Starbucks to Offer Tuition for Veteran’s Families

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Jan 13, 5:22PM EST · Published Nov 10, 6:19AM EST

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Starbucks to Offer Tuition for Veteran’s Families — © courtesy of Starbucks Corp.

Veterans who work at Starbucks Corp. (NASDAQ: SBUX) just got a big perk. The company will pay for the college educations of their spouses and children. It is another step along the way as CEO Howard Schultz attempts to improve the lives of his lower level employees who are paid modest wages.

According to a press release:

Starbucks, which already offers a tuition-free education to eligible U.S. partners through the Starbucks College Achievement Plan, also announced today it is providing partners who are current or former members of the U.S. Armed Forces with an additional tuition-free education to extend to a spouse or child. More than 4,000 partners already take advantage of the Starbucks College Achievement Plan education benefit in partnership with Arizona State University (ASU) to earn a bachelor’s degree with 100 percent tuition coverage. ASU, with nearly 4,200 veterans and 1,000 military family members enrolled at the university, also demonstrates a strong commitment to veterans and military families through scholarships and the Pat Tillman Veterans Center and has been named one of the nation’s “Best for Vets” colleges by the Military Times.

Starbucks has hired 5,500 veteran and veteran spouses already, against a 2018 goal of 10,000.

As fast-food chains and major retailers fight the perception that at minimum wages their employees do not earn a living wage, most of these companies have battled to keep pay low. Pressure on them has caused Wal-Mart to increase pay, which it says hurt its earnings. It remains to be seen whether the Starbucks college benefit will hurt its earnings. In the meantime, Schultz has come up with an extraordinary benefit.

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.