Career Spotlight: Sending employees back to school
Come September, many of America's younger workers will say goodbye to summer jobs or internships and head back to the classroom. But there could be good reason to keep that day job–and it's not just the paycheck. More than 70 percent of companies now offer educational assistance to their employees, which can include everything from workshops at a local college to a graduate degree.
Many Fortune 500 firms have helped career employees pay for M.B.A.'s, for instance, but these days even new hires can get generous tuition assistance. Jennifer Panaro, a marketing manager for Pitney Bowes in Stamford, Conn., joined the mail service and products company right out of college in 1999, hoping to take quick advantage of its educational assistance program. Three years later she graduated from Fairfield University with an M.B.A.–and she's been promoted twice. "You have to have the job experience and the credibility, but it's nice to throw in, 'Oh, she has an M.B.A.,' " says Panaro, who estimates that the company spent between $50,000 and $60,000 for her education.
Pitney Bowes is currently helping to pay tuition for about 200 employees in graduate programs and more than 800 working for undergraduate degrees. Overall it spends about $4 million a year on educational expenses–money well spent, it says, since picking up the tuition bill is one way to recruit and develop a talented workforce. "If I'm taking courses in a field that I can apply to my work, then I'm going to bring back something more to the table," says Bruce Gonatuti, vice president of workforce relations at Pitney Bowes.
Not all companies are so generous, and larger companies tend to offer better deals. Among companies with fewer than 100 employees, only 40 percent paid for college and graduate-level coursework, according to a recent survey by the Society for Human Resource Management. About 70 percent of medium-sized companies, with between 100 and 499 employees, chipped in for tuition, and among companies with 500 or more employees, 80 percent did.
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