Starbucks admits it's not contributing to scholarship fund

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.