Conditions That Drive Employees towards Employer Assistance For Education
Employer tuition assistance can help someone who is unable to get a federal loan at a lower rate and is too concerned to take private loans at very high rates. Besides private loans are available to only those students who have a very good credit score or whose loans can be guaranteed by someone who has a good credit score. These are the reasons why many employees prefer to apply for an educational loan.
Disadvantages of Applying for Employer Assistance
Although, the government puts an upper limit on the employer assistance that can be provided to an employee for the sake of education, which is $5250, it is not necessary that all the employers come forward and help the employee planning to take up higher studies. First of all, the degree the employee is seeking might be unrelated to his or her current job and wouldn’t help to provide better performance either. Secondly, there is a chance that the employee is critical to the division or team for which he or she is working and cannot be encouraged to take a break. This causes the employers to reject the application. However, it is out in the open that the employee is looking to go for higher studies, which could be a reason of friction between the employee and less open minded managers.
Disadvantages of Taking Employer Assistance
If an employee succeeds in convincing the employer to provide tuition assistance, he or she might have to face a few more problems too as everything comes at a cost. Firstly, if the tuition assistance is very high, the employer may only be offering a loan which an employee has to repay. This could prove to be difficult, especially if the employer dictates the terms for the new compensation after finishing the degree. Secondly, the employee will have to sign an agreement invariably that he or she will continue to work for the same employer for a fixed amount of years after returning from higher education. This could be critical for many reasons. The employee cannot take up higher paying jobs after finishing education and has to return to the employer who may or may not be generous with the latest compensation. This will make repaying other loans taken for education, difficult.
The employee might be asked to work for a different domain that relates to the degree the employee has received. However, the job profile and the quality of work may or may be satisfactory. Besides, with the contract, the employee while a student at the university cannot even think of the option of appearing for other interviews for better job profiles. This might lead to dissatisfaction at work and one can lose the whole purpose of seeking higher education. Breaking the contract could prove expensive too and not something which most employees would like to venture into.
Lastly, education followed by good experience for a few years on the same lines is what adds value to the students and hence signing an agreement to continue with the employer might be a bad decision.
