starbucks

College is becoming unaffordable for many in the middle class.  The average student graduates  with nearly $30,000 dollars in debt after obtaining a bachelors degree.  That’s a pretty steep price tag and hardly a good way to begin one’s adult life.  It makes living at home until you are 40 more and more of  not just a possibility but a fact of life.  Congress, to date, has refused to pass legislation that improves the college loan situation.  Enter Starbucks to the rescue, according to  Politico:

Starbucks soon will be helping college kids with more than pulling all-nighters.

The company best known for its pricey java chip frappuccinos said Sunday it will pay a huge chunk of college tuition for its baristas and the rest of its 135,000 U.S. employees through a new partnership with Arizona State University.

Many companies reimburse students for a portion of the undergraduate or graduate school tuition, but fewer go this far — and the coffee chain won’t require employees who use the benefit to continue working at one of its 8,000 stores past graduation.

 

“There’s no doubt, the inequality within the country has created a situation where many Americans are being left behind,” Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz said. “The question for all of us is, should we accept that, or should we try and do something about it?”

The Starbucks College Achievement Plan will fully reimburse employees enrolled as college juniors and seniors in one of more than 40 of ASU’s online degree programs. Starbucks will pay partial tuition and provide need-based scholarships if students are enrolled as freshmen or sophomores.

Schultz will officially kick off the program Monday in New York City alongside ASU President Michael Crow, Education Secretary Arne Duncan and 350 New York-area Starbucks employees at a forum on college access and how business can play a role in addressing college affordability.

“Those who’ve been clamoring for bold, new initiatives to reduce the barriers to quality higher education in America should applaud this announcement,” Crow said. “As others follow Starbucks’s example, we will hear those barriers come crashing down, to the lasting benefit of all Americans.”

 

Starbucks is already a trend-setter with employment benefits.   It pays above minimum wage and its baristas make tips.  It has a limited reimbursement plan for students. Additionally,  Starbucks has been known for its health care benefits.  Part time workers are eligible for the company health plan.  Additionally, domestic partners can be included on the company plan as a matter of policy.

Will companies start offering better benefits to attract and maintain a more highly skilled, better educated work force?  It sure sounds like it if Starbucks is any indication.  Not to be a snob, but what sets the Starbucks experience apart from other fast food experiences other than different cuisine?  Could it be that the employees don’t greet you smacking gum and saying “I ain’t got no puncil?”   Often your workers are college graduates who want the health care benefits.   It makes for a better dining experience to not have one’s ears assaulted by bad grammar.

The new educational plan for Starbucks workers is just another incentive that will enable the company to build on that Starbucks experience and make it better.  I think I will add to my portfolio this morning.

27 Thoughts to “When college costs just get too high….work at Starbucks”

  1. Jackson Bills

    “Congress, to date, has refused to pass legislation that improves the college loan situation.”

    There isn’t much Congress can do to improve the situation. The only idea’s I’ve heard of have come from Elizabeth Warren, however, her idea doesn’t fix the problem. It only prolongs and exacerbates the college loan situation.

    If your only goal is to make more and more money readily available for college loans then the price of going to college is going to keep going up exponentially. To address the affordability issue of going to college you have to address the reason the costs are going up so much every year, (not to mention why books are so f’n expensive) not to make money easier to get/payback.

    1. Interest rates could be fixed, there could be incentives for keeping costs and tuition low and the text book companies could all be boycotted. Those thieving bastards make all their money off of college students. Compare costs. Compare costs of a high school book to a college book. No comparison. Its printed words and numbers. Period.

      I don’t agree that more people going to college jacks the price up. Let’s start with the premise that the entire purpose of the undergraduate system is to support the graduate programs and their excesses. Once we access that fact, and it is a fact, then we can discuss.

      Maybe its time to let the graduate schools start relying more on donors and corporate America and less on the undergraduate schools nation wide.

  2. Rick Bentley

    Impressive.

