Starbucks received wonderful publicity for its offer to pay the tuition of thousands of workers who took online courses at Arizona State University.
But there is a catch.
“Any Starbucks employee who works at least 20 hours per week will soon be able to complete his/her junior and senior years of college at Arizona State University (ASU) Online, thanks to a deal between the coffeehouse colossus and the institute of higher learning. But not everyone thinks that the new plan is such a great deal for Starbucks employees.
The Starbucks College Achievement Plan, which replaces an earlier tuition assistance program in the company’s benefits package, was officially unveiled at a public forum in New York’s Times Center. U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan put in an appearance at the forum during which he told Starbucks employees, “I urge you to take advantage of this.”
A joint statement from Starbucks and ASU hailed the new tuition reimbursement plan as “a powerful, first-of-its-kind program designed to unleash [a] lifetime opportunity for thousands of eligible part-time and full-time U.S. partners (employees).” Under the new plan, employees who complete their freshman and sophomore years at ASU Online would receive a major discount, and the remaining two years would be totally free.
Sounds great, right? Not according to Sara Goldrick-Rab, professor of educational policy studies and sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who said she found it “incredibly problematic” that Starbucks has decided to limit its tuition assistance to a single online university.
““ASU Online is a profit venture,” said Goldrick-Rab. “And basically, these two businesses have gotten together and created a monopoly on college ventures for Starbucks employees.”
“Although ASU is a public university, its online wing is definitely a revenue-generating enterprise, helping the university manage its finances in an era of declining state aid. Online courses are taught by ASU professors, but much of the technical and administrative work that goes into managing ASU Online has been handed over to a private company, Pearson.
“In addition to limiting student choices, Goldrick-Rab said she believes it will leave them with a shoddier education. Recent research has suggested that online-only classes may leave low-income students at a disadvantage. Those are precisely the people, said Goldrick-Rab, who are mostly likely to enroll in ASU Online through the Starbucks program.
“These studies indicate that online education not only doesn’t work well for them, but can also propel them backwards,” she said. Students would also be expected to become full-time students, while still working an average 20 hours per week at Starbucks.”
And that is not all. The New York Times reports: that “students could have to pay thousands of dollars out of pocket, and wait months or years before being reimbursed.”
“That feature of the program was not mentioned in the Starbucks news release announcing the program, or on its publicly accessible web page about the program. But as word of it leaked out, educators and education experts took to the Internet to say that the benefit was less than it seemed, and might even frighten away some potential users.
“Given the upfront cost, it pushes a lot of risk onto the student,” Rachel Fishman, an education policy analyst at the New America Foundation, wrote in a blog post dissecting the program.”
I’m not a particular fan of online education, but I think some folks need to chill out. So what if this is a joint marketting campaign by two for-profit companies? Nothing has been taken from the Starbucks employees. If they choose not to accept this offer, they are no worse off than they were previously.
But ASU online gave a special contract rate to Starbucks.
So are they cost-shifting? Are they making up the difference by shifting costs to their non-Starbucks students?
Can we see the contract negotiations between ASU online and Starbucks, and the contract?
Does it matter? No one is forced to enroll. Again, I think it’s likely a garbage program, but given all the other bad stuff going on in the education world these days, I’m having a hard time mustering much outrage over something truly voluntary like this.
trying to respond to Jack Talbot but it won’t let me. Anyway, from my understanding, I think a lot of the outrage is coming from the fact that apparently Starbucks used to have a more generic scholarship program where you could go anywhere if you qualified. They seem to have butchered that program in favor of this one, which doesn’t appear to cost Starbucks anything.
This program replaced a tuition assistance program that was more general. I’d call that being worse off.
Exactly, how about a scholarship where you can take the money to any university you choose after getting accepted… which, if I were college age… would include ZERO on-line courses?
No, say Starbucks, we get to decide… it must be ASU On-line… and 100% of your courses MUST be on-line. Some folks at Starbucks are getting greased by ASU On-line with this deal. (greased = getting kickbacks)
Right now, it’s almost a given that anything Arne Duncan backs is a dirty, filthy scam.
