Amazon announced today that it would fully fund the college education for over 750,000 of its frontline workers in the United States, including the cost of classes, books, and fees.
“Amazon is now the largest job creator in the U.S., and we know that investing in free skills training for our teams can have a huge impact for hundreds of thousands of families across the country,” Amazon Worldwide Consumer CEO Dave Clark said. “We launched Career Choice almost 10 years ago to help remove the biggest barriers to continuing education—time and money—and we are now expanding it even further to pay full tuition and add several new fields of study.”
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Amazon says the total of this investment will reach $1.2 billion by 2025, and it will also build over 110 on-site classrooms for employees in its fulfillment centers across 37 states. To date, over 50,000 Amazon employees around the world have already participated in the Career Choice program, which also funds high school diplomas, GEDs, and English as a Second Language (ESL) proficiency certifications.
The fully-funded college tuition program kicks off in January 2022 and, going forward, Amazon will pay employees’ tuition and fees directly instead of reimbursing them after they’ve completed coursework, easing the financial burden. All hourly employees with just three months of employment are eligible, and employees will have access to funds for education annually as long as they remain at the company. There is no limit to the number of years they can benefit, the company adds.