Working with ASU, Starbucks will make the new college degree program available to 135,000 employees who work at least 20 hours a week. Remarkably, employees will have a wide choice in the selection of educational programs and will not be required to maintain their employment with Starbucks after earning their degree.
How does it work? For the first two years, Starbucks’ college-bound employees would pay greatly reduced tuition. For upper division students, Starbucks would reimburse any money that workers pay out of pocket.
If the students meet the admission requirements at Arizona State, tuition for an online degree is about $10,000 per year, with many Starbucks employees qualifying additionally for as much as $5,730 in Pell grants annually. Starbucks will make the program available only to employees at their company-operated stores. They did not disclose the financial terms of the agreement with Arizona State.
There are important lessons here.
The first lesson is it’s about the student. The promise of an education is not a “point in time” moment but a lifelong, evolving, arduous road filled with roadblocks and hidden surprises. It begins by creating a defined pathway. Choice determines the pathway. And the student must make a choice about which pathway and how to proceed along it.
Choice and access are the two pillars upon which future educational pathways must be built.
