The New York Times の記事からです。スターバックスが従業員に無償でオンラインの大学教育を提供する、という素晴らしいニュースに感銘を受けました。
アメリカでは大学教育の授業料が高いことが問題視され、オバマ大統領もそれに積極的に取り組んでおられますが、スターバックスは、会社として従業員に社会的な貢献を果たすことになります！資格があるのは13万人、そして学士号取得にかかる授業料は一人当たり約600万円ということです。
太字の部分だけ訳をつけました。日本語の部分だけ読んでも大筋がとれます。後半は、このプログラムに希望の光を見る従業員の紹介です。
TOEFLや大学留学に関係する単語もたくさん使われている記事です。
＜記事全文＞
Starbucks will provide a free online college education to thousands of its workers, without requiring that they remain with the company, through an unusual arrangement with Arizona State University, the company and the university will announce on Monday.
スターバックスが、アリゾナ州立大学との異例の提携により何千人もの従業員に無料のオンライン大学教育を提供することになる。それにより従業員が会社に残る必要はない。
The program is open to any of the company’s 135,000 United States employees, provided they work at least 20 hours a week and have the grades and test scores to gain admission to Arizona State. For a barista with at least two years of college credit, the company will pay full tuition; for those with fewer credits it will pay part of the cost, but even for many of them, courses will be free, with government and university aid.
このプログラムは全米13万5千人の従業員に資格があり、条件は週20時間の労働と、アリゾナ州立大学入学に必要な成績とテストの点数を持っていることだ。（これなら仕事と学業が両立できる！！）
“Starbucks is going where no other major corporation has gone,” said Jamie P. Merisotis, president and chief executive of the Lumina Foundation, a group focused on education. “For many of these Starbucks employees, an online university education is the only reasonable way they’re going to get a bachelor’s degree.”
Many employers offer tuition reimbursement. But those programs usually come with limitations like the full cost not being paid, new employees being excluded, requiring that workers stay for years afterward, or limiting reimbursement to work-related courses.
Starbucks is, in effect, inviting its workers, from the day they join the company, to study whatever they like, and then leave whenever they like — knowing that many of them, degrees in hand, will leave for better-paying jobs.
スターバックスは、事実上、こうした従業員の多くが、大学の卒業資格を手にし、より収入のいい仕事を求めてやめていくであろうことを知りながら、会社に入ったその日から、何でも好きなことを勉強し、いつでも好きな時に会社をやめることを促すことになる。
Even if they did, their experience “would be accreted to our brand, our reputation and our business,” Howard D. Schultz, the company’s chairman and chief executive, said in an interview. “I believe it will lower attrition, it’ll increase performance, it’ll attract and retain better people.”
スターバックスの会長兼最高経営責任者であるハワード・シュルツ氏はインタビューで「彼らの経験が、我々のブランド、評判、ビジネスを高めてくれるだろう」さらに、「これにより、労働力の低下を防ぎ、従業員の業務を向上させ、より良い人材を引きつけ、維持することになるだろう」と答えた。
In a low-wage service industry, Starbucks has for decades been unusual, doing things such as providing health insurance, even for part-timers, and giving its employees stock options. (Like other food and drink chains, it has also been accused of using improper tactics in fighting unionization drives.) Whether in spite of those perks or because of them, the company has been highly successful; its stock, which closed Friday at $74.69, has grown in value more than a hundredfold since it went public in 1992.
低賃金のサービス業界としては、スターバックスは何十年もの間特殊であったといえる。例えばパートタイムの従業員にさえ健康保険を提供したり、従業員に自社株を購入できるストック・オプションを与えるなどしてきた。
The president of Arizona State, Michael M. Crow, something of an evangelist for online education, was scheduled to join Mr. Schultz and Arne Duncan, the education secretary, to announce the program on Monday in Manhattan. Arizona State has one of the largest online degree programs in the United States, with 11,000 students and 40 undergraduate majors, and one of the most highly regarded.
アリゾナ州立大学はアメリカで最も大規模なオンライン大学教育プログラムを持ち、1万1千人の学生と、40の学部の専攻があり、最も高い評価を受けている大学である。
The university and the company say they do not know how many Starbucks employees will take advantage of the program, which includes help with paperwork and academic advising, but they expect thousands to enroll, and Mr. Crow said Arizona State has prepared for a major surge in enrollment. Tuition for Arizona State’s online undergraduate courses is usually about $500 per credit, and it takes 120 credits to earn a bachelor’s degree.
