Education and training are intrinsically tied. The purpose of this initiative is to achieve and sustain performance improvement in the workplace by delivering educational opportunities and resources to employees and their family members across the nation and around the world. The HERC higher education initiative was launched to provide much needed support, state-of-the-art systems, and web-based resources to serve the entire workforce.

By providing employees of the corporations served by HERC with avenues through which they are able to advance their knowledge in subjects that relate to their jobs, performance improvement in the workplace is expected to be a natural result. There are two avenues through which employees can achieve this through the HERC initiative: a) By pursuing an undergraduate or graduate degree in a field of study that aligns with the student's current field of work or aspiration for the future; To support employees who desire to pursue a degree, we provide the state-of-the-art degree exploration system, DegreeQuest ®; and b) By providing links to thousands of tuition-free courses from many of the best colleges and universities across the nation and around the world on our student support website, SOCRATES.

Every undergraduate degree in America is required to have a certain array of Liberal Arts courses in order to ensure the students receive a well-rounded education. That is a cornerstone of higher education in the U.S. and, quite frankly, makes sense: When a student receives a well-rounded education, performance improvement in the workplace is also enhanced, as these students sharpen their communication and analytical skills. Access to instruction in these foundational subjects, also, is part of the purpose for which this initiative was created.

The mission of HERC is to provide much needed higher education support, state-of-the-art systems, and web-based resources to serve the entire workforce of the organizations served and to update these systems and sites periodically throughout each year to promote excellence in the delivery of the support. To serve as a quality of life contribution, this initiative is also open for participation by family members of employees, as well as retirees of the organizations served and their family members.