What it had to solve
In 2014 Starbucks had about 135,000 U.S. employees working 20+ hours a week; only around a quarter held college degrees, while 70 percent were enrolled in college or hoped to be. Existing employer tuition programs typically capped support near $5,250 a year, demanded job-related majors, or required years of service after graduation.
The idea
Pay hourly coffee workers' way through an online bachelor's degree — open to every 20-hour-a-week employee, in 40+ majors, with no obligation to stay.
How it works
On June 16, 2014, Schultz announced the Starbucks College Achievement Plan with Arizona State University: full tuition reimbursement for juniors and seniors and partial for freshmen and sophomores across ASU's 40-plus online degree programs, each student paired with a dedicated enrollment coach, financial-aid counselor and academic advisor. Graduates owed Starbucks nothing.
What it did
The plan reset expectations for hourly retail benefits and was praised from President Obama down — while education critics flagged a catch buried in the design: reimbursement only kicked in after 21 credits, leaving roughly two semesters of cost and risk with the worker.
Background
Most corporate tuition programs were built to bind workers: small annual caps, job-related majors only, clawbacks if you left. Starbucks' 2014 College Achievement Plan inverted the design — any U.S. partner working 20 or more hours a week could pursue any of 40-plus online bachelor's degrees at Arizona State University, and no one had to stay a day past graduation.
The original structure reimbursed tuition in full for the final two years and partially for the first two, with the refund arriving only after each 21-credit block. Critics like UW-Madison's Sara Goldrick-Rab called the ASU-exclusive setup 'extremely problematic' and noted the upfront-cost risk sat on low-income students; Vox argued the real beneficiary was the college dropout ready to try again.
Even skeptics conceded nothing else in retail or food service came close. The plan made Starbucks the reference point whenever companies talked about educating hourly workers — and it kept improving.
Why it lands
Eligibility at 20 hours a week swept in the part-time barista workforce that benefits usually exclude.
Removing any post-graduation service requirement turned a perk into a credible promise.
The ASU partnership gave scale: one online university could absorb tens of thousands of working students.
Per-student coaches and advisors attacked the real dropout risk — juggling shifts and study — not just the tuition bill.
What you can take
A benefit that still pays off if the employee leaves buys more loyalty than one with handcuffs — trust itself is the retention tool.
Since then
Starbucks kept widening the plan. By 2025 it covered 100 percent of tuition upfront rather than by reimbursement, and in a single week in May 2025 more than 1,100 partners graduated through SCAP. Starbucks reports many graduates choose to stay anyway — the outcome the no-strings design was betting on.
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