  3. George S. Harris

    I believe Jackson may be on to something. We are led to believe that all children should have a college degree bit I have to ask, “Why?” Not all children are capable of the rigors of college and there are plenty of jobs that pay as well as any requiring a college degree. My plumber charges me $100/hr. A good Master Electrician can command that much and often more. The same with good mechanics. But let’s look at salaries for a second. The highest paid president of a public university is the president of Ohio State University, E. Gordon Gee, who makes $1,992,221 a year. The top 10 public university presidents all make in excess of $700,000 a year. Charles W. Steger, president of Virginia Tech (No 10 on the list) makes a paltry $738,603. But wait–let’s look at private universities. The presidents of the top 10 private universities all make in excess of $1,500,000 a year with Constantine N. Papadakis of Drexel University topping the list at $4,912,127. All this from the the Chronicle of Higher Education. Did I mention coaches? Nick Saban of Alabama makes $5,545,852. Urban Meyer, head coach of Ohio State makes nearly 2.5 times the salary of the university’s president: $4,608,000. Want to fix the system? Do something about salaries.

  4. Jackson Bills

    “Maybe its time to let the graduate schools start relying more on donors and corporate America and less on the undergraduate schools nation wide.”

    So you agree? Get the federal government out of the student loan business, right? Instead of government making things worse… now we can agree on something. 🙂

    Honestly, I have a son who just turned 5. By the time he is college age I truly believe that your standard ‘college’ is going to be obsolete. I agree with Mr. Harris’s comment 100% re: Why? in reference to a college degree. Besides, you have SO many students now with majors that simply don’t translate into a decent salary. Just take a look at the spike in liberal arts types of majors and the decline in engineering type majors. Kids these day are unfortunately told to just follow your heart and do what ever it is you want to do. The result is you spent $50k on a kid to get a degree who can’t get a job thus they move back in with you.

    Trade schools and online colleges are going to overtake the greedy, narcissistic, pompous, elitist college campuses in no more than a decade. Then they will have priced themselves right out of business just like so many other U.S. industries. The only people U.S. colleges are going to produce that can earn a high wage are those from other countries who send their kids to our schools with a purpose other than to have them ‘do what their heart desires’.

    It’s about time we become honest with our children and let them know that if you want a degree in acting, liberal arts, basket weaving then be prepared to come right back home and live with mommy and daddy for the next 20 years. We need to tell them to pursue math, chemistry, science if they want to be something other than what they thought they would be in life. Sounds harsh but it’s life.

  5. Rick Bentley

    “By the time he is college age I truly believe that your standard ‘college’ is going to be obsolete.”

    I wouldn’t bet on that. We’ll probably see more options for educating, more online study. But I don’t think that in a short term that the whole model is going to change.

  6. Rick Bentley

    President Obama says that the high cost of education is because State legislatures have been putting less money in – he correlates it to the cost of prisons and healthcare – http://www.cnsnews.com/mrctv-blog/craig-bannister/obama-spending-prisons-main-reason-tuition-has-gone

    Truthfully, I’m sure that the high cost of college does have to do with the way Americans these days begrudge spending to anything and everything, in vain attempts to keep more money in their pockets. Penny-wise pound foolish, that’s us. Cut taxes, run up deficit, then sit and worry about keeping a job in this cut-throat society we’ve enabled. That’s the new American Dream …

  7. ed myers

    K-12 is less expensive than college because parents provide R&B cheaper than schools do. Add 2 years to high school to make it K-14. Reduce the cost of a college degrees by $30K…the amount of debt the average kid acquires in school. (A high school year costs about $12K/year. Public colleges cost about $27K per year.) During those 2 years kids are placed in work-study or other pay-as-you-go plans instead of debt.

    1. You can also take your senior year at a community college. I know several young people who did it and saved themselves some bucks.

  8. George S. Harris

    Which community colleges are offering 4th year programs?

  9. George S. Harris

    In this area, several of the community colleges belong to an educational consortium that includes most of the major universities in the area. But a community college with 4th year programs?

  10. Censored bybvbl

    @George S. Harris
    I think it’s the 4th. year of high school.

  11. Cargosquid

    I attend Virginia Commonwealth University.

    I was talking about the costs of school with my prof and he agrees that the costs of school is outrageous.

    And then we looked around. The same kids complaining about costs are buying Starbucks in what is said to be the busiest Starbucks in the country. It is inside the school library. The university spent 28K on a consultant to judge whether the head of VCU is doing a good job. I thought the Board was supposed to do that. The gym is immense and top of the line. The sports program costs every student hundreds in fees. The school has bikes and cars available for rental by the students. It has its own free for student, separate clinic even though the MCV hospital system is connected to the VCU system. VCU has its own police force even though the campus is in the middle of downtown Richmond which has its own police forces. The dorms have separate rooms. I think SOME might have roommates.

