Dive Brief:
- Facebook has publicly launched a special class where students get college credit for contributing to open source projects.
- The class, Open Academy, was the subject of a pilot program at Stanford and is run in partnership with computer science programs at schools including University of Pennsylvania and Carnegie Mellon.
- Students are paired with mentors and an open source project and then work in virtual teams from their schools.
Dive Insight:
As the article makes clear, this isn't exactly an altruistic program on Facebook's part. The company is in a battle for talent, and a program like this might give them an edge in identifying and recruiting young people.
