However, if an employee leaves East Lansing within two years of the last course taken, the employee will have to reimburse the city for the tuition.

“We’d like to be able to reimburse everybody no matter what reason, but we’ve simply got to keep an eye on tax dollars as well,” Staton said. “We’re not developing individuals for other employers.”

About 20 employees take advantage of the program each year, he said.

The city has a $25,000 budget to spend on employee degrees that comes from the city’s general fund. This past year the city spent $26,000 on the program, said George Lahanas, director of administrative services for East Lansing. The overspending was absorbed within other areas of the training budget, he said.

This was due to an increase in employees interested in improving their skills while dealing with this economy, Staton said.

“If we do significantly overrun the budget, we will have to turn people down (in the future),” he said.

The employees would then be chosen on a first come, first serve basis, he said.

Despite the poor economy, this program will not be facing cuts, though the city would not cut another program to fund this, Lahanas said.

“Having a workforce trained and able to have the expertise that you want is an important factor to try to maintain,” he said.

However, this sort of program may also have other benefits for employers, said Val Meyers, associate director of the MSU Office of Financial Aid. Many private sectors will offer their employees educational benefits, and the city would not want to see someone doing a great job leave for the private sector to obtain these benefits, she said.

“It’s a way of keeping all your really good people, and not losing them to another company,” Meyers said.

Thomas Crane, IS network administrator for East Lansing, said that he probably would not have pursued his master’s degree in technology systems management if it were not for this program.

“The city offering to help with the tuition reimbursement kind of gave me the last push that I needed to commit to getting a graduate degree,” he said.

However, he said being a full-time student while having a full-time career was difficult to manage, but not having to worry about the cost of it lowered his stress level.

Paul Holland, a public policy graduate student, said that while he thinks the additional education would benefit the city, now is not the right time for a program like this.

“If we were in North Carolina’s economy, then yeah,” he said. “But Michigan is strapped for money (right now) … and I don’t think that, right now, the benefits outweigh the costs.”

The benefit to the city depends on what department the person is in, because a master’s may not be necessary in some areas of work, said Sally Silver, an East Lansing resident.

“The city has to see if they wanted someone with a master’s, would it be less expensive for them to hire someone directly than to reimburse for the degree?” she said.

While this program does not directly have an impact on the relationship between the city and the university, it should help the employees relate with the university, Meyers said.

“Having city officials experiencing what students experience on campus here — or even a part of it — has to promote understanding,” she said.