If Andrew Hanawalt wanted to take online classes at Arizona State University, they wouldn’t cost him a thing.
He works at a Starbucks store in Washington, and when the company pledged last year to offer discounted tuition to students who enrolled at ASU Online, he was interested.
There was one problem: ASU Online doesn’t have his major. He’s studying simulation and digital entertainment at the University of Baltimore, and he decided he couldn’t transfer unless ASU Online offered the same.
Starbucks announced the partnership, called the Starbucks College Achievement Plan, in June 2014. The secretary of education, Arne Duncan, supported the plan and spoke at the announcement. The unusual arrangement drew intense news coverage, including a cover article in The Atlantic that wondered if it would become a model for helping more Americans reach the middle class.
Enrollment projections were high: Michael M. Crow, president of Arizona State, said he expected as many as 15,000 new students.
In the year since, nearly 3,700 Starbucks employees have enrolled in the program.
“Going back to school is a daunting task, even with tuition covered,” says Leah Lommel, chief operating officer at ASU Online. “It’s a big life change, and you have to be willing to put in time to go back to school. So I think it’s OK. I think we’re happy with how it’s grown.”
Mr. Hanawalt doesn’t know anyone in his Starbucks branch who is enrolled in the program, but he does know a few people who have expressed interest, and he thinks there may be someone at the Dupont Circle location, just down the street, who is enrolled. But the baristas there shake their heads. They don’t know anyone taking classes at ASU.
There are 10 Starbucks stores within a half-mile of The Chronicle’s offices, in Washington. With the exception of two, at which employees said they weren’t allowed to talk to the news media, nobody knew of anyone participating in the plan.
“We have a lot of students who have expressed interest in the program, and they just haven’t enrolled yet,” says Ms. Lommel.
The university hopes to enroll 5,000 Starbucks employees by the end of the year, she says. After a few years, Arizona State hopes that enrollment will level out between 10,000 and 15,000. The program is available to more than 100,000 employees in all.
Adrienne Gemperle, the company’s senior vice president for partner resources, leads the enrollment program. Whenever a new hire expresses interest in the program, she says, Starbucks follows up with a phone call within a couple of weeks. More than 60 percent of new hires say they’re interested in the program, she reports. “We have what I’d say is a very healthy interest.”
This year 12 employees graduated with credits from the program. Starbucks wants to see 25,000 employees graduate by 2025, estimating that the goal will cost it at least $250 million.
Expanding the Program
When Starbucks announced the partnership, the coffee-shop chain planned to reimburse juniors and seniors for the full cost of tuition not already covered by university scholarships and financial aid. Freshmen and sophomores would get smaller university discounts and no reimbursements from the company. Starbucks hoped that the bigger discounts later on would encourage students to get through their first two years. And once tuition was even lower, students would have an incentive to complete their degrees.
But this spring, Starbucks and ASU expanded the program. Now all students will get the higher discount on tuition, and Starbucks will reimburse them for the amount not covered by the discounts and federal financial aid. Six weeks after the end of the semester — as long as they maintain a passing grade-point average — they will receive the reimbursements in their paychecks.
Barbara Bowyer, a Starbucks store manager in Apache Junction, Ariz., takes the money from the reimbursements and applies it immediately toward her next semester. That accounts for the reimbursements’ not coming until the semester is completed. Using the program is doable, she says, “as long as you’re aware of how the process works.”
Ms. Bowyer, who stays on top of company news, is certainly aware of how the process works. She was sitting in her car around 3:15 a.m., waiting for her shift to start, when she learned of the partnership in The New York Times. “I almost had a heart attack in my car,” she says. “As soon as we walked into the store, before I started any of my opening duties, I immediately looked on our store portal, which is our information hub for all partners, and sure enough, there was an announcement.”
Since then she’s been participating in the program as well as encouraging other employees to enroll.
Not all Starbucks employees are as well informed, though, and some of those interviewed by The Chronicle didn’t know that the partnership existed.
The company disseminates information through as many channels as possible and to as many employees as possible, says Ms. Gemperle. But “with 125,000 of them in the U.S.,” she says, “this can be a challenge.”
Since the beginning of the partnership, Starbucks and Arizona State have tried to develop ways to support the employees after they’ve enrolled. Everyone in the program goes through an orientation just for Starbucks employees. They can connect with one another in online forums, and they work with enrollment coaches along with academic and financial-aid counselors.
Limited Offer
The company is also working to move employees participating in an older tuition-assistance program to the new plan, which can mean transferring institutions. Starbucks allowed students using the previous program to continue at their colleges for about a year, but now it’s asking those students to move to Arizona State.
Under the old plan, students didn’t get nearly as much financial support, but they weren’t limited to one college. For students like Mr. Hanawalt, in lesser-known disciplines, that is a problem.
Ms. Gemperle says Starbucks employees wanted access to a high-quality degree. At Arizona State, “the program offerings are so comprehensive, so we haven’t had much concern from partners over it being one institutional choice.”
The most popular programs among Starbucks employees this year are organizational leadership, psychology, healthy-lifestyle coaching, business communication, and English.
Ms. Bowyer is pursuing an interdisciplinary degree in women’s and gender studies and family and human development. She’s the first person in her family to attend college. For her, pursuing a degree is a personal challenge.
“Just knowing that I opened my book every night and I read that last chapter when I really wanted to go to bed,” she says, “it’s just so self-gratifying to know that I was empowered enough to do that.”
Correction (9/30/2015, 3:09 p.m.): Because of incorrect information provided by Arizona State University, this article originally misstated the number of Starbucks employees enrolled in the program. It is nearly 3,700, not 3,000. The article has been updated to reflect this correction.
