Starbucks admits it's not contributing to scholarship fund

http://www.komonews.com/news/local/Starbucks-admits-its-not-contributing-to-hyped-scholarships-263837031.html

by dbbolton • 12 years ago

51 18 12 years ago

Artemis2• 12 years ago

What a shame. They just partnered with the Arizona State University to lower costs for their workers because they are underpaid.

Nice "contribution".

EpicEng• 12 years ago

Are they "underpaid"? What do you suggest a barista at Starbucks make? Regardless of the details, their workers get a discount on a college education. Seems like a nice perk for doing a job that the majority of people can do.

jeangenie• 12 years ago

What a joke.

coldcode• 12 years ago

Always easy to be generous if it's not your money. Usually I see this type of philanthropy on "American Greed".

mantraxC• 12 years ago

So we're gonna pile on Starbucks for negotiating lower tuition fees for their employees. What the hell is wrong with you people?

Consider that if they had no program at all, they wouldn't be getting the bad press right now. This article is asking us to punish Starbucks for doing something, because it doesn't conform to some childish stereotype for the proverbial rich giving some of their infinite money to the poor.

vtlynch• 12 years ago

Well the problem I see is that this could change the intent of Starbucks. Perhaps it wasent about them wanting to help employees, but instead was a mutually beneficial program for Starbucks and ASU. With online courses and MOOCs being seen as a new way to raise funds for schools, perhaps this is just a marketing tool for ASU to increase enrollment and attract attention (obviously this would happen for ASU either way, but if that was the goal that seems like a substantial change to the nature/effect of the program).

If Starbucks was making a bigger financial investment, it would indicate they were really doing this because they value the benefits of education enough to trade the financially tangible for the intangible.

With this clarification, that seemingly falls out the door. Im not sure how I feel about that. Its still a good program, because at the very least it is encouragement.

EDIT: So it seems this isnt the whole story. So its good to see Starbucks is indeed contributing, which one again, changes their intent.

jjoonathan• 12 years ago

No, we're going to pile on them for implying that they did something other than what they actually did and hoping it would slip under the radar.

Zigurd• 12 years ago

Would a reasonable person equate "scholarship fund" with "negotiated discount?"

The Starbucks program has a lot going for it. They didn't need to stretch the truth.

pdabbadabba3• 12 years ago

I agree that what Starbucks is doing is admirable whether or not they're putting up their own money.

But what irritates me, for one (and, I'd wager, other HNers), is that if this article is true, then the Starbucks PR blitz accompanying this decision has been, at best, badly misleading. I seem to recall, for example, Howard Schultz's making an appearance on the Daily Show the other day and telling the American public that paying tuition for all their workers was going to cost them millions upon millions of dollars. If that was a lie, it seems to me that's worthy of condemnation.

EDIT: This article is clickbait, and it fooled me. If you read to the end you'll see that Starbucks is, indeed, paying for the students' last two years of college:

The program would work much the same way for the junior and senior years, except that Starbucks would reimburse workers for their out of pocket costs, once they completed 21 credits.

russelluresti• 12 years ago

Finally, someone actually read the whole article.

brandonbloom• 12 years ago

I understand your perspective, but it should be pretty clear while people are going to "pile on Starbucks". If they had come out and said that they negotiated lower tuition fees for their employees, they'd have gotten a small PR bump and some deserved good will. However, they were intentionally misleading.

Furthermore, there's a pretty good chance that a large number of folks who got wind of the original PR blitz will never hear this follow-up story. Starbucks' PR team took an intentional calculated risk in running the story the way that they did. The savvy public has a moral obligation to make these sorts of scummy marketing bets produce a lower expected value.

fleitz• 12 years ago

Yeah the article seems stupid, while technically they aren't contributing to the scholarship they do pay tuition for the last 2 years.

I'm not the biggest fan of starbucks, mostly because their coffee doesn't taste that good, however, I don't why what they've done shouldn't be applauded.

It's kinda funny that I see more people upset about the business practices of Starbucks/Wal-Mart than Lockheed Martin.

pdabbadabba3• 12 years ago

As I've said elsewhere below, This article is clickbait. If you read to the end you'll see that Starbucks is, indeed, paying for the students' last two years of college:

The program would work much the same way for the junior and senior years, except that Starbucks would reimburse workers for their out of pocket costs, once they completed 21 credits.

The only point the article is making is that Starbucks is not paying into the scholarship fund that goes towards students' first two years of expenses. I do not see why this, standing alone, is a big deal. To be clear, Starbucks IS PAYING out of pocket for its students' tuition. Just not 100% of it. ASU is kicking in some money as well. I don't see that this is wildly inconsistent with Starbucks' PR message about the program.

This article is much more informative: http://www.politico.com/story/2014/06/starbucks-ceo-howard-s...

The partnership between Starbucks and ASU will provide full tuition reimbursement for any of the company’s 135,000 U.S. employees enrolled as juniors and seniors, each time they complete 21 credit hours. While the up-front costs could be problematic for some students, Starbucks says the 21-credit system is an incentive for completion.
ASU-funded scholarships will also help cover the cost. Juniors and seniors can get about $2,240 per 12-credit course load — undergraduate online programs cost between $480 and $543 per credit hour — and freshmen and sophomores can get $1,267 total.

jdotjdot• 12 years ago

This kind of clickbait that contains absolute falsehoods in the title really frustrates me. Not everyone is going to read the article, or read to the end even if they click it, and people are going to come away with a misrepresentation of the facts.

dbbolton2• 12 years ago

The issue is that it was initially presented as an "up front" scholarship, but it is in fact a reimbursement. The difference is significant. Even the quote from your preferred article mentions that "up-front costs could be problematic for some students".

If you get a $10,000 scholarship, enroll, then decide somewhere along the line that your workload is too much and you have to withdraw, you aren't out $10,000.

With this program, if you don't hit the 21 credit mark, you are screwed.

No one is arguing that Starbucks isn't paying for school. The argument is that they were misleading about how they are paying for it.

Dylan16807• 12 years ago

Discouraging withdrawal could be argued to be the point, and the amount of courses you would withdraw from at once should be much less than 21 credits. Assuming you still get 21 hours of money if you complete 21 out of 29 credit hours, I don't see it as a major problem.

And this is for the Junior and Senior classes. You should already know what workload you can handle by then.

pdabbadabba3• 12 years ago

Maybe this is AN issue, but this is certainly not the issue highlighted by the komonews.com article. The point of the article is

It turns out Starbucks isn't contributing any upfront scholarship money to an online college degree program it introduced this week.

This is technically true, but readily misleads the reader into thinking that Starbucks is not contributing any money at all. (If you disagree, I suggest scrolling down a bit in this thread to see the reactions of your fellow HNers.) In fact, Starbucks will reimburse workers for the cost of their second two years of college--ASU and the federal government (essentially) will pay for the first two. The article does also mention this, but buries it more than halfway down.

Starbucks admits it's not contributing to scholarship fund

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