free* <online> college... Still, it sounds like a noble effort.

>The program is open to any of the company’s 135,000 United States employees, provided they work at least 20 hours a week and have the grades and test scores to gain admission to Arizona State. For a barista with at least two years of college credit, the company will pay full tuition; for those with fewer credits it will pay part of the cost, but even for many of them, courses will be free, with government and university aid.

Then it's a noble experiment on two different planes: Offering education to their workforce and testing whether online education can scale up to serve an SBUX-sized workforce. Good on 'em.

Its not real education unless you sit through 45 minutes of an instrctor reading you powerpoint slides from the book in person.

they should just learn to code! In fact, let them check out http://coderin90.com