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. Rachel Carlson, CEO for Guild Education, which also doesn’t reveal graduation rates, says the more relevant data is whether college classes help employees get promotions or wage increases.
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.