LAS VEGAS--(BUSINESS WIRE)--#UIPATHFORWARD III – Today at FORWARD III, the first-ever global event for the Robotic Process Automation (RPA) community, UiPath is celebrating the success of its Academic Alliance program by announcing a new partnership with William & Mary’s business school to offer a “Robot for Every Student.”
This fall, the University’s Raymond A. Mason School of Business is offering UiPath’s one-credit, 14-hour “Introduction to RPA for Business” course to more than 400 students. All incoming majors and minors of the business school received the software during orientation in August. The three-year partnership includes a contribution of $4 million worth of UiPath software. It is anticipated that by the 2020-2021 academic year, a total of 800 business students will have a UiPath software robot.
The ultimate goal is for students to use their innovative and entrepreneurial minds to create automated business solutions and processes that do not yet exist, and to prepare students now for an automated future of work.
“This partnership gives William & Mary students a tremendously exciting opportunity to explore the leading edge of software robotics as they pursue their academic passions,” said William & Mary President Katherine Rowe. “To be able to test out how RPA works in practice – and to be able to think critically about it, in the early stages of the development of this field – will give them a powerful framework for engaging with technology transformation in their future lives as citizens and professionals.”
William & Mary’s RPA program is made possible by the UiPath Academic Alliance, which aims to train more than one million students, and partner with one thousand accredited institutions of higher learning globally over the next two years. The Robot for Every Student initiative affords the ability to introduce RPA to the entire university, college or campus, whether the student is majoring in technology, business or any other field. The students can create their own software robot “assistants” to help them prepare for classes, do faster and better research, search for financial aid or jobs or even innovate a new process or solution to support non-profit work for the betterment of society.
Since its inception in October 2018, UiPath Academic Alliance has partnered with nearly 400 higher education institutions in 33 countries. It offers several courses designed to prepare both technical and business-oriented students for an automated future. More than 100 of these – including Munich University of Applied Sciences (Germany), Hogeschool van Arnhem en Nijmegen (HAN) University of Applied Sciences (Netherlands), Warsaw School of Economics (Poland), Kozminski University (Poland), Babes-Bolyai University (Romania), Renmin University of China, and PSG College of Technology (India) – have invested in full, semester-long courses.
The HAN University of Applied Sciences in The Netherlands will also offer a “Robot for Every Student” to 3,000 students and educators immediately with plans to quickly expand the program to 15,000. Professor John Smits said, “In my view, it’s absolutely vital that every student is exposed to this critical skill. RPA truly has the capacity to revolutionize how we work; and not just in computer sciences, but in other professional careers as well.” HAN will offer UiPath to Finance & Control, Accountancy, Logistics, Education, Management and Retail majors.
California State University – Fullerton is another featured partner of the Academic Alliance. Accounting students enrolled in the Mihaylo College of Business and Economics are learning how RPA can drive efficiencies, improve customer service and bolster overall business performance. April Morris, professor of Accounting: Data Analytics and Robotics, commented: “Our accounting curriculum is evolving into a world-class, tech-forward, real-world experience-based model. Automation is no longer the future, it is the ‘now’. Our graduates are developing skills that will set them apart from the rest. UiPath was a name that was consistently mentioned by our stakeholders, so we built a curriculum based on their technology.”
Matthew Poole, strategic program manager at the University of Auckland, New Zealand – ranked No. 1 globally in the University Impact Rankings by Times Higher Education – stated: “We already have a proven partnership with UiPath that has grown organically through a natural alignment of people, values and ideas that is deeper than any contractual agreement, and is characterized by high trust and quick action. The reaction of the students has been beyond excited, we are expanding our Academic offers and working with Government to ready all New Zealanders for a robotic and AI future.”
“AI and automation will create more than 100 million new jobs in the near future,” said UiPath Vice President, Technical Enablement and Academic Alliance, Alok Shrivastava. “Our Academic Alliance was created to help close this massive and emerging skills gap by empowering everyone – from students to experienced professionals – to prepare themselves for the new future of work.”
About UiPath
UiPath is leading the “automation first” era – championing one robot for every person, delivering free and open training and collaboration and enabling robots to learn new skills through AI and machine learning. Led by a commitment to bring digital era skills to more than a million people, the company’s enterprise Robotic Process Automation (RPA) platform has already automated millions of repetitive, mind-numbing tasks for business and government organizations all over the world, improving productivity, customer experience and employee job satisfaction.
Recently named by Comparably as the 6th happiest place to work and the 11th best company culture among large businesses, UiPath is one of the fastest growing and highest-valued AI enterprise software companies worldwide.
