Hudson Valley Community College Selected by Amazon as an Education Partner for Career Choice Program
November 1, 2022
Hudson Valley Community College has been selected as an education partner for Amazon’s Career Choice program, which provides Amazon’s hourly employees access to degree and certificate programs at the Capital Region’s largest community college. College costs – including tuition, books and fees – are paid by Amazon.
Amazon’s Career Choice program empowers employees to learn new skills that can lead to career success at Amazon or elsewhere. The program offers a variety of education and skill-building opportunities, including funding college tuition and education expenses, industry certifications, and foundational skills such as English language proficiency, high school diplomas, and GEDs.
Amazon’s Career Choice program covers student costs up to $5,250 per year for full-time employees and $2,625 per year for part-time workers. Hudson Valley Community College’s tuition is $2,400 per semester for New York State residents, plus fees. The college is the only Capital Region community college to be selected by Amazon for its Career Choice program.
“Amazon continues to build its workforce within the Capital Region, and we are excited to be a part of that growth, as an educational partner that can provide a wide range of courses as well as more than 80 credit-bearing degree and certificate programs,” said President Roger Ramsammy. “I believe one of the reasons Hudson Valley was chosen as an Amazon Career Choice partner was because of the variety of modalities we offer – online, remote, on-campus, daytime, evening – we do all we can to fit education into the schedules of our working students. We look forward to engaging with this new student population and helping them reach their educational goals.”
Hudson Valley Community College offers hundreds of courses and an array of programs through the Schools of Business and Liberal Arts, Health Sciences and STEM. The college currently has a total enrollment of approximately 7,500 students in credit-bearing courses and offers both on-campus and online degree opportunities. New degree programs at the college include Psychology, Welding and Fabrication, and Electric and Autonomous Vehicles. This fall, the college has seen a 1.6 percent growth in the number of students it serves, compared to Fall 2021.
Amazon’s Career Choice program has a rigorous selection process for third-party partner educators, choosing partners that are focused on helping employees through their education programs, assisting them with job placements, and overall offering education that leads to career success.
“We believe in empowering our employees by providing them access to the education and training they need to grow their careers, whether that’s with us or elsewhere,” said Carley Graham Garcia, Amazon’s head of community affairs in New York. “We are excited that Hudson Valley Community College has joined us as an education partner for Career Choice, adding to the many benefits available to our employees in the Capital Region. More than 90,000 Amazon employees around the world have already participated in Career Choice and we’ve seen first-hand how it can transform their lives.”
Career Choice was launched in 2012, and the program is active in 14 countries across the globe. More than 50,000 Amazon employees have participated since its inception, with more than 35,000 in the United States, and more than half of Amazon’s participants identify as Black, Hispanic or Native American. Healthcare, transportation and information technology are the most popular fields of study chosen by employees. In the U.S., the company is investing $1.2 billion to upskill more than 300,000 employees by 2025 to help move them into higher-paying, in-demand jobs.