Walmart To Cover 100% Of College Tuition And Books For Associates

Walmart Inc. WMT has announced it will pay 100% of college tuition and books for the part-time and full-time associates in its Walmart and Sam’s Clubs stores.

What Happened: This initiative is part of its Live Better U (LBU) education program, which previously charged associates a $1 a day fee to participate. In a press statement, the company said the fee was being eliminated on Aug. 16 and added it was “committing to invest nearly $1 billion over the next five years in career-driven training and development.”

“We are creating a path of opportunity for our associates to grow their careers at Walmart, so they can continue to build better lives for themselves and their families,” said Lorraine Stomski, senior vice president of learning and leadership at Walmart. “This investment is another way we can support our associates to pursue their passion and purpose while removing the barriers that too often keep adult working learners from obtaining degrees.”

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What Else Happened: There is a caveat to this arrangement: Participants need to choose from a limited selection of schools for their studies.

With its new announcement, Walmart added four new schools to the LBU program: Johnson & Wales University, the University of Arizona, the University of Denver and Pathstream.

The schools that were already participating in the LBU program are Brandman University, Penn Foster, Purdue University Global, Southern New Hampshire University, Wilmington University and Voxy EnGen.

Walmart stated that more than 52,000 associates have participated in the program since its launch in 2018 and 8,000 have already graduated, with nearly 28,000 associates active in a LBU program this summer.

See also: How to Buy Walmart Stock

Photo: Jared C. Benedict / Wikimedia Commons.