognizant U.S. Foundation, Walmart.org, and Microsoft Philanthropies today announced grants totaling $3 million to support the nonprofit.

With this funding, CodePath.org will redefine CS education at 150 two- and four-year college campuses across the country, delivering industry-informed CS curriculum and creating pathways into technology jobs for 7,000 students from Tuscaloosa State to Texas Community College. 

As corporate funders, we see our job as more than just writing a check. We’re committed to using our platform and expertise as a company to identify the most promising solutions — and, increasingly, identify ways to deepen our impact through meaningful collaboration. We hope that this announcement is a sign of what’s to come: major companies coming together to accelerate solutions for building a diverse, robust technology workforce. 

The digital skills gap and lack of representation in the tech industry is a multi-layered problem that requires innovative, collaborative solutions to drive systems change. No one organization or funder can solve this alone. We invite more organizations to join forces with CodePath.org to help build a more inclusive tech talent pipeline, and more broadly, to collaborate and share best practices with peers, so that we can solve this problem faster and more effectively.