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Walmart Offers To Foot College Tuition Bills for US Employees (bloomberg.com)
Walmart will begin offering to subsidize college tuition for its 1.5 million workers in the United States, joining a growing list of companies that are helping employees pay for higher education as a perk in a tight labor market. From a report: The retailer's 1.5 million employees can now pursue associate's or bachelor's degrees in business or supply-chain management at three nonprofit schools for $1 a day, according to a statement Wednesday. Walmart will subsidize tuition, books and fees and provide support with the application and enrollment processes. As many as 68,000 employees might sign up, Walmart executives estimated. "Many of our associates don't have the opportunity to complete a degree," said Drew Holler, Walmart's U.S. vice president of people innovation, in an interview. "We felt strongly that this is something that would improve their lives and help us run a better business." The tuition program -- offered to part-time staff as well as full-timers -- is the latest move by Walmart to improve employee retention and engagement. A handful of other companies, including Starbucks and Amazon, also offer tuition support.
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How about paying a livable wage.
The catch is that you can only apply to one of three schools.
Which will be ok for some with the online classes, but most prolly won't be able to do it with a crappy connection.
The millennial that doesn't like most of the stuff designed for millennials.
Will they also allow employees the time to actually take advantage of the benefit? Do only full-time employees qualify, or can part-timers take advantage as well?
it was basically an backhanded way to get me into a training program for the job. The way it worked they would send me to a specialized program for some skill they wanted me to have (that had no value outside of their business). If I dropped out I was on the hook for tuition. Also I had to pay out of pocket and wait for reimbursement, which wasn't paid out until 6 months after I graduated.
Fortunately I got out before they foisted it on me. The way it was structured I was basically paying for required training and then if they made enough money off me in 6 months I'd get it back. All the risk was on me. I'm not saying this is what it is, but it sure looks like it.
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That's nice, Walmart, but I think what people want is to not have both mom and dad working 60 hour work weeks yet still be living paycheck-to-paycheck.
Considering how much of their work day their associates spend standing up or walking around? Quite a few. B-)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Until participants get fired for having restricted availability due to the classes they're now taking.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
That makes it much cheaper to offer than a living wage!
Sounds to me, as well that;
- This is NOT a serfdom scam (like some tech companies that send you to boot camp and then charge you for it if you quit within a rather long time.0
- The skills and certs are likely to be useful for seeking jobs - and at higher levels - at other companies both in the same industry (which is where their people are likely to work even if they DO go to another company) and in business in general.
- Their training their people with skills suitable for higher ranking, and higher paid, positions in their own company. To get that to pay off (beyond job satsifaction and retention) they'd have to be promoting from within, rather than hiring middle-to-upper management from without while leaving the rank-and-file stuck in a dead-end job.
Looks like a good deal for all concerned.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
The problem with government garneted student loans for just about any degree (Basket weaving, Women's Studies etc) is clear. However, I don't see where Wal-Mart is going to contribute to the high cost of education with this program. Why?
First, this isn't a loan guarantee, it's tuition assistance.
Second, it's only for areas of study that Wal-Mart finds valuable and one would assume other companies would as well.
Finally, only about a million employees of Wal-Mart are eligible and only a fraction of those will take advantage. If 5% take Wal-Mart up on this offer, it's only going to be 50K students, and I doubt they'd see that many. Hardly enough to drive the market of 20.4 Million students.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
The catch is that you can only apply to one of three schools.
Oh, you mean so:
- They go to schools that the company know do a good job of teaching the skills they company needs for a decent price.
- They don't go to one of the scam "school" operations that rip you off for big bucks and don't teach you squat.
- They don't go to an accredited school that teaches left-wing politics, socialist "economics" theories, and that business (especially Walmart) is the enemy - rather than something you need to do and do well if you want to get ahead in one.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Business majors? Think again. Those are 'certificates of attendance', at best.
Standard drunken frat boy degree, dime a dozen, each dumber than the last.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
University education has become quite dysfunctional. There're large chunks of it that server little in the way of educational value and too many students who are either incapable of even those low bars or have no real interest in attending. It's warped into a perverse kind of monster that is incentivized to attract as many students as possible to get their loan money with no real concern for the quality of education. This has led to an adult daycare type of situation where schools will spend large sums of money on student centers, athletics, and anything else that will attract more students. All manner of useless degrees are offered, because the university doesn't care if it does students no good as long as it attracts students and their tuition payments. Worse (or better if you're the college) yet, if you give a student a useless degree, they'll eventually figure out they need to come back for even more college at some point in the future.
We've done today's youth a massive disservice by telling them that they need a college education. If you're going to work retail for the rest of your life, a college education is useless. Similarly, too many kids overlook trade schools at the expense of chasing a four year degree. There are all together too many young people entering college at 18 that don't have any idea what they want to do with their life yet and invariable fail or drop out due to disinterest or confusion. We need to tell people that there's no shame in getting a minimum wage job and figuring out how to be an adult and what you want to do with your life before going to school. I think that message would prevent a large part of the problem.
