Scholarship Programs Mean Happier Employees and Higher Education

Updated April 2020

In an increasingly competitive global marketplace, companies of every size are striving to stand out from the crowd. Recruiting and retaining a great workforce is a full-time job (and then some), and it’s no longer enough just to offer a competitive salary and a solid health plan. Today’s most talented employees grew up in a world of previously unheard-of amenities, from flexible hours to on-site lap pools to daily massage-therapist visits. In short, they’ve come to expect more.

And no matter what your company’s HR budget, it’s possible to offer more by featuring a scholarship program, tuition assistance program or other education-related benefit. Providing higher education assistance is an easy way to invest in your workforce. By funding employee and dependent education, you’re showing your staff that you care about their personal advancement and their family’s budget; you’re also helping ensure that you’ve got employees with the latest skills and the sharpest thinking.

Employee scholarship programs are especially important in the face of today’s changing higher-ed landscape. “Non-traditional students”—those who take time off after high school or balance college with full-time work—are becoming a bigger and bigger part of the college world: According to USA Today in 2018, “people over 25 or those with children are enrolling in college classes — so many that nearly 74 percent of American undergraduate students are “nontraditional.”

In other words, more and more members of the workforce are going to school, as well—and they’re exactly the kind of motivated, self-starting employees that you’ll want to recruit and retain. With the hiring landscape continuing to be a job seeker’s market with unemployment hovering at 3.6% to start 2020, retaining your top talent is critical to your organization’s success and growth.

Higher education benefits can be the key to doing so. In fact, the Working Learner Index developed by Bright Horizons states that, of their respondents, “82% said their continued education, made possible by an employer’s tuition reimbursement program, made them more effective employees” and “41% of Gen Z employees believe their tuition reimbursement program is the single best benefit offered by their employer.”

If you’re ready to start a scholarship or tuition assistance program, or you’re looking to expand your company’s current offering, you’ve got some options. The Wall Street Journal laid out a number of possibilities for individual, corporate and foundation funders, with a strong emphasis on outsourcing scholarship program management rather than trying to do so in-house. Some options include:

• • Providing scholarships through a community foundation: This option allows a donor to fund scholarships of just about any amount and criteria. This option is ideal for individuals or small, community-focused businesses.
  • Establishing a standalone foundation: While this offers a great deal of control over spending and scholarship selection, it can also take a lot of time to manage, and isn’t as tax-friendly as other options.
  • Creating an endowment or named scholarship with a college: Making a donation to a school or their scholarship foundation means outsourcing award selection and disbursement to the experts—but it also means that only students at the school benefit, and not necessarily your employees.
  • Developing a scholarship program with a nonprofit administrator: A number of nonprofits across the nation provide scholarship and tuition program outsourcing; Scholarship America is the largest, with more than 1,000 clients around the world. Outsourcing your scholarship program helps your HR department save time and money, while you retain the ability to set up award criteria, scholarship amounts and other details.

Whatever option works best for you, your company and your financial situation, the fact is that simply creating an education assistance program for employees and dependents will benefit you from day one. 

As the lines between college students and the professional workforce become more and more blurred—and the competition for great employees gets more and more heated—it’s imperative for both your company and the country to support educational development, and creating a scholarship program is one of the easiest ways to do so.

Interested in offering a tuition reimbursement or tuition assistance program but don’t know how to get started? Visit our tuition assistance page for more information or contact us directly.