Companies lure hourly workers with college tuition perks

  • 📰 10News
  • ⏱ Reading Time:
  • 67 sec. here
  • 3 min. at publisher
  • 📊 Quality Score:
  • News: 30%
  • Publisher: 50%

Ireland News News

Ireland Ireland Latest News,Ireland Ireland Headlines

More than a dozen companies have launched free or almost-free college programs for their front-line workers over the last decade.

NEW YORK — When Daniella Malave started working for Chipotle at 17, the main benefit she was seeking was free food. As it turned out, she also got a free college education.

Companies see the programs as a way to recruit and retain workers in a tight labor market or train them for management positions. For hourly employees, the programs remove the financial barriers of obtaining a degree. Hall said a lack of data also makes it difficult to judge the programs' effectiveness. Chipotle, Walmart, Amazon and Starbucks, for example, don't share graduation rates, in part because they're hard to calculate because students often take a semester off or take more than four years to earn a degree.

More than 89,000 workers have participated in Walmart's college program and more than 15,000 have graduated, said Lorraine Stomski, Walmart’s senior vice president of associate learning and leadership. Starbucks' program, which launched in 2014, was initially a tuition-reimbursement program, but in 2021, it began covering tuition costs upfront. Now, 85% of the company's stores have at least one employee in the program, which will celebrate its 10,000th graduate in December.

Some companies, like Chipotle and JPMorgan Chase, offer online programs through Guild as well as stipends students can put toward in-person learning at local institutions. Amazon’s college programs offer a mixture of online and in-person learning at local community colleges or universities.

 

Thank you for your comment. Your comment will be published after being reviewed.
Please try again later.
We have summarized this news so that you can read it quickly. If you are interested in the news, you can read the full text here. Read more:

 /  🏆 732. in İE

Ireland Ireland Latest News, Ireland Ireland Headlines