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Amazon launches ‘Future Engineer’ education program in India

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London, UK
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Despite making up the second largest internet market globally, India is grossly underrepresented in the world of computer science. Amazon is attempting to rectify this by bringing its education program ‘Future Engineer’ to the nation’s students.

The American e-commerce giant helmed by newbie astronaut Jeff Bezos is capable of some good, it would seem.

Back in 2018, Amazon launched an education program called Future Engineer which continues to unearth aspiring young tech entrepreneurs from underprivileged and underrepresented backgrounds.

Focused primarily on students aged between grade six and 12, the program offers up what Amazon calls ‘childhood-to-career’ scholarships and internships, where computer science courses on robotics, AI, and machine learning are taught by expert mentors.

Put it this way, offerings are far beyond that of your average IT curriculum.

Currently operating across five countries – including the US, UK, Canada, France, and Germany – the initiative is focused on driving young people towards modern industries that will likely shape their futures. Bezos’ grandchildren will need rockets of their own too.

To its credit, Amazon is deliberately targeting communities that wouldn’t ordinarily have the exposure or resources to get students interested in computer science. As its website states, irrespective of all socio-economic factors, it strives to break ‘disproportionate barriers to education.’

One such country suffering from a distinct lack of computer science prospects today, despite making up the second largest online market in the world, is India – and that’s why Future Engineer is setting up there as we speak.

Amazon reportedly aims to reach more than 100,000 students in 900 government schools in the region before the turn of 2023. Does the company ever lack ambition?

At a virtual conference on Tuesday, a spokesperson for the program made the announcement and revealed that the curriculum is being contextualised for Indian teachers and converted into several regional languages.

‘While a million students enrol in CS engineering courses annually in India, students from underserved and underrepresented communities contribute relatively small numbers,’ Amazon said.

‘There are several reasons – low exposure to CS-related career opportunities, lack of inspirational role models in their community, and language barriers to access interesting curriculum formats. Also, government schools have limited resources to impart CS education.’

The move arrives as part of a culmination of education-based efforts from Amazon, which total more than $6.5bn to date. Two years ago, it launched JEE Ready, an app designed to help Indian students register at prestigious tech institutes while providing online classes and mock tests.

Bringing the Future Engineer program to India comfortably represents Amazon’s largest undertaking in its schooling ambitions, and hopefully it will have some bearing on making the overall representation of tech more inclusive in the future.

On that front, we’ll likely hear of plans to bring Future Engineer to other countries in the coming years.

As it stands on home soil, the number of Black professionals in science and engineering will have to nigh-on double before 2030 to be in any way representative of the Black US population, according to the National Science Board.

These estimations underline the fact that there’s a ton of work to be done to make tech a more all-encompassing space, and burdened with the weight of impending climate doom, the need for engineers will only increase with future generations.

Imagine if a Future Engineer student ends up finding a solution to deal with the plastic waste crisis Amazon has contributed so grossly to. How very ironic that would be.

Tech Editor London, UK

I’m Jamie (He/Him), the Editor in Chief at Thred. Keeping up with gaming and revolutionary technology is my forte, but when away from my keyboard, you’ll probably find me wrapped around a large Tango ice blast at the latest mediocre horror flick. Follow me on Twitter, LinkedIn and drop me some ideas/feedback via email.

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