All is not always as it seems. This is the story. It is more of an advertising stunt than a program with substance. Gone are the days of even a hint of integrity in corporate boardrooms.
Early in my career, professional companies would offer tuition reimbursement as a benefit. I earned a grad degree. One friend became a lawyer. Another a PhD in tech. In turn, we stayed and help build the organization. The Starbucks program is not even close to that.
http://www.dailyfinance.com/2014/06/19/starbucks-education-not-as-advertised/
“Nothing has been taken from the Starbucks employees.”
Yes, it has.
Starbucks employees previously had a tuition assistance program.
So, seems to my current employees are losing some choice, and getting pushed toward a lesser education.
Shame.
Also, ASU Online is partnered with Knewton and Pearson to do a total data capture in order to “personalize” the educational process. http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/01/25/arizona-st-and-knewtons-grand-experiment-adaptive-learning#sthash.114ryESQ.dpbs
So, these Starbucks employees will end up also losing their privacy as Knewton datamines them…
Knewton! The data ptracking people. Watch their youtube video if you want to know what Knewton is all about. I am not suprised at all you don’t have to dig too deep into this initiative before the word Pearson pops into the mix.
Here are just three neccesary cross checks when you shear of a new education program. 1) Does Arne Duncan endorse it 2) Can it be linked to Pearson 3) Can it be linked to Gates. If you can answer yes to any one of these things – warning, danger. If you can answer yes to all three – death knell.
Sorry for my spelling errors. I will blame my phone.
worth mentioning that Starbucks is contributing zero dollars towards this new “initiative,” which is simply a marketing ploy. they replaced what was a decent, if somewhat common, tuition assistance program for employees with a program that requires no contribution from the employer and limits the employee/student option for schools to one–ASU online.
why is it that conservatives and big business are all for consumer choice, unless they can find a way to corner the market and limit choice in favor of profit generation? what a sham.
WEll, Starbucks is a pretty liberal company, so I’m not sure what this has to do with ideology.
I guess “liberal” means any company that doesn’t poke its nose into your marital and reproductive business.
This disgusts me. It appears that Starbucks has no interest in helping its employees further their life goals. They have an interest in good PR, making backdoor deals with another for profit company (yes the online division of ASU). The worst part in reading this… how the heck is PEARSON involved??? There is only one reason – profit. What a disgrace. If Starbucks truly wants to better its employees, it would offer them a tuition reimbursement system (TAP) that pays on a per course basis provided the employee gets a passing grade and if the employee works more than 20 hours or for a certain number of years, they can increase the number of courses that can be taken. And best of all, the employee would choose where the course was taken. But clearly, Starbucks does not appear interesting in the employee!
I thought Arne was auditioning for Pearson all this time, now I find out he really wants to work at Starbucks.
LOL!
Why is the US Sec of Education endorsing a for-profit college?
His agency is tasked with regulating for-profit college and they have not done so.
State AG’s are doing all the regulation.
Are we supposed to believe the USDOE are planning on regulating the same industry they are promoting?
Also, if you talk to low wage employees, one of the reasons they can’t get an education at the local public community college is low wage employers won’t give them regular, predictable scheduling.
They can’t commit to a course because they have no idea when they have to work.
That’s why online ed is so attractive to low wage employers. They can continue with JIT (Just In Time) scheduling.
JIT came from manufacturing and it was intended to apply to inventory, not employees.
It’s just another example of the trend of treating people as commodities.
It works out great for the employer. They own 40 hours of employee’s week but they’re only paying for 20.
Manufacturers don’t even apply JIT to employees. Their workers get 40 and they have regular shifts.
One of my students brought this to my attention last week. Very excited about it. I told him to look much more closely before leaping.
Yet again, we seem to have something developing involving a two tiered system of education. What will the average employer think of a degree from this outfit? How well-rounded are their offerings in the first place? Or are we supposing that these folks are going to stay at Starbucks for the rest of their lives?
With employers and graduate schools, on-line colleges and on-line degrees already have the reputation as junk degrees… along the lines of the unaccredited diploma mills of yesterday.