アリゾナ州立大学の授業料は、1単位当たり500ドルで、学士号を取るには120単位が必要。（つまり、オンラインでの学士号取得に約600万円が必要です。）
The Starbucks program sounds like a boon to Abraham G. Cervantes, 24, who lives in the San Pedro section of Los Angeles with his mother and two of his brothers, and would be the first in his family to earn a college degree. “I’m the only one in the family with a steady job,” he said. In fact, he has two jobs — one at Starbucks, and another at a music studio.
While studying at a community college, he discovered classical music, and fell in love with Chopin, Bach and Beethoven, though at home he can practice only on a worn-out piano. He said he dreamed of being a professor of music, but after five years of trying to mesh his class and work schedules, he has not finished his associate’s degree.
“Working two jobs, you don’t always have time to attend school,” he said.
The new Starbucks program “would be a huge benefit to me,” Mr. Cervantes said, giving him flexibility and eliminating the commute to and from school.
The company says that in its employee surveys some of the most compelling results are about higher education. Seventy percent of Starbucks employees do not have a degree but want to earn one; some have never gone to college, some have gone but dropped out, and others are in school, but have found it slow going.
24歳Abrahamさんに希望の光！彼女は家族の中で初めて大学の学士号を持つことになるだろう。家族の中でただ一人、定職についている。とはいえ、スターバックスとミュージック・スタジオで二つの仕事を掛け持ち。コミュニティー・カレッジでクラッシクを学んだのをきっかけに、音楽の教授になる夢を持っている。
“My dad lost his job during the recession, in my first year of college, and my parents were really struggling for money,” said Tammie R. Lopez, 22, who would also be the first in her family to finish college. “They were on the verge of losing their home, so I stopped going to school so I could get a second job and help them.”
Ms. Lopez, who lives in the San Fernando Valley, got a full-time job at Starbucks and goes to a community college at night.
22歳のTammieさんも、家族で初の大学卒業者になる。「父は不況の時に仕事を失って、私は大学一年の時でしたが、両親は本当にお金に苦しんでいました。」「家を失う瀬戸際だったので、私は学校をやめ、二つ目の仕事をして両親を助けました。」スターバックスではフルタイムの仕事をし、夜はコミュニティー・カレッジに通う。そんな彼女にも希望の光が見えました！
Mr. Schultz, the Starbucks chief, said such stories strike a personal chord with him. He grew up in public housing in Brooklyn and an athletic scholarship enabled him to be the first in his family to attend college, at Northern Michigan University.
会長のシュルツ氏は、こうした話は個人的な心の琴線にふれると語る。彼は、ブルックリンの公営住宅で育ち、運動選手のための奨学金のお蔭で家族で初めて大学に行ったのだ。
He and Mr. Crow said they met a few years ago when Mr. Schultz spoke at Arizona State, and got to know each other while working with the Markle Foundation, a charitable public policy organization. They found they shared modest backgrounds and concerns about growing inequality.
“The middle class is being hollowed out in so many ways,” Mr. Crow said. Unless more people become educated, he said, “We can all see this social train wreck ahead of us.”
It is a wreck that Michael Bojorquez Echevarria, 23, another Starbucks barista in the San Fernando Valley, can see clearly, and is struggling to avoid. He grew up in the Bay Area, the child of immigrants from Mexico, and saw the limitations that a lack of education had placed on them, he said, adding that he has always believed that “I have to be one of those people who can say we made it.”
“My ultimate vision, what I’m striving for, is to work with children who have gone through physical or emotional abuse,” he said.
For now, he is working toward an associate’s degree in sociology. He works about 60 hours a week at two different Starbucks locations, where he said the regular customers asked about his studies and egged him on.
“Imagine just waking up one day and knowing that your whole degree would be paid for, and the only thing you have to do is enroll and study and be a good student,” he said. “It would change my lifestyle, the whole dynamic of what I do every day.”
23歳のMichaelさんはメキシコ系の移民。現在二つのスターバックスで週60時間働いている。「私の最終的な目標、今努力していることは、身体的な、または心の虐待を経験した子供たちと一緒に働くことなんです。」
「想像してみて下さい。ある日朝起きて、大学の全学費が支払われることになると知らされることを。やらなければならないことは、登録して、勉強して、いい学生であることだけなんですよ。」「それは私のライフスタイルを、そして私が毎日やっていることの原動力全体を変えることになります。」
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