The coffee company announces that it will pay all four years of employees’ online college education.
by Kate Everson
April 7, 2015
The coffee company sees your criticism and raises you an expanded tuition assistance program. (Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.)
Starbucks Corp. honors its own customer service promise — if your morning latte doesn’t taste good to you, a barista will remake it.
The coffee shop chain also appears to have listened to criticism about its tuition assistance program and amended it to address the main point of disapproval. CEO Howard Schultz announced today the company will expand the College Achievement Plan to include reimbursement for freshmen and sophomore students working on online degrees through Arizona State University. Students will be given loans that Starbucks pays back in full upon their successful completion of a semester.
The original program, which launched in July 2014, gave scholarships to freshman and sophomores but did not pay full tuition for students until their junior and senior years.
Any employee who works 20 hours a week is eligible for the program. Starbucks expects at least 25,000 workers will take advantage of the offer by 2025. It has budgeted $250 million in anticipation.
