Last week, EdSurge published “5 Years Since Starbucks Offered to Help Baristas Attend College, How Many Have Graduated?”, a report on the 5 year outcomes of the Starbucks College Achievement Plan, which has helped over 3,000 Starbucks employees earn their first bachelor’s degrees at minimal personal cost with a combination of scholarships and reimbursement funds. The partnership between Starbucks and Arizona State University (ASU) has fostered success for incumbent learners in large part because of their willingness to constantly learn and apply what works, alongside extending meaningful benefits to their employees. 

It prompted us to take a look back at a conversation we had in 2016 with ASU’s Phil Regier, where he serves as University Dean for Educational Initiatives and CEO and remember where they started. You can read that conversation here.

We’re excited about the Starbucks College Achievement Plan outcomes—and see it as evidence that models like this can be replicated and scaled. This news also affirms our view of the emerging future of learning. We see credentialing moving to a Weave, where learners can earn visible credentials for what they know, whether that learning happened through school, life, or work. The Weave graphic below details this concept, one that builds on the efforts of the ASU/Starbucks model and other employer efforts. 

Learn more about the Weave in our white paper, The Learner Revolution, available here.

The Weave