Removing government backed loans would probably fix the other half. When banks are on the hook, the actuaries will crunch the numbers and quickly realize that loaning $100,000 to someone for a degree in underwater basket weaving is a good investment. If rich kids want to get useless degrees on mommy and daddy's dime, that's their own business, but letting an 18 year old run up six figure debts that they can't hope to repay is just irresponsible on society's part.
There is no better test for "not college bound" than becoming a Wal-Mart employee.
Why?
If one is wanting to go to school, why is a Wal-Mart job somehow crosswise to that goal?
My son has a $10/hour job he's held for two years and is starting college in the fall. Where I don't expect him to work full time and be a full time student to pay his way given I have the means, he *could* easily attend college and pay for it himself working part time, at least for the first two years at the community college.
If he can do it, I'm sure working at Wal-Mart wouldn't be that different.
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Michael Larson became an assistant manage at Walmart
The summary mentions that these degrees are in "business or supply chain management", and only available through 3 institutions. I'll give them credit for not going to ITT Tech or U of Phoenix or something...that's a plus. But, does the world need any more generic business students? Will Walmart even need them as time goes by?
Even when I graduated a million years ago, the generic business, psychology, communications, etc. students were basically attending class between parties and most just squeaked by. With the increase in students being pushed into college I can't imagine this has changed at all. In the old days when a degree was a guaranteed path to a job, the idea was that if you didn't know what you wanted to do, major in business and some company would find some random job for you. Those random jobs are disappearing, and low-margin employers like Walmart and Amazon are going to be the first to eliminate people wherever they can.
Walmart is at least offering something...they probably cut some sweet deal with the 3 universities to boost their enrollment numbers and got a massive tuition discount, and it's a direct expense that they don't pay tax on. But, limiting where and what can be studied makes this seem like a serfdom arrangement, kind of like the coder bootcamps that take people in and funnel them off to startups desperate for more JavaScript monkeys willing to work 100 hour weeks.
Why restrict the choice to second-tier "adult ed" schools in three states? This means that most people will be forced to take the classes online, which denies a lot of opportunities. In a traditional class, you have contact with professors and other students and hear of research opportunities, etc. Of course, that's what Wal*Mart doesn't want -- they don't want students to develop connections outside the company. Otherwise, the students can just up and leave after they have their degree.
The schools are second-tier "adult ed" schools in three states -- so majority of courses taken will be online. No opportunity for networking or making connections. Why do you assume that Wal*Mart employees would want to work in the same industry all of their careers?
"We need to tell people that there's no shame in getting a minimum wage job and figuring out how to be an adult and what you want to do with your life before going to school. I think that message would prevent a large part of the problem. "
I'm not so sure about that. Certainly back when I went, if you didn't apply in your senior year of high school you missed out on certain opportunities. Even one year off unless you were in community college put you in the "non-traditional" crowd and effectively limited your choices of schools that would accept you.
You're not wrong; there's a lot of students who really would benefit. But, there's so much pressure, at least among students/parents that care about such things, to have students follow the traditional path. It's all about what opportunities you have...if you can get into an Ivy League school even by the skin of your teeth, there are jobs available to you that other students can't get and connections other students won't have. If you go the state school route like I did you have to work harder to find work and won't have some of the exceedingly lucrative stuff like banking and management consulting available to you.
Only because it's hard to find the time to better yourself while working subsistence wages. Believe me -- probably 95% of Wal*Mart employees want the hell out of working for that crappy company.
About the "training" aspect -- I'd agree if this were the 50s or 60s and this was a massive lifelong employer like IBM, AT&T, General Motors, etc. Walmart isn't that kind of employer; if they could run their stores with zero employees they would because their margin is so low. So, what incentive do they have to train store managers? I'd think they and other retailers would be figuring out how to replace people as quickly as possible, and certainly not be interested in their career development.
The days where you could start at a big employer out of high school, show some initiative and get chosen for a training program/college tuition waiver are over. Walmart doesn't have an incentive to invest in people the same way a 1960s IBM might because you don't need specialized knowledge to run a retail store.
Fair point. Most companies/agencies I've worked for typically want to own you for the duration of your education + 1/2 years. It's a contract between employee and employer, breach typically means the employee must pay back the past 1-2 years of tuition paid for by the employer.
I would assume Wal-Mart would be similar. Reimbursement for full-time school up to N dollars, half-time up to N/2 dollars, per year. Should the employee quit or otherwise stop working for Wal-Mart, I'm sure WM will recoup at least N dollars in some way.
My wife worked at Wal-Mart when she was in college. She now has her CPA, a Bachelor's in Economics, and a Master's in Accounting.
You're a fucking moron.
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Fiscally conservative?
You mean one that supports tax cuts while wanting to pay to revamp out military's murder devices and technologies?
A fiscally conservative president would tell the military industrial complex to go bugger itself.
