A growing number of employers are offering full or partial college tuition assistance to their workers, including prominent companies in Florida such as Disney and Walmart. With numerous industries struggling to find workers, a college tuition perk can play a dual role as both a recruiting tool for companies and a stepping stone for workers to move out of low-wage jobs.

Walmart announced last month that it will cover the full cost of tuition for its 1.5 million part-time and full-time employees in the U.S. through its Live Better U program. This week, Target followed suit with a pledge to spend $200 million over the next four years to offer its workers free undergraduate and associate degree programs as well as certificates in business majors. Both companies’ programs will also pay for textbooks.

Tuition assistance as a job perk isn’t limited to big-box retailers, nor is it new. Companies as diverse as Starbucks, Boeing, Verizon and Chipotle all offer their own version of a free degree, and a slew of other companies — Amazon, BP, Taco Bell and Wells Fargo, to name a few — provide a partial tuition assistance benefit. In Florida, the Disney Aspire program covers 100% of the tuition costs for hourly U.S. workers who want a bachelor’s or master’s degree from the University of Florida or the University of Central Florida. Like Aspire, most companies’ programs are limited to certain schools and carry restrictions about in-person vs. online courses.

Still, the benefit is significant, both cumulatively and for individual workers. Tuition and fees average nearly $10,000 a year at a four-year public school. At private colleges, the annual price tag is a staggering $32,000, according to the College Board. Yet higher education remains worth the investment. Federal data show that median weekly earnings in 2017 for those with doctoral and professional degrees were more than triple those with less than a high school diploma — $1,836 a week vs. $520. It goes without saying that employees laboring for $520 a week, which comes out to less than $30,000 a year, can scarcely afford a $10,000 college tuition bill.

In the aggregate, the potential of thousands of low-wage employees attaining a college degree or professional certification can be a changemaker. The stagnant nature of many jobs in food service, retail and delivery is part of the reason the economic recovery has been so unevenly felt among Americans — and why, in the wake of trillions in stimulus spending and enhanced unemployment benefits due to Covid, those jobs have been so hard to refill. Being able to go to college while working at a fast food joint could be a literal step into the middle class.

That’s not to say that tuition assistance programs are a silver bullet for every worker. Older, returning students without a strong academic background could struggle in an online-only degree program. And tuition reimbursement programs that require workers to first pay out of pocket could put them further behind if they don’t end up with a degree. So it’s good to see that many companies’ education assistance offerings also provide academic coaching or make it available through their partner universities.

As the economy crawls back from the pandemic, millions of Americans remain unemployed, searching not just for work but better work. As of June, 500,000 jobs were vacant in Florida as employers struggle to recruit both skilled and unskilled laborers. To try to fill that void, major companies are upping the ante on perks like sign-on bonuses and paid vacation. Free college tuition that comes with academic support can change the face of traditionally low-paid work, supplying companies with motivated employees while providing those employees an upwardly mobile path.

Editorials are the institutional voice of the Tampa Bay Times. The members of the Editorial Board are Editor of Editorials Graham Brink, Sherri Day, Sebastian Dortch, John Hill, Jim Verhulst and Chairman and CEO Paul Tash. Follow @TBTimes_Opinion on Twitter for more opinion news.