The American Dream Academy is a new tuition-free, six-month online program. Our mission is to help you gain the skills needed to pursue a great job or continue your education. We will support you every step of the way.
Don't wait: programming including live, virtual workshops and webinars begins on 1st, 2022. Click the button below to register and start learning!
The American Dream Academy is focused on creating meaningful opportunities for you to develop new skills to enter in-demand jobs fields or to prepare to earn a four-year college degree, regardless of your background or goals.
The flexible program includes courses, all offered for free on Coursera’s global online learning platform, that you can move through at your own pace as well as support to help you complete them. These include:
The American Dream Academy is tuition-free. The costs of tuition are fully covered by the Milken Center for Advancing the American Dream, Coursera, and other partners.
Yes. All courses are online on Coursera, where you can learn on your own time, at your own pace. There will be additional live, virtual, community programming as part of the program to interact with experts and peers.
To complete the program, it is estimated that you will need to commit approximately five to ten hours a week of study on your own time over a six month period.
The American Dream Academy cannot guarantee you a new or better job. But you will learn technical and workplace skills that today’s employers value; for instance, the Google Career Certificates are recognized by over 150 employers. Additionally, some of the Career Certificates are eligible for pre-approved transfer credit at Western Governors University (WGU) and the University of North Texas (UNT). For example, Google Career Certificates have secured credit recommendations of up to 12 credits from the American Council of Education (ACE®) Credit.
Completion of the The American Dream Academy will also qualify you for admissions in WGU's Bachelor programs in College of Business and College of Information Technology. A high school degree or its equivalent is also required.
All Google Career Certificates are available in English with Spanish language support. Some courses have subtitles in additional languages, including Arabic, French, Portuguese, Italian, German, Russian, and Spanish. The Beginning with Me course and all community programming are available in English only.
The American Dream Academy complies fully with the Americans with Disabilities Act and other relevant laws and regulations. Please visit the Coursera Learner Help Center to discuss your specific needs.
You can enroll in the next registration period which opens the following day.
Coursera is a global online learning platform where learners can engage in courses offered by over 200 world-class universities and companies. All of The American Dream Academy coursework is available on Coursera.
The choice of courses you take is up to you. You will be able to select from Career Certificates and workplace skills courses created by some of America’s largest companies, including IBM, Meta, Google, and Salesforce, and top-level universities.
The Career Certificates offered by The American Dream Academy are designed to prepare you to pursue an in-demand career and require no previous experience. You are required to complete one of them. They include:
You can refer to the Certificate Pathways chart to read information about each Career Certificate, including the skills you will learn, the entry-level jobs each one prepares you for, and the average salary and number of open positions for jobs in each area.
Workplace skills are often referred to as "soft" or "durable" skills. They relate to how you work, solve problems, and interact with colleagues. They include skills like communications, leadership, and critical thinking. They are critical to success and are requested by employers three times more than technical skills. The American Dream Academy offers a collection of workplace skills courses for you to choose from.
The workplace skills courses in The American Dream Academy reflect the skills most requested by employers. You are required to complete two of them. They include:
None. No degree or prior experience is required.
Yes. The American Dream Academy is designed to be flexible. You can complete the Beginning with Me course, Career Certificates, and workplace skills courses at your own pace within six months from the registration deadline.
Yes. Some Career Certificates are eligible for pre-approved transfer credit at Western Governors University (WGU) and the University of North Texas (UNT). More information on transferring credits will be available to you after you enroll. They are:
You can start working on the Beginning with Me course, Career Certificate, and workplace skills courses as soon as you register.
Community programming includes live, virtual events with your peers that occur throughout the program, and help you define your purpose, set goals, and prepare for your next opportunity. Participation in community programming is optional.
All of the Google certificates outline role specific resume and interviewing help directly within the certificate, including 12 months of free access to Big Interview, which provides hands-on practice with mock interviews tailored to specific job fields. Following completion of a Google Career Certificate, learners have the opportunity to connect with over 150 companies in our employer consortium that consider graduates for jobs, including SAP, Verizon, Wayfair, and Google. In addition, learners who complete Google certificate graduates can sign up, at no cost, with Career Circle, a workforce development staffing agency, to create a profile and have the opportunity to work 1:1 with recruiting experts, to receive resume support and coaching, and get help connecting to jobs. Graduates need to be eligible to work in the U.S.
For troubleshooting login and account issues, please visit the Coursera Learner Help Center.
The Milken Center for Advancing the American Dream is a national nonprofit organization located in Washington, D.C. It exists to help make access to the American Dream—however you define it and wherever you are—more available to everyone. The Center works on both sides of the access equation: making resources available to visitors on-line and in person to help them acquire the skills needed to achieve their personal dreams; and at the same time, work with the private sector, government, non-profit and community leaders to help advance fairness in education, funding, finance and health resources and policies.
The American Dream Academy works with a variety of partners across the corporate, non profit, and public sectors to support learner participation and engagement, and broaden opportunity.
There are several different ways to support the program. To discuss further, email us at [email protected].