Maybe some smart but poor kids will now choose to work at WalMart for a few years for the opportunity to attend college without accruing crushing debt.
Only I can judge you.
I'm not so sure about that. Certainly back when I went, if you didn't apply in your senior year of high school you missed out on certain opportunities. Even one year off unless you were in community college put you in the "non-traditional" crowd and effectively limited your choices of schools that would accept you.
It doesn't surprise me that schools would attempt to push people towards a path that results in the most money for the school even if it is a disservice to the individuals involved.
In a perfect world where everyone knew what they wanted to do with their life at 18 and was mature enough to take advantage of all of the opportunities they have with regards to education, I'd agree with you completely. However, we know that isn't the case from the data: Only 19% graduate on time.. Worse still 30% will not finish at all essentially dropping or failing out. That is not good and we as a society need to be aware that what we might want and what happens in the real world are two very different things. Kicking and screaming at reality are unlikely to yield different results.
Just like student loans drove tuitions higher. You can subsidize something on the demand side, or the supply side.
If you subsidize on the demand side, you lower the cost to buyers while keeping the price to sellers the same. Someone in the middle (government, scholarship fund, Walmart, etc) makes up the difference. The lower cost to buyers increases demand. If the product is a commodity (all versions of the product are more or less identical and interchangeable, e.g. lettuce, or oil), this increased demand spurs producers to increase production so they can sell more. Supply increases, and prices stabilize again close to what they were at before the subsidy, except now you have more supply.
That doesn't happen with education because it's not a commodity. People want to go to ivy league schools. These schools then experience increased demand without any incentive to increase supply. So they just ratchet up the price of tuition to soak up the extra money the subsidy enables people to pay them. The end result is after several decades, all you've accomplished is the right hand stealing from the left. People who qualify for the subsidy are able to go to school, at the expense of some people who don't qualify for the subsidy being unable to afford to go. The net number of students doesn't increase or increases very little. And the price of tuition increases by roughly the amount of the subsidy per student.
If you subsidize on the supply side, you're directly encouraging an increase in supply. Ivy league schools keep their tuition the same, but your subsidy allows the construction of more schools (e.g. State universities). The increased competition from having more schools drives them to figure out ways to cut expenses, and lower their tuition to attract more students.
Walmart would accomplish a lot more if they instead used this money for a fund to help construct more schools.
I see The Enlightenment has passed you by.
But tuition reimbursement?
True about business majors -- business education is responsible for a lot of the lack of scruples and short-sightedness seen in US business.
Not sure if bachelor's degrees are watered-down and grade-inflated. In popular disciplines -- i.e. biochem to pre-med, they tend to want to keep the averages at a C+ or so to weed out the people who won't be able to hack it in upper-level classes.
Same goes for CS, I'd assume.
or do you work for one and wrote it yourself? This is one of their talking points. It's always the same: We can't raise your pay because somebody else will just take it away if we do. Maybe it's the gov't. Maybe it's the businesses you shop at (funny that for Walmart employees).
It's a lie. No, employees making $15/hr don't pay 40% of their income in taxes. Even at $15/hr (the living wage as of 2018, though it's going to have to be raised soon) you pay about 15-20%. Less if you have kids. I know, I made that kind of money for years before getting a better job.
Tuition assistance is fine and dandy, but it's no substitute for a living wage. People need to live while they go to school, and it's unreasonable to expect people who couldn't make it through college in their teens & 20s to do it while working for a living in their 30s, 40s or 50s. Sure, some people have done it but they're outliers. You're being disingenuous at best and a right wing, anti-worker shill at worst.
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Like many other such employers, they have a habit of only offering less than 30 hours a week employment per employee so as to not have to pay full benefits. Thus pushing people into multiple jobs, multiple commutes per day, and juggling hours. Now with added study hours on top? There's only so many hours in a week.
This. Also, look at this from TFA:
OUR Walmart, an activist group, called the plan a “step forward” in a statement, but questioned how many employees would be able take advantage of it because of the company’s scheduling system, which might make it difficult to juggle work and college.
“As soon as you tell Walmart you’re going to school, you lose access to a full-time schedule,” Andrea Dehlendorf, co-executive director of OUR Walmart, said in an interview after the company’s shareholder meeting Wednesday.
I don't shop at Walmart. I confess, when I saw this headline, I almost reconsidered. Almost.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
Instead of footing the bill for more useless college degrees, why not just pay the employees a livable wage?
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Trump isn't even slightly fiscally conservative. He's even less responsible than the two presidents that came before him.
we need more trades / apprenticeships tracks in tech and need to stop the idea the schools saying that not going to college is bad.
plumbers and electricians don't need 4 years of pure classroom. and if they do say it better for them to get experience and they say learns skills on how to run there own shop.
In IT / tech there are people who go to 4 years pure classroom that can be clueless. And yet we have bootcamps / tech schools (2-4 years over kill but needed to be roped in the college system)