Walmart employees: Get a college degree for about $1 per day

Kristen Allen is a single mother with three kids, who she playfully calls her "little monkeys."  She works at Walmart in Matthews. And not just that. She works the overnight shift.

One reason she took the job was Walmart's Live Better U program. She gets to go to college for about $1 per day.

[RELATED: Walmart expanding education program for $1 a day degree, free SAT and ACT prep to high schoolers]

"It's given us an opportunity that we couldn't say 'no' to," she told Action 9's Jason Stoogenke. "No debt. You can't argue with that. It's pretty amazing."

Her degree will say Brandman University. You don't hear about it a lot on the East Coast. But it's a real school, a fully accredited college in California that says it's been around since the 1950s. Other students get degrees from the University of Florida or Bellevue University in Nebraska.

Allen graduates in about a year and a half.  Her degree will be a bachelor's in business management.

"Hopefully, I'll be able to go to my commencement in California and actually graduate for real," she said. "That's my goal and, hopefully, take the little monkeys with me too."

But she has a big day before then. She'll be in Arkansas later this week at Walmart's annual shareholder meeting, introducing a Walmart executive with 160,000 people watching.

Walmart's Live Better U program is a partnership with Guild Education. It offers education at every level:

• Free high school education to associates and certain family members
• Foreign language classes
• $1 per day college program
• Discounts on master's degrees

Cox Media Group