“And you get a degree, and you get a degree…”
That’s what I’ve been thinking about the founder of Boxed, Chieh Huang, who will be paying for the college educations of his employees kids. The money will be coming out of his own pocket/company stake, which hypothetically could make him one of the world’s biggest educational benefactors (in the company of players like the Gates Foundation) if Boxed ends up becoming the online version of Costco.
It’s an interesting story in light of Starbucks and Fiat Chrysler providing tuition assistance to their workforce; it also fits neatly into the recent trend of other company CEOs taking an interest in the income inequality issue in America.
The magnitude of Huang’s gesture, it seems, leaves little doubt about: 1) his confidence in Boxed becoming one of the next big e-commerce successes, and 2) subsequently being able to use that windfall to compensate (and then some) for his ambitious mass scholarship expenditure.
Like many charitable acts coming from the comfortably-off ( a lot of which, overall, is motivated by an actual interest in humankind), Huang also probably stands to reap a nice tax benefit from the gesture – be it individually, corporate-wise, or both. Beyond those benefits both to him and to Boxed, that he is undertaking such an effort does underscore his own belief in education as a ladder into the middle class, and also puts him on the side of those like Melissa Mayer, who has been a rarity among tech’s power players in preaching the importance of having a college degree – notwithstanding criticisms that she doesn’t look far beyond the Ivy League and Stanford for her degreed workforce.
What would be interesting to see is if Huang’s charitable endeavor inspires others, particularly in tech, to do the same, and if it could accompany an overall rise in diversity among people of color in the tech/Silicon Valley workforce. Now that the industry is (very gradually) taking note of the issue of black and brown talent being largely absent from the workforce, might this be away for increasing numbers of minority workers to make sure their children receive a college education, perhaps bringing them into the tech workforce? Also, would this kind of undertaking among new-economy CEOs parallel a rise of more low-income individuals, regardless of color, being given the proper education necessary to find jobs in these industries, thereby elevating themselves into the middle class and ensuring that their own children stay there?
Washington Post: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/on-leadership/wp/2015/05/28/ceo-says-he-will-pay-college-tuition-for-all-of-his-employees-children/
CNN Money: http://money.cnn.com/2015/06/12/technology/boxed-ceo-pays-college-tuitions/
CBS News: http://www.cbsnews.com/news/why-one-ceo-is-paying-for-college-for-his-workers-kids/
Kyle Coward 