Bennett Carpenter and Laura Goldblatt and Lenora Hanson:

When Starbucks announced in June that the company would offer many of its employees a discounted online college education through Arizona State University, social theorists, business analysts, and education commentators quickly weighed in, often with compelling analyses of the relative (de)merits of digital and distance learning,the commodification of knowledge, and the future of higher ed. Such responses are right to point out the self-serving nature of the initiative and the ways that it furthers a two-tiered educational system.

Yet Starbucks’ actions collect a set of issues that have long dogged debates about the future of the university into a single body—that of the low-income-worker-as-student. As Svati Kirsten Narula points out, a student without financial aid or family resources would have to work 48 hours a week at minimum wage in order to cover the costs of tuition—a feat that, as she puts it, “would require superhuman strength, or maybe a time machine.” Low-income students thus often face a “choice” between accruing crippling financial debt or, as the Starbucks example illustrates, pursuing a second-tier education at a for-profit institution.* Meanwhile, the university contains a large number of low-income food and service workers whose labor ensures the smooth functioning of the educational system but who are themselves denied access to educational opportunities.