McDonald’s employees can now receive college credits towards a business diploma at any of Ontario’s 24 public colleges.
According to a press release, Colleges Ontario partnered with McDonald’s to allow employees with “specific training” to bypass the first year of a business administration degree at any Ontario college. This could offer students savings of up to $4,500.
McDonald’s managers with “level 2″ training and a few additional requirements are eligible for credit, the release said.
Colleges Ontario’s president Linda Franklin said in the release that the program represents a “new way of thinking” that will allow employees to further their education without relearning skills they have already acquired on the job.
Asia Green, a fourth-year Carleton University global politics student and McDonald’s manager, said she thinks the partnership is a great idea. She said it will help relieve the financial strain of going to school, and make up for the lack of study time students have when balancing work with school.
“I’ve learned so much from this [management] program,” Green said. “Working at McDonald’s you deal with the worst possible customers. It’s always a high-paced, high-stress environment.”
Green that managers learn the value of multitasking and prioritizing when working in such a stressful environment, which are valuable management traits in the business field.
However, not everyone thinks the partnership is a good idea.
Warren Thomas, the president of the Ontario Public Service Employees Union (OPSEU), said in a release that students skipping an entire year of their degree would be missing out on quality education offered by college faculty members.
Thomas said it would be a mistake to allow corporations such as McDonald’s to provide college level education to business students.
“We place our faith in our public education system to prepare tomorrow’s leaders for their responsibilities. Do we really want our future business leaders taking Ethics 101 from the Hamburglar?” Thomas said. “Colleges need the provincial government to invest in them, not outsource their work.”
RM Kennedy, chair of OPSEU’s College Academic Workers Divisional Executive, said in the release that the partnership will hand “college credits over to a private corporation with questionable business practices, including tax-avoidance schemes, anti-union tactics, and a reliance on a precarious low-wage workforce.”
Green said she disagreed with OPSEU’s argument.
“I’m not sure that I agree that it should be worth a year of business school, but definitely getting that hands on experience [would] be the equivalent of a co-op,” she said.
McDonald’s Canada also has a similar agreement with the British Columbia Institute of Technology and is looking to implement more programs with Canadian post-secondary institutions, according to the press release.
