Starbucks to Provide Free College Education to Thousands of Workers – NYTimes.com

• Starbucks to Provide Free College Education to Thousands of Workers – NYTimes.com

  I wish other corporations in America would take notice and emulate what Starbucks and Arizona State are doing to combat inequality in our country. This move by Starbucks is better than a minimum raise it will lift thousands into the middle class and be lifetime Starbucks customers.

  tags: education schools universities colleges employment workers tuition

  • Starbucks will provide a free online college education to thousands of its workers, without requiring that they remain with the company,

  • The program is open to any of the company’s 135,000 United States employees, provided they work at least 20 hours a week and have the grades and test scores to gain admission to Arizona State.

  • “Starbucks is going where no other major corporation has gone,”

  • Starbucks is, in effect, inviting its workers, from the day they join the company, to study whatever they like, and then leave whenever they like — knowing that many of them, degrees in hand, will leave for better-paying jobs.

  • Howard D. Schultz, the company’s chairman and chief executive, said in an interview. “I believe it will lower attrition, it’ll increase performance, it’ll attract and retain better people.”

  • The president of Arizona State, Michael M. Crow, something of an evangelist for online education,

  • they expect thousands to enroll, and Mr. Crow said Arizona State has prepared for a major surge in enrollment. Tuition for Arizona State’s online undergraduate courses is usually about $500 per credit, and it takes 120 credits to earn a bachelor’s degree.

  • The new Starbucks program “would be a huge benefit to me,” Mr. Cervantes said, giving him flexibility and eliminating the commute to and from school.

  • Seventy percent of Starbucks employees do not have a degree but want to earn one; some have never gone to college, some have gone but dropped out, and others are in school, but have found it slow going.

  • Mr. Schultz, the Starbucks chief, said such stories strike a personal chord with him. He grew up in public housing in Brooklyn and an athletic scholarship enabled him to be the first in his family to attend college, at Northern Michigan University.

  • “The middle class is being hollowed out in so many ways,” Mr. Crow said. Unless more people become educated, he said, “We can all see this social train wreck ahead of us.”

  • “Imagine just waking up one day and knowing that your whole degree would be paid for, and the only thing you have to do is enroll and study and be a good student,” he said. “It would change my lifestyle, the whole dynamic of what I do every day.”

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.