For consumers, Starbucks’s pricey-but-alluringly-caffeinated beverages can be a real money drain, but on Monday the coffee chain announced plans to ease the financial burden of its employees by subsidizing the cost of college.
The Starbucks College Achievement Plan is the result of a new partnership between Starbucks and Arizona State University, aimed at giving low-income and minority students a leg-up by making college more affordable. It will be open to employees that work at least 20 hours a week at any of Starbucks’s cafes, offices, or roasting plants, The Wall Street Journal reported.
“There’s no doubt, the inequality within the country has created a situation where many Americans are being left behind. The question for all of us is, should we accept that, or should we try and do something about it?” Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz commented in a news release.
With its new college achievement plan, Starbucks is aiming to do something big: The plan will fully reimburse employees that are enrolled as either juniors or seniors in one of ASU’s online degree programs and will offer tuition breaks and need-based scholarships to freshmen and sophomores. ASU will also accept transfer credit from employees currently enrolled in other college programs, but students must meet ASU admittance standards in order to enroll.
The plan comes after Starbucks employees expressed concern about the steep price of college education. Starbucks doesn’t have exact data on how many employees will likely take advantage of the plan, but says that current or aspiring students comprise 70 percent of its workforce, Politico reported.
Starbucks is not the only company to offer college assistance programs to its employees. However, the coffee chain’s new initiative takes the concept several steps further, making it seem more “altruistic” than other corporate plans, according to Wells Fargo analyst Trace Urden in the WSJ.
Notably, employees are not required to continue working for Starbucks once they have earned their degrees. Also, unlike other corporate programs which specifically subsidize degrees that are compatible with the company’s objectives, Starbucks employees are free to pursue degrees completely unrelated to their Starbucks jobs, whether that be electrical engineering, Spanish, or philosophy. As Mr. Urden asserts, the fact that Starbucks employees “aren’t going to be studying macchiato making” will eventually “help them leave Starbucks and go somewhere else.”
Ironically, though, Starbucks has expressed hope that by responding to employees’ anxiety about college affordability, the company, which already has a high-retention rate, will be better able to retain talented employees, thereby minimizing hiring and training costs.