Employers see an on-line degree on a resume and laugh to themselves, then shake their heads in pity for the chump who blew all his money for this worthless degree.
Graduate schools admissions officials see an on-line degree and do the same.
Also, apparently, the Starbucks college support is not available everywhere. I know it is not available in New York City.
Its PR, and for profit. Perhaps ASU can partner up with Starbucks and TFA and create a fast track teacher program for its coffee barristas.
Jack Talbot (@jackmtalbot)
June 23, 2014 at 9:54 am
Does it matter? No one is forced to enroll. Again, I think it’s likely a garbage program, but given all the other bad stuff going on in the education world these days, I’m having a hard time mustering much outrage over something truly voluntary like this.
Well, it does matter, because here’s the potential market effect.
ASU online offers an exclusive rate to Starbucks. But that’s a discount rate. Say it doesn’t actually cover costs but they hope to make that up in volume. What happens to the non-Starbucks rates (the rest of the students)? Are they subsidizing the Starbucks rate if the volume projection doesn’t pan out? Are they subsiding the Starbucks rate UNTIL the volume pans out?
I just keep going back to SYSTEMS in ed reform. How there’s no recognition that when you pull on one string in a system fabric, everything else moves. It’s sort of astonishing to me that they’re ignoring systems, because “systems thinking” is all the rage in the private sector. All of these Great Ideas are considered in isolation, as if there’s no possible downside to the rest of the system, but of course there is!
Say this takes off, and a national provider corners a big chunk of the public community college students. What happens to the public community college that is 20 miles from my office, employs local people and is a huge job training hub? Are they going to be driven out of business by a big national operator like ASU Online?
You raise two points. The first is that current ASU Online students might be subsidizing the Starbucks students. My response is twofold. First, this happens all the time. “Full-price” customers at stores subsidize those who use coupons or buy stuff on sale. In the higher-ed world, non-scholarship students help pay for the educations of scholarship students (those who are not on some sort of corporate- or endowment-funded scholarship, that is). If regular ASU Online students have to pay more to subsidize the Starbucks students, then maybe other educational options will be more price-competitive.
Your second concern is the continuing viability of community colleges as they compete with online programs. I understand what you’re saying, but my response is that it is up to the community colleges to convince potential students that local schools offer a better value compared to online options. This is a battle that is going to be waged, anyway, as most four-year colleges now offer online courses. This deal with Starbucks isn’t even a minor skirmish in that growing war.
Shame on ASU for allowing its name on this deal.
Reblogged this on jsheelmusic.
So how about some public college or university stepping up to the plate and making some offers to our young people through a business? This post sounds like sour grapes because the public sector didn’t think of it first.
From the article: “Although ASU is a PUBLIC university, its online wing is definitely a revenue-generating enterprise, helping the university manage its finances in an era of declining state aid.” (emphasis added)
A public university DID think of it first.
I think what I find most despicable is that it appears that Starbucks really is not offering its employees anything of proven value. A completely online degree apparently has limited usefulness. If Starbucks was using it to grow its next generation of management, they would have a bit ore credibility. At this stage it appears to be a publicity stunt that may suck in some people who really have no idea that a degree will most likely be of limited value. I had only heard good things about Starbucks before this. It’s a shame that they are willing to risk their reputation.
Pearson? Shocking. It shows up everywhere, the &$@# hydra. Shame on Starbucks.
I guess this is the definition of everyone being “college” (on-line) “& career (Starbucks, Walmart,etc.) ready.”
21st Century Skills, courtesy of corporate America.
Free ‘Online’ College Education. I thought it was University of Phoenix.
My daughter works for Starbucks and this new program does nothing for her by way of achieving her degree in teaching for which she has been attending a college for the past 2 years. This new program is not employee friendly and is not a true benefit. If anyone has ever taken an on-line course then they would understand the limits and the difficulties that come with it.
there is mention of the risk in this Starbucks offer: I see no more risk than a federal student loan really. At least they are trying…and online schools are what you make them…