    All of this costs money. And when it was criticized….the staunchest defenders were the students that cried out that they NEEDED this stuff.

    So, they need these loans.

    If I didn’t have the GI Bill, I couldn’t afford to go. 4 classes = $4500 not counting fees and books. Heck, I dropped and changed a class because it demanded SIX textbooks.

    1. I am not sure what you are saying. Should people go on the cheap and eat in soup lines because they are in college?

      Let’s expand this discussion.

  12. Cargosquid

    @Moon-howler
    I am saying that the universities have over priced, luxury facilities. And that the same students that spend hundreds of dollars per month in the Starbucks and demand that these luxuries are “needed” complain about the high cost of college.

    It used to be that colleges had basic dorm rooms and cafeterias. Medical needs and law enforcement needs were met by local resources. Sports were not big business.

    1. It might be true of that one college but sports were sure a big business where I grew up. Everything centered around the University. My father went to school on a scholarship but he had to play three sports per year.

      Mary Washington where I attended college had basic dorm rooms and a dining hall with 4 wings. It was a woman’s college then so the sports weren’t much of an issue.

      Starbucks is part of Americana. Today every room/dorm is air conditioned. I never had an ac in my dorm. There are TVS, wi fi, printers, all sorts of crap that hadn’t even been thought of when I was coming along. We had one TV in the residence hall sitting out in the main room. A couple of folks had little TVs with rabbit ears but that was that. Then there are the cell phones….

      Its just a different world. I also think my last year there was about $1600. If you made 10k a year you were in comfortable enough shape though.

  13. Rick Bentley

    “Should people go on the cheap and eat in soup lines because they are in college?”

    Back in my day … mid-80’s … I lived on $3 a day. Lots of mac and cheese, and chunky Campbell soup. Most days dinner was rice soaked in a Campbell’s soup (usually cheddar cheese, or mushroom)

    But on the other hand, I know students whose student loans plus what their parents gave them enabled them not only to order pizza every night, but to smoke pot, and snort cocaine. I”m sure there are always haves, and have-nots.

    1. Not going to date myself but…back in my day, I got 25 bucks a month from my parents. I also smoked so that check really got stretched. My room and board was paid though. I just had to support cokes and cigarettes and I don’t mean cocaine either.

  14. Censored bybvbl

    @Rick Bentley

    I had classmates whose parents gave them a new Mercedes or a townhouse in Old Town Alexandria for graduation presents. Some peeps will always have more money.

    1. I got a job and bought my own camero and thought I was hot you know what. My parents had paid for college. That was enough. It also was a struggle.

  15. Censored bybvbl

    I worked most of the time I was in college. I met the above classmates while taking classes not offered at my school but at another university which was part of a consortium.

    I haven’t researched why college tuitions are so much higher. Many of us who paid reasonable tuitions were part of the baby boom glut. Universities made room for us. Then there was a baby bust. Maybe they raised tuitions to survive and never cut back when they had more students in a second large wave.

    As for the perks offered on campus – people expect to have upward mobility. Many of us grew up when a single car was the norm for a household or one TV. Houses were smaller. Things change. I’m trying to sell a house in Fairfax County that is 50+ years old in order to settle an estate. Most of the buyers for that neighborhood are in their 20s and 30s but expect all the amenities in their first house – regardless of the fact that it’s 50 years old but well maintained. They don’t want to commute from Gainesville in order to achieve this.

    1. Damn youngsters with their sense of entitlement. I live in a 70’s house and it is smaller and has bad closet space. Sigh. I suffer. I also could afford to retire and not have to work until I dropped dead in the work place. I guess its a trade.

  16. George S. Harris

    Has anyone figured inflation into this? Am neither a math or economics whiz but what cost $X 20 years ago is now $X x 5 or more. But I still say inflated salaries for coaches and upper level administrators also add BIG$ to the cost of a college/university education.

    1. I agree, George. Supposedly athletic events bring in the money to offset those huge salaries. I don’t know. Do they?

      Supposedly $$$ was the reason Maryland left the ACC in favor of the Big Ten. What a mistake that will prove to be. They lost a lot of alumni support on that bad call.

  17. Cargosquid

    @Moon-howler
    70’s?

    Mine was built in 1956. Yours is way modern!

    What are closets?

    1. Closets are these little tiny things with big tall doors that you reach into and don’t hold much.

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