Walmart doing college for less — and for better

The headline was eye-catching.

“Walmart Expands College For $1 A Day” was the topper on an online story at Forbes.com.

Awesome. Walmart offering college degrees. And Walmart offering higher education degrees for a dollar — a day?

Again, awesome. (And somewhere the Dollar General people are ticked they didn’t think of this first.)

Walmart deserves some praise for this innovative approach to building a workforce. It deserves praise for its engagement with employees. And it deserves praise for opening the eyes of everyone from Bernie Sanders to Colonel Sanders that college tuition can be covered without the government spending trillions to cover the cost of college.

Here’s the back story about how this could revamp the college financing model in the good, old-fashioned American way.

According to Forbes, Walmart, the largest private sector employer in the U.S., has a college plan for its

1.5 million employees. It says it will cost $1 a day during the length of an employee’s college program. Check this out:

› Walmart offers flexible work schedules, including working the same days and shifts for up to 13 weeks;

› Free college admission test prep courses;

› As many as seven credit hours;

› And a debt-free degree in the fields of technology, business or supply chain management with more course offerings like cybersecurity, computer science, computer and network security and computing technology on the horizon.

There are a slew of online options at colleges or universities such as the University of Florida, Brandman University, Bellevue University, Southern New Hampshire University, Purdue University Global and Wilmington University. Some officials suggest more options will be added soon.

The Walmart plan covers the full cost — not included in financial aid, that is — of tuition, fees and books and allows Walmart to ensure its associates can have a debtfree college degree. It also is aimed at retaining its motivated employees, including current CEO Doug McMillon, who started at Walmart in high school.

According to Forbes, more than 7,500 Walmart associates from all 50 states have been accepted into the program, and the megaretailer estimates that more than 60,000 could join in the next five years.

Home Depot has something similar, too. Here’s hoping the rest of corporate America takes notice.

It’s an effort to keep the workforce engaged and energized. It’s a bridge to expanding the next generation of their workforce. It reminds us that competition and capitalism work without the avalanche of federal dollars that too many politicians are promising.

Am I sympathetic to a lot of college graduates who are underemployed and overeducated? Sure, but those decisions were theirs even if they were not aware of the full ramifications.

But moving forward, if Johnny High School Grad takes on six figures in debt and decides to major in pre-Reconstruction European literature and can’t find a job in the business world, well, go figure.

Think of it this way: What a great way to enhance the competitive nature of higher ed as well as maintaining and attracting a talented work force.

If those options are there — as well as the state-funded ways to get community college hours — it’s a waybetter solution than Bernie or Liz or the rest of the socialists looking to buy votes with college credit and student loan forgiveness.