How Employees Decide Whether Their Employer's Program Is Worth Their Time, From Tuition.io's 2026 Survey
Since the pandemic, many hospitals answered the nursing shortage by relying on traveling and agency nurses. Increasingly, they are now looking to their own workforce instead, helping administrative and support staff advance into clinical roles through targeted education and training. Employers in retail and food service face the same choice — to hire skilled people from outside or to develop them in-house — turning to career pathway programs to build sustainable talent pipelines in their organizations.
Targeted education and training can take the form of certificates and degrees, GED classes, ESL courses, and apprenticeships. And while an employer may provide funding for these programs, if workers don't sign up, essential roles stay open, and the program has nothing to show for its cost.
If there’s employer funding available, what keeps a worker from signing up? Tuition.io's 2026 Career Pathway Survey asked 525 healthcare, retail, and food service workers in August and September to find out. Over 80% can see what it would take to move into a better-paying role, but many employees don't have funds on hand to pay the tuition upfront. Others doubt these programs will actually lead to a better-paying job.
The survey results point to three steps employers can take to encourage enrollment. They can show workers which roles a program qualifies them for, have coworkers who finished it share their experiences, and pay tuition directly instead of reimbursing it.
Employers build career pathway programs to both retain talent and fill roles that require skills their current workforce lacks.
Replacing an employee costs between 50% and 200% of their annual salary, with costs rising toward the top of that range for more senior roles. Moving a current employee into a skilled role is often more efficient than hiring from scratch.
Degree programs are getting harder for workers to afford on their own. College costs have outpaced inflation for decades, and in July 2026, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act reduced the amount families can borrow for undergraduate programs and eliminated Graduate PLUS loans for degree programs. The capped loans that remain often don't cover a full program.
Employers are also shifting toward short-form learning, such as the certifications and credentials that connect directly to a higher-paying role in the near term. Tuition.io clients in healthcare and retail are funding more of them. A certificate takes less time than a degree, which makes the payoff faster and easier to predict.
When an employer funds either type of program, workers can move into a better-paying role without taking on additional debt, and the employer fills a skilled role from its own staff.
Frontline workers already believe a better job within their organization is within reach. 67% are at least somewhat confident their employer offers realistic opportunities to move into higher-paying roles.
Very few workers rule out a career pathway program outright. 98% named at least one program detail that would convince them it’s worth their time.
Workers want opportunities to advance. When enrollment in a career pathway program falls short, employers should look at whether the program's requirements are getting in the way.
Workers weigh the time a program takes against what it leads to. 30% worry about finding enough hours outside their job to complete one, and 24% doubt a higher-paying job would be available once they finish.
Before signing up for a program, frontline workers want to know what the new job pays and what it takes to qualify. 29% said the new role’s pay would do the most to convince them a program is worth their time, even when the employer offered to pay for a certificate program in full. Another 15% said full tuition coverage alone was enough.
49% of workers said a guaranteed interview after completion would greatly increase their confidence that a program leads to a better job, and 44% said the same of clear requirements for qualifying for the new role.
Most also want a sizable raise in return for a year of study, with 63% of workers saying they need a pay increase of over 10%.
Employers who spell out the new role's pay, its qualifications, and whether an interview follows program completion give workers a concrete reason to believe the program leads to a better-paying job.
Across every age group and education level surveyed, workers consistently rank former program participants as their most trusted source of advice. 48% of frontline workers said they would most trust employees who already completed a program when deciding whether to join one, more than three times the share who named a direct manager (14%) or the HR and benefits team (13%).
Workers also expect a program to have a track record. 64% say at least half of past participants would need to move into a better-paying role before they consider it credible. 33% say at least 75% of past participants would need to have landed a better role.
Employers who track how many participants advance and help those participants talk with prospective enrollees can satisfy what workers say they look for before enrolling.
If their employer paid tuition upfront instead of reimbursing it, 78% of workers said they would be more likely to participate. Reimbursement asks workers to cover tuition first and wait to be repaid.
Workers also worry about what happens if they leave. Having to repay education costs if they leave the company was the most cited barrier to committing to a 12-month program, named by 34% of workers. For a worker who spends a year studying, a repayment clause turns employer-paid tuition into a debt that could follow them if they change jobs.
When employers address these cost concerns directly, more workers enroll, advance into skilled roles, and fill positions the company would otherwise have to hire externally for.
80% of healthcare workers say they can see what it would take to move into a higher-paying role with their employer. 72% are at least somewhat confident their employer offers a way up.
79% of healthcare workers said they would be more likely to participate if tuition were paid upfront, in line with workers overall (78%). But they worry more than other frontline workers about what happens if they leave, with 40% naming the cost of repaying education if they leave the company as their most common barrier (vs. 33% of food service workers and 28% of retail workers). Healthcare careers often advance through credentials and degrees, such as LPN and RN programs, which cost more than a short certificate, so the amount owed back can be substantial.
Finding time outside work (30%), doubts over whether a higher-paying job would be available afterward (24%) and a lack of manager support (22%) follow.
Tuition coverage matters more to healthcare workers than to workers overall. When asked which single detail would do the most to convince them a program is worth their time, 25% of healthcare workers chose a higher salary and 21% chose full tuition coverage. Among all workers, the gap between the two is wider, with 29% choosing salary and 15% choosing full tuition coverage.
Healthcare workers also want specifics about the next role. To 46% of healthcare workers, clear role requirements would make them more confident that the program will lead to a better job, and 46% said the same of a guaranteed interview.
Healthcare employers can ease the repayment worry by removing the clawback clause (requiring tuition repayment to the employer if they leave the company) or limiting it to a short window. In practice, a more lenient repayment requirement has minimal impact since tuition assistance participants tend to stay. In client data from Tuition.io’s healthcare clients, their turnover has run roughly 20% to 50% lower than that of eligible employees overall, so fewer would ever trigger the clause.
Tuition.io’s tuition assistance platform is built to give employers the flexibility to design their program to best meet the needs of their workforce. CourseCa$h™ seamlessly pays tuition directly to any education provider, so workers don’t front the cost and wait for reimbursement, and employers have full choice on the education. One-on-one education mentoring helps workers choose a program that leads to a better-paying role with confidence. Real-time reporting shows employers how their investment performs across workforce segments and education paths.
Schedule a time to talk through what a credible career pathway program could look like for your workforce.
Tuition.io's 2026 Career Pathway Survey asked 525 non-managerial employees aged 18-45 at U.S. companies with at least 1,000 employees about employer-sponsored career programs. Respondents work in healthcare (177), retail (193), and food service (155), and either have no college degree or are early in their careers (ages 18-24). Tuition.io partnered with Centiment to field the survey from August to September 2026. Several program questions described a 12-month certificate tied to a higher-paying role. Percentages are rounded to the nearest whole number.
Tuition.io is the leading employer-sponsored financial wellness platform specializing in student loan benefits and tuition assistance administration. We help employers hire, retain, and upskill talent by addressing the dual challenges of historic student debt and the ROI of higher education.
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