Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz explains why the company provides in partnership with Arizona State University free college tuition to every one of its American employees working 20 hours or more a week.

The country is $22, $23 trillion in debt, it doesn’t have the financial capability to do the things that we would aspire America to do and so the responsibility falls on its citizens…the government is not capable and is not doing it…

It makes business sense for Starbucks to do it and the company figured a way to make it cost neutral, which is one of the advantages of private action, but Schultz’s recognition that government can’t is important.