Tonight's guests are
Howard Schultz on The Daily Show and
Ta-Nehisi Coates on The Colbert Report.
Howard Schultz is chairman and CEO of Starbucks. He will be discussing higher education.
Starbucks Will Pay Full College Tuition For Thousands Of Its Workers
Starbucks announced late Sunday it will pay for thousands of its workers to take courses through Arizona State University to complete their bachelor's degree.
The Starbucks College Achievement plan will let full- and part-time workers choose from 40 undergraduate degree programs at ASU that will be delivered online. 135,000 employees are eligible.
This time of year, thousands of newly minted high school graduates are preparing to head to college in the fall. They seem like they are on the right track -- dreaming of the future even as they fret over their new roommates and class schedules.
But the reality is that only about half of them will graduate. Today, America's graduation rates significantly lag behind those of other developed countries. In the U.S. today, the biggest predictor of a student's success isn't their GPA, or their commitment, or their hours of hard work.
It's their parents' zip code
At Starbucks, approximately 72% of our 135,000 U.S. employees have not yet completed their degrees.6 Many of them are working students who represent, in a nutshell, the challenges of completing a degree for many young Americans today.
Starbucks has long believed that the best investment we can make is in our own people and their futures. Through this partnership with ASU, we'll be setting thousands of employees on the path to becoming some of the best-qualified workers in America. In addition to receiving an excellent education at ASU, they are gaining valuable experience in business, leadership and customer service, and showing their grit as working students. We want our partners to thrive wherever they go, and to become Starbucks best future leaders -- or customers, if their career takes them elsewhere.
Ta-Nehisi Coates is a writer, journalist and blogger. He has written on a number of topics, most recently igniting a debate on reparations.
The Case for Reparations
And so we must imagine a new country. Reparations—by which I mean the full acceptance of our collective biography and its consequences—is the price we must pay to see ourselves squarely. The recovering alcoholic may well have to live with his illness for the rest of his life. But at least he is not living a drunken lie. Reparations beckons us to reject the intoxication of hubris and see America as it is—the work of fallible humans.
Won’t reparations divide us? Not any more than we are already divided. The wealth gap merely puts a number on something we feel but cannot say—that American prosperity was ill-gotten and selective in its distribution. What is needed is an airing of family secrets, a settling with old ghosts. What is needed is a healing of the American psyche and the banishment of white guilt.
The Atlantic article is very comprehensive, unfortunately I did not have enough time to do anything but skim it.
This Week's Guests
THE DAILY SHOW
Tu 6/17: Daniel Schulman
We 6/18: Kevin Hart
Th 6/19: Jennifer Esposito
THE COLBERT REPORT
Tu 6/17: David Boies & Theodore B. Olson
We 6/18: Katty Kay & Claire Shipman
Th 6/19: Jay Carney
Monday, Monday, can't trust that day
I went to mow the lawn today and the 1 year old mower will not run properly so it will need to be repaired. I used the old mower bought in the 90's and the frame finally rusted through and the handle and rear wheel separated from the rest of the mower before I could finish the front lawn. At least the back is mowed. Monday's suck.