GB700 Unit 10 Doctoral Position Paper Example

Degrees Retain Only Where They Lead Somewhere: A Unit 10 Doctoral Position Paper on Tuition Assistance and Turnover

[Student Name]

Purdue University Global

GB700: Doctoral Studies in Business

Unit 10 Doctoral Position Paper

[Instructor Name]

[Date]

The candidate is composite and illustrative; the studies and theories cited are real.

The Position

Employer tuition programs are associated with lower turnover while employees study, partly because of who enrolls. After graduation, their effect on retention depends on internal opportunity. For frontline employees in programs that prepay degrees, the absence of visible internal pathways is likely to turn a retention program into a pipeline to other employers. Internal opportunity is the moderator the field has examined least for the employees it now matters most for.

A Map of the Conversation

The literature divides into four positions, drawn from the Unit 5 synthesis matrix.

Participation retains. Employees enrolled in employer-paid courses are less likely to leave while studying (Benson et al., 2004). Repayment clauses and the benefit's ongoing value provide plausible mechanisms.

Programs sort employees who plan to stay. Much of the association between participation and retention reflects which employees enroll and which employers attract (Manchester, 2012). On this view, programs retain partly by changing who works at the firm.

General skills raise mobility. Human capital theory predicts that employers will underinvest in general training because it raises employees' outside value (Becker, 1964). In the 2004 records, graduates without a promotion were the group most likely to quit (Benson et al., 2004).

Effects depend on internal opportunity. Where employees see a route upward inside the organization, support for their development goes with lower turnover; where they do not, the link weakens (Kraimer et al., 2011).

Each position is supported by careful work, and each answers a somewhat different question, measured at a different point in an employee's tenure.

Where the Candidate Stands

I place myself in the fourth camp and argue that it subsumes the third. The general-skills argument predicts that graduates leave; the opportunity argument predicts which graduates leave. Benson et al. (2004) found that promotion largely offset graduates' greater risk of leaving, which suggests that general skills create mobility that internal opportunity can absorb. What the field has not examined is how this works for frontline employees, whose degrees often qualify them for roles several levels above their current job, and in programs that prepay tuition, which remove the employee's own financial stake and often the repayment clause as well.

The question is not whether degrees make employees more mobile, but whether the employer has somewhere for them to move.

What the Candidate Accepts from Each Camp

From the participation camp, I accept that turnover falls during enrollment; my position concerns what happens after. From the sorting camp, I accept that selection explains part of any participant versus non-participant difference, which is why my research questions compare graduates with comparable employees and examine promotion within the graduate group. From the general-skills camp, I accept the mechanism: degrees raise outside value. My disagreement with each is about where the decisive variation lies.

Why Frontline Employees Are the Hard Case

The position matters most for frontline employees for three reasons. Their degrees often qualify them for roles several levels above their current job, such as moving from teller to credit analyst, so the internal step they need is larger than for a salaried employee earning an advanced degree. The number of such roles in a bank is limited and concentrated in headquarters, so many graduates working in branches may never see an opening near them. And frontline employees have the most to gain from outside offers, since a degree can raise their market wage substantially. All three reasons point the same way: if internal opportunity matters anywhere, it matters most here.

The Two Strongest Objections

Objection 1: Sorting already explains the retention benefit, so internal opportunity is beside the point. If programs retain mainly by attracting employees who intended to stay, then post-graduation opportunity matters little. My response is that sorting explains why participants differ from non-participants, not why some graduates stay and others leave. Within the group that chose to enroll, the variation in post-graduation turnover remains to be explained, and the 2004 evidence points to promotion.

Objection 2: Repayment clauses solve the problem. Employers can require graduates to repay tuition if they leave within a set period. My response is that clauses delay departures rather than prevent them, and that they place the heaviest burden on lower-paid employees, who may be unable to repay. Many prepaid programs designed for frontline workers have dropped repayment clauses for exactly that reason. The question then returns to what keeps graduates once the clause expires.

What Would Prove the Position Wrong

The position would be weakened if frontline graduates of prepaid programs who were not promoted stayed at rates similar to those who were, over three years. It would be refuted if graduates in units with many internal openings left at the same rates as graduates in units with few. Either result would suggest that something other than opportunity, perhaps loyalty created by the employer's investment, keeps frontline graduates. Popper (1959) made falsifiability the mark of a scientific claim, and these are the observations that would count against mine.

What the Position Does Not Claim

The position does not claim that tuition programs are a poor investment, that frontline employees should not receive degrees, or that employers should restrict programs to protect themselves from graduates leaving. A graduate who leaves for a better job elsewhere may represent a gain for the employee and the economy even if it is a loss for the employer. The claim is narrower: that an employer seeking retention from a prepaid program should expect it only where graduates have somewhere to go inside the organization. An employer that values the program for other reasons, such as recruitment, community commitment or employee well-being, may reasonably fund it regardless.

Agenda and Contribution

The research agenda follows from the problem statement: compare post-graduation turnover among frontline employees in prepaid degree programs with that of comparable non-participants, and test whether internal promotion and transfer account for the difference, using records from several regional banks. The contribution would be twofold. For scholars, it would test the opportunity moderator in a population and program design the literature has not studied. For employers, it would show whether the decision to fund degrees should be paired with a decision to create pathways, which Hom et al. (2017) suggest is where turnover research has most often failed to reach practice.

References

Becker, G. S. (1964). Human capital: A theoretical and empirical analysis, with special reference to education. National Bureau of Economic Research.

Benson, G. S., Finegold, D., & Mohrman, S. A. (2004). You paid for the skills, now keep them: Tuition reimbursement and voluntary turnover. Academy of Management Journal, 47(3), 315-331. https://doi.org/10.5465/20159584

Hom, P. W., Lee, T. W., Shaw, J. D., & Hausknecht, J. P. (2017). One hundred years of employee turnover theory and research. Journal of Applied Psychology, 102(3), 530-545. https://doi.org/10.1037/apl0000103

Kraimer, M. L., Seibert, S. E., Wayne, S. J., Liden, R. C., & Bravo, J. (2011). Antecedents and outcomes of organizational support for development: The critical role of career opportunities. Journal of Applied Psychology, 96(3), 485-500. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0021452

Manchester, C. F. (2012). General human capital and employee mobility: How tuition reimbursement increases retention through sorting and participation. ILR Review, 65(4), 951-974. https://doi.org/10.1177/001979391206500408

Popper, K. R. (1959). The logic of scientific discovery. Hutchinson.