Amazon.com Inc. said today that it will cover all college tuition fees should any of its 750,000 operations workers in the U.S. decide to take on higher education.

The e-commerce giant said as part of a $1.2 billion investment in education and skills training, it will cover fees, books and classes. As part of the same program, Amazon said it will also offer fully paid training courses for employees who want to climb the ladder and work in more technical areas.

If college is a bridge too far from some of the company’s front-line workers, they will now also have the option to study for their high school diploma, the General Educational Development certificate or GED, or join an English as a second language course.

“Amazon is now the largest job creator in the U.S., and we know that investing in free skills training for our teams can have a huge impact for hundreds of thousands of families across the country,” said Dave Clark, Amazon’s chief executive of worldwide consumer. “We launched Career Choice almost ten years ago to help remove the biggest barriers to continuing education — time and money — and we are now expanding it even further to pay full tuition and add several new fields of study.”

It might sound too good to be true, but Amazon follows a number of large companies in the U.S. that have of late offered various paid-for education and training programs in a bid to lure workers in a competitive job market. In May, Waste Management Inc. went a step further in offering not just free college for workers but also for their family members. Amazon’s main rival, Walmart Inc., is also now offering free college tuition.

Amazon has been criticized in the past for working conditions in its warehouses, something the company has improved somewhat in what has been a busy time for the company. Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, Amazon has been posting massive spikes in revenue. The boom has also meant Amazon has had to bulk up its workforce considerably.

Free education might just be the thing that encourages people to choose Amazon as a place to work, or choose to stay. While offering training courses and education is nothing new in the corporate world, giving blue-collar warehouse workers and drivers the ability to take a free college degree is historically unique. There’s also ample data that such a qualification for the most part sets a person up for life in terms of higher earnings.

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