Cecilia Guante didn’t plan on stopping her schooling after she finished her associate degree.
But she ran out of money and had to shelve her dream to earn a bachelor’s degree in engineering.
“My loans were getting too big, and I don’t like owing money,” Guante said.
Fast forward six years and the Cranston resident is excitedly preparing to return to the classroom, having enrolled at the Community College of Rhode Island for the spring. She still doesn’t have enough money to pay for it herself, but she won’t have to.
Her employer, Amazon.com Inc., will foot the tuition as part of its Career Choice program, which named CCRI as a partnering educational institution in August. Under the agreement, the online retail giant will cover up to $5,200 of annual tuition costs for its full-time workers who want to earn new degrees or certificates (a smaller amount is available for part-time Amazon workers).
Amazon is hardly the first employer to incentivize workers to go back to school. But what makes this program different from nearly all of its competitors is that Amazon pays the costs upfront, not the tuition reimbursement that other companies may offer, according to Amy Kacerik, CCRI’s dean of enrollment management.
This was the key selling point for Guante, who works in Amazon’s Fall River fulfillment center. Even working two jobs, both at Amazon and Whole Foods Market IP Inc. – an Amazon subsidiary – store in Rhode Island, she didn’t have enough savings to cover the tuition, plus the cost of books and other expenses.
Indeed, many of the hourly wage workers who could benefit the most from higher education don’t have the money to pay out of pocket, even with the potential for reimbursement, says Shannon Gilkey, the R.I. postsecondary commissioner.
“To offer that money upfront is really a proactive way for employers to break down that barrier,” Gilkey said.
The commissioner is hopeful that Amazon’s leadership will spur other Rhode Island companies to follow suit with upfront, tuition payment programs. Although smaller businesses don’t have the same deep pockets as Amazon, the per-person cost to employers could be “pretty reasonable” after federal financial aid is applied, Gilkey says.
In Gilkey’s eyes, employers have a key role to play in helping meet the state benchmark of having 70% of workers with a postsecondary degree or equivalent credentials by 2030, up from the existing 53%.
But the Amazon-CCRI program has gotten off to a slow start. Guante is one of a small number of Amazon workers signed up to start taking classes at CCRI through the program, though the college has fielded more than 50 inquiries from potential students since the partnership was announced, Kacerik said.
What was now a trickle could become a flood after a new, $290 million Amazon warehouse opens in Johnston next year.
Amazon’s Johnston project had little bearing on its decision to partner with CCRI, according to company spokeswoman Caitlin McLaughlin. But the 1,500 new jobs the warehouse will bring to the Ocean State will more than double the company’s Rhode Island workforce, which stood at 1,000 people as of the fourth quarter of 2021, McLaughlin said.
While new to Rhode Island, Amazon’s Career Choice program was launched in 2012, with more than 80,000 workers taking classes at 250 educational institutions worldwide, according to McLaughlin. The company also expanded the program in January, with a $1.2 billion investment over the next three years that includes upfront tuition costs – previously it was a reimbursement model – new industry certifications, English language proficiency courses and high school completion options for some 750,000 workers.
The investment could help Amazon by preparing its workers for more technical jobs, but Amazon founder Jeff Bezos has also made it clear that he doesn’t mind losing workers to new jobs either. The program touts the opportunity for workers to pursue new careers that offer “in-demand jobs” such as transportation, information technology, health care and mechanical trades.
At Fall River-based Bristol Community College, which joined Amazon’s Career Choice program in 2020, health care and IT were the most popular degrees among Amazon students, according to spokesman Kevin Spirlet. However, just 15 Amazon workers had enrolled at Bristol since the partnership began, seven of whom have dropped out ahead of finishing a degree or certificate, Spirlet said.
He chalks up the low enrollment to the COVID-19 pandemic and expects the switch from reimbursement to upfront tuition coverage by Amazon will bring more workers to the college.
Guante wants to stay at Amazon – she liked it enough to justify the 30-minute drive from Cranston to Fall River. She hopes a new degree in cybersecurity or something computer-related will help her get a better, higher-paying position with the company.
“As soon as I found out I qualified, I was really excited,” she said. “I am thinking about my future.”
