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Comment by jeremyarussell | Hacker News Reader

I suppose it's better than nothing, the full time thing is the kicker, I'd say a year and part time should suffice to weed out people that are just getting hired for college money. Plus, if they quit before the schooling is up they wouldn't keep getting tuition.

On a side note, does anyone know of other workplaces that offer a tuition payment program? --- A google search later and I actually find this site http://www.fatwallet.com/forums/finance/746434/

I does look like Amazon isn't really doing that much of an amazing thing here though.

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Unfortunately, most companies don't seem to publish it, but you can find out through HR. I worked at a company (now Lonza), and they had 100% tuition reimbursement with no caps. I did my entire Master's degree at their expense (ECE), and I am familiar with one full-time warehouse employee who started moving boxes and ended up leaving after he had enough education to become an actuary! Of course, your reimbursement was contingent on maintaining at least a B in each course, which I think is completely fair.

Yet, for some reason, this company has never made it in the news for its tuition programs, but Amazon offers basically nothing in comparison and somehow they are worth mentioning.

Well, Amazon is making news because we can naively assume by looking at a summary that they're doing it the same way they make money — by working in volume. We can estimate pretty quickly how many people work in Amazon's warehouses, at something in the neighborhood of "an awful lot of people". So it sounds good at a glance. Few people will even notice the details that whittle away the eligible base down to around 0.

If they were giving a paltry reimbursement to everyone who worked in an Amazon warehouse while taking classes, that would add up to something much more significant than the big companies I've worked for that employed people who already felt set-for-life and who could've gotten an advanced degree on the company dime if they felt like it, for example.

yes. almost every employer offers some degree of tuition reimbursement because, as far as I understand, they can get a tax deduction for the money they pay to their employees under such a program. most places will offer around $5000 a year, as the federal cap (the last time I looked) for reimbursement was $5250.

Is it actually common for hourly staff? I know it's common for tech employees, but I didn't realize it was also common for warehouse staff, janitors, etc. to get tuition reimbursement.

It's been available at companies such as UPS for a while: https://ups.managehr.com/Benefits.htm

I'm not sure if it's the norm.

I worked at a FedEx Kinkos part-time for a few months and was eligible. I think it kicked in after less than 6 months.

I have never seen a restriction on the class (exempt/non-exempt) of employee. The only restriction I remember seeing for tuition reimbursement at the companies I've worked at was that you must be full time and the coursework must somehow be related to what the company does. That last bit is typically only there to discourage "underwater basketweaving" courses.

The most common degrees people go for seem to be general Business, Marketing, Accounting, and then the more specialized tech. degrees. I'm amazed at the number of CS people I come across who have "silent" MBA's. At my last job I knew at least one person who joined with a high school diploma and eventually had an MSEE all paid for by the company.

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