Adidas offers student loan assistance to employees – Portland Business Journal (bizjournals.com)
Portland Business Journal reporter Demi Lawrence delivered an important article on adidas’ plan to support their employees who have student loans. “Through Adidas’ student loan support program, eligible employees can receive $100 per month toward their student loans, up to $1,200 per year.” Click through to read the details. While the internet is abuzz about the Three Stripes finally selling the Yeezy inventory, adidas isn’t amplifying this information at all. There aren’t any celebratory posts where the brand is patting itself on the back, so I’m patting them on the back.
My son is enrolled at an adidas sponsored college, the University of Miami. Tuition is right around 88,000 a year. He has a full scholarship and is entering his junior year, but the schollie doesn’t cover room and board. We pay about 7,000 dollars a month for his other expenses. That’s times 8 months or 56,000 dollars. He’s enrolled in a prestigious program and there isn’t any way we would allow him to miss out an education so we are paying his way. We have student loans and there isn’t any way in the world we were going to allow our son to walk into the world with the weight of 200,000 in student loans. The world is missing out on some amazing people in the job field because graduates are leaving school and a year later they are working to pay those loans off. The easy discussion is to say a person should attend a community college and a state school, or that a person should learn a trade. Unfortunately, this removes the workforce needed to keep businesses afloat. When the hiring pool diminishes, unemployment sits on the economy like a sumo wrestler landing on a flyweight boxer. No matter the amount of punching you can’t strengthen the economy on trade schools alone. An educated populace empowers the country.
While it seems that a 1200 dollar stipend per year isn’t much, if an employee is signed up for Income Based Repayment when student loans begin again, their bill could be right at 100 dollars a month. More important, they could match the payment and knock out 2400 dollars a year. This is a beautiful and important gesture. There are many companies that offer tuition reimbursement, but for full time adidas employees this is an acknowledgement of being seen. Kudos adidas.
