What is Free Education?

If you have ever wondered what “free education” or “free school” is and can’t stop but wonder how you or someone you know paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to get through school whereas now it’s “free,” you are not alone. You are among the millions of Americans who have been perplexed by the terminology. And you’ve reached the right place to learn what free education is all about.

In the past decade, the terms “free education” or “free school” have gained popularity as a recruitment and retention tool, especially for frontline workers in the healthcare, retail, and hospitality sectors. Let me be the one to break the bubble – the word “free” is a misnomer in the terminology. It’s the employer that’s paying for their employees to go to school so that the employees stick around for longer and progress through the career ladder within the organization. This is because it’s much cheaper for organizations to pay for school than to lose trained employees to competition and go through the recruitment cycle all over again. As a part of the benefits portfolio, these come under Education benefits specifically Tuition Assistance (TA) benefits. The tuition administration services are delivered through third-party providers and each one works and markets their product differently. So, it’s not free for the employers.

The use of the word “free” in this context is highly debatable even for employees. At least there is an opportunity cost involved because most of these third-party education benefit providers offering “free education” or “free school” take away the freedom of choice from the employees while pigeonholing them to a handful of schools they charge a high marketing fee from in exchange for traction. Data has shown that this results in lower graduation rates because the employees often get disengaged since they have little to no say in the school they’re going to as one of the factors, ultimately resulting in attrition, and the “free education” product not delivering the desired results.

Reports have shown that frontline employees are still leaving by the doves and last year’s data alone shows a 41% attrition rate. To further corroborate the facts, the 2024 NSI National Health Care Retention & RN Staffing Report shows that almost a quarter (23.8%) of newly hired RNs leave within the first year making the first-year turnover rate as high as 34.0%. Unsurprisingly,  most hospitals focus more on retaining new hires (69.9%).

Each 1% change in turnover costs or saves a hospital about $262,500 annually.

According to the LinkedIn Workplace Learning report of 2025, 94% of surveyed employees said that they would stay longer if their employer helped them in learning new skills. However, we know that choice plays a vital part in dynamics.

Experience Counts

Enter Edcor. We have a Debt-free degree program that addresses all these gaps and is of true value to both the employer and the employee.  We call it a Debt-free degree because the employee has zero to minimal out-of-pocket costs when they utilize their employer’s TA, thus saving them from impending student loans. The schools pay zero marketing fees to us, we have more than two dozen highly utilized school network partners offering these programs at the annual employer TA contribution of $5250, and the employee can pick a school of their choice. This $5250 is tax-free for the employer and the employee resulting in another win-win.

What more? We offer complimentary Academic Advising to handhold the learner through the course of their educational journey leading to higher graduation rates and a better ROI and savings for the employee and the employer. There is more. We offer these programs not just for traditional degrees but also for short-term stackable certificate degrees and tech-heavy boot camps that fulfill your upskilling goals for all levels of your workforce most effectively.

The Edcor Debt-free degree program is more than two decades old, fine-tuned over the years to suit the marketplace, and works meticulously with both Tuition Assistance or Direct Billing as well as Tuition Reimbursement with Deferrals – just that it’s not marketed aggressively in the press because that’s not our focus. Our focus is service, course completion, maximizing client ROI, and above all making the academic journey of a corporate learner easy.

We have more than 250 Live programs integrated seamlessly with the Tuition benefits of 60+ Fortune 500 Clients who benefit from these.

What are the administrative burdens of making these degrees available to employees?

None.

Edcor has years of experience in offering standardized and customized Debt-free degrees. Additionally, we also have the flexibility to narrow the schools to a specific network of targeted educational institutions based on the Client’s talent management or workforce planning strategy – without the pay-to-play model with selected colleges or institutions. Edcor’s solution is fully customized to the Client’s needs. If a large portfolio of schools with full choice for your employees is preferred, we can accommodate. Or as mentioned previously, we can limit the focus to a set number of schools. We can also accommodate a combination of the two based on targeted populations.

If you are a corporate employee reading this, I encourage you to take this to your HR to see if your organization would benefit by engaging with Edcor on these programs. If you’re an HR professional reading this, I encourage you to take this information to your senior management or reach out to us at solutions@edcor.com to find out how these programs can help you with your upskilling and workforce management goals while delivering on your strategic objectives –  without breaking your bank.

Think Edcor. Think Possible.