The largest non-relational database supplier in the world, MongoDB, has started a program in India to teach over 500,000 students the skills needed to utilize MongoDB Atlas, a platform that speeds and simplifies database deployment across different clouds. The so-called MongoDB for Academia initiative offers free training for students, educational tools for teachers, credits to use MongoDB technology without charge, and certificates to assist individuals who finish courses in finding employment. The program has been launched in partnership with ICT Academy, the not-for-profit educational initiative of the Tamil Nadu government and the government of India that has a mission to train higher education teachers and students to help close the technology skills gap in India. ICT Academy will identify over 800 educational institutions and more than 1,000 educators for this program.

Raghu Viswanathan, VP of education, academia, and documentation at MongoDB, said that its research found India has about 800,000 graduates in computer science, IT, and maths, but while 65% of them have core skills from going to college, they don’t have the extra tech skills needed to get a “big tech job.” While relational databases (where data is structured into tables with rows and columns) still dominate the market, non-relational ones are rapidly gaining ground, as the need to deal with large volumes of data, much of it unstructured or semi-structured (such as web pages, images, videos, voice), grows.

Viswanathan said MongoDB applies five principles to its approach to education. “The first is that we want our online education to be completely free. We have even made it frictionless we don’t even ask you to log in to look at content. The belief is that if you enable learners quickly, then good things will happen with the product,” he said. The second principle is the provision of a hands-on learning experience to complement the video and reading experience. “We’ve really invested heavily in these hands-on labs,” Viswanathan said. The third principle is certification the company in essence, vouches for the students’ skills. The fourth principle is to create shorter learning assets. This is to deal with the rapid software changes that happen. The byte-sized courses help a student to quickly keep up with technology instead of going through a longer course, most of which she would have learned earlier.

The fourth principle is to create shorter learning assets. This is to deal with the rapid software changes that happen. The byte-sized courses help a student to quickly keep up with technology instead of going through a longer course, most of which she would have learned earlier. The last principle is that MongoDB goes where the students are. “If they’re on Coursera, we go to Coursera. If they’re on Linkedin, we go to Linkedin. We want to make our content as ubiquitous as possible. A lot of companies keep their content on their own platform. We don’t believe in that,” Viswanathan said.