Year Up is an American nonprofit organization focused on education and job skills. The organization provides students without a 4- year

bachelor’s degree A bachelor's degree (from Middle Latin ''baccalaureus'') or baccalaureate (from Modern Latin ''baccalaureatus'') is an undergraduate academic degree awarded by colleges and universities upon completion of a course of study lasting three to six y ...

with resources, training and corporate internships with the aim of improving their job prospects and

social mobility Social mobility is the movement of individuals, families, households or other categories of people within or between social strata in a society. It is a change in social status relative to one's current social location within a given society ...

History

The organization was founded in Boston in 2000 by Gerald Chertavian, who worked as a banker on

Wall Street Wall Street is an eight-block-long street in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan in New York City. It runs between Broadway in the west to South Street and the East River in the east. The term "Wall Street" has become a metonym for t ...

and later co-founded a software company. In June 2002, Year Up's first class of students graduated its one-year program.The program had started in Boston in 2001 with 22 students. In 2011, Year Up established a

Puget Sound Puget Sound ( ) is a sound of the Pacific Northwest, an inlet of the Pacific Ocean, and part of the Salish Sea. It is located along the northwestern coast of the U.S. state of Washington. It is a complex estuarine system of interconnected ma ...

program, based in downtown Seattle. It opened a program in Phoenix in 2014. As of 2020, the organization worked with more than 250 companies that provided funding for the program and took on interns. In 2021, the Office of Planning, Research, and Evaluation in the

US Department of Health and Human Services The United States Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is a cabinet-level executive branch department of the U.S. federal government created to protect the health of all Americans and providing essential human services. Its motto is " ...

(OPRE) published a report of a study it had sponsored, evaluating Year Up's longer term impact via a five-year randomized controlled trial. The study found that the Year Up program had a statistically significant impact on earnings. In 2022, the OPRE reported that six years after completing the Year Up program, past participants had an income 30% higher than a control group of non-participants. As of 2022, approximately 4,000 students per year participated in Year Up's programs.

Programs

Year Up's program includes job skills training and internships in a corporate environment, for underserved students who have a

high school diploma A high school diploma or high school degree is a North American academic school leaving qualification awarded upon high school graduation. The high school diploma is typically obtained after a course of study lasting four years, from grade 9 to gra ...

or equivalent, but have not received a college degree. As of 2018, the program was aimed at young people and accepted participants aged between 18 and 24 years old. The organization also runs a program providing materials and resources to other training providers working with students, including

community colleges A community college is a type of educational institution. The term can have different meanings in different countries: many community colleges have an "open enrollment" for students who have graduated from high school (also known as senior sec ...

Funding and partnerships

The majority of funding for Year Up is provided by its corporate partners. Additional funding is provided by sponsorships, donations and public funding, the latter of which represented 2% of the organization's budget as of 2018. In 2022, Google announced it was working with Year Up and two other job training programs to provide funding and course content. Also in 2022, Year Up received a grant of $3 million from the private equity firm Blackstone Inc.

References

{{reflist Non-profit organizations based in the United States Educational organizations established in 2000 Educational organizations based in the United States Non-profit organizations based in Boston 501(c)(3) organizations