Starbucks

Starbucks is including significant tuition assistance as an employee benefit.

Chances are,  it will turn out to be a barely worthwhlie for the employees, and a minor decrease in earnings for the company. It still rings a bell, though, as if it is trying to solve a significant problem any way that it can.

Looking a back at the indicators of the Fourth Turning, we find items including

1) "Prophets enter elderhood, Nomads enter midlife, Heroes enter young adulthood."2) "America's institutional life is torn down and rebuilt from the ground up"3) This is a "response to a perceived threat to the nations very survival"4) "Civic authority revives”5) "Cultural expression finds a community purpose"6) "People begin to locate themselves as members of a larger group 7)The Crisis eventually becomes a "founding moment," "refreshing and redefining the national identity."

Is college debt a “perceived threat”? There are people who consider it a real problem.  Is Starbucks finding a community purpose, and locating itself as members of a larger group? It does sound that way.

There’s plenty of opinion and analysis out there, not all favorable. It is however possible that this is the sort of community action that will be seen, at least in the short term.