What can we help you find?

Our Career Opportunity Platform™ connects employees with education and skilling programs mapped to career pathways at every job level.

Guild offers a marketplace of curated education and learning programs designed for the success of working adults. Layered onto that is support, guidance, and resources at every step to help ensure the new skills employees are building translate into career pathways that are in demand at their companies — all without paying for tuition or career services on their own.

Guild enables employers to invest in their employees’ personal and professional growth through learning programs, skilling, career development, and 1:1 coaching.

We offer more than 1,800 vetted education and skilling programs that vary in length (e.g., short-form bootcamps and certificate programs vs. long-form degree programs), format (e.g., online vs. hybrid vs. in-person), and level (i.e., foundational, intermediate, advanced).

Over 5 million employees were eligible for Guild through their employer in the last 12 months¹ . Over 80% of those eligible employees are estimated to be frontline workers, defined as roles that provide a service to the general public.

According to the IRS, an employee can exclude up to $5,250 annually in employer-provided educational assistance benefits from their gross income. Qualifying educational assistance payments include tuition, fees, books, supplies, and similar expenses. If total tuition and other educational benefits exceed this amount within the year, the excess is generally considered additional taxable wages, subject to the same tax withholding and other rules applicable to wage income. 

In some cases, an employer might offer its employees a “tax gross-up,” which is an additional salary payment that results in the employee receiving the same net pay as if taxes had not been withheld on the excess funds beyond the $5,250 for educational benefits.

The catalog experience has filters that help members find programs that are fully covered or partially covered. Additionally, employers are able to select programs they’d like to be highlighted for their employees. 

Yes. The Guild platform allows users to search for an appropriate program within the benefits policy that has been defined. We offer search in the form of filters and criteria as well as a program discovery quiz that can help narrow the set of appropriate programs for the employee based on their interests and level of education.

The Guild platform is accessible using a mobile web browser and does not require a dedicated application. 

Our coaching and technical teams are available to any employee eligible for the education benefit regardless of their location within the United States.

We have intentionally designed support systems and escalation channels to ensure all parties are invested in learner success. 

As a Guild partner, please direct general questions to your Guild point of contact. If a learner isn’t getting the desired response from Guild, review this resource to find the right channel.

Guild monitors member and learner satisfaction and feedback through targeted surveys, including Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) rating and Net Promoter Score (NPS). The CSAT Rating for Guild coaches from surveyed learners is 95 out of 100.²

Yes. As a core part of our work, each employer's catalog is customized to achieve the established business outcomes and unique skilling needs they’re seeking — while meeting employees where they are in their educational and career journeys. This is an ongoing process that is consistently reevaluated based on usage data, learner survey data, anecdotal data from our coaches, and collaboration with our employer partners.

The Guild Career Opportunity Platform™ often works in conjunction with companies’ L&D ecosystems and overall strategies. For example, Guild can work with partners to evaluate whether corporate programs can be college credit-bearing so that employees can apply to transfer these credits to their Guild programs.

A "tuition-free" program means that employees bear no tuition costs for their education. Many employers also cover the cost of books, mandatory fees (such as transcript fees), and any taxes that the learner might incur from using the benefit. 

Removing the biggest financial barrier to education and skilling enables broader access for every employee — not just the ones who can afford to pay for education upfront. By designing a program for the most marginalized employee, employers can enable access for every employee.

Tuition assistance is a payment mechanism through which Guild removes the need for employees to pay for tuition upfront by facilitating payment between employers and learning partners. By removing major financial barriers, tuition assistance enables more employees to access the benefit.

Because Guild has already curated a learning marketplace based on high outcomes, tuition assistance also allows employers to better curate programs based on quality, fit, and cost.

Yes, Guild can provide education benefits to dependents. This capability is available for all of our partners. Learn more about the program at Waste Management, for example, which company leaders highlighted in the New York Times.

At Guild, tuition reimbursement is a complementary component to Guild’s recommended tuition assistance benefit. For employers with an existing tuition reimbursement program or for those interested, Guild facilitates the administration of the benefit, providing end-to-end eligibility checks, transcript and program review, and acceptance/rejection of reimbursement requests. 

While tuition assistance serves the vast majority of our partners and their employees, tuition reimbursement can also be a solution for employees interested in specialized programs outside of Guild’s learning marketplace.

At Guild, we don’t view graduation as the only metric of success since many learners are pursuing programs to advance professionally. Given our evolution to focus on career mobility and opportunity creation, graduate rates do not encompass the broader impact we’re focused on creating in the lives of members we support.

83% of surveyed Guild members cite career advancement as a motivator to return to school. We’re proud that employees enrolled in Guild Learning Marketplace courses had an 87% passage rate over the last 12 months, but that doesn’t tell the full story. What we are focused on is bringing career mobility outcomes to life for our members and learners in tangible and meaningful ways, including in the form of role changes or an increase in salary.

An indicator of success for us isn’t strictly completion of a program — some learners drop out because starting their course helped them land their dream job. We also consider tangible, meaningful outcomes that impact the trajectory for employees to advance, including promotion rates and wage growth:

Internal mobility: 2.2x higher likelihood of internal mobility for learners in Guild’s Learning Marketplace compared to non-engaged employees.

Wage increase: 2.4x higher wage increase for learners in Guild’s Learning Marketplace compared to non-engaged employees.

Guild’s Learning Marketplace is intentionally designed to increase the accessibility of education and drive the success of working adult learners. We generally evaluate potential partners based on quality, scalability, accessibility, equity, and alignment with career mobility.

In addition, we look for innovators in education and learning that are mission-aligned with Guild. 

There are a variety of channels, both broad and personalized, that help individuals find and explore learning programs. 

Guild works with employers to raise awareness about the Guild benefit.  

Employees can browse a curated catalog of learning programs — and the member quiz on the platform welcome page identifies experience, interests, and then relevant education and skilling opportunities. Additional career discovery resources and tools help learners navigate educational options and move toward the next education or skilling program that fits their career goals. 

Guild Coaches also work with prospective learners as they evaluate courses, enroll, persist, and explore their career options. 

We have more than 1,800 programs across industries, levels, and formats. Our Learning Marketplace is designed to have the right program for every eligible employee so they can meet their education and career goals. 

Our catalog includes high school completion, bachelor’s degrees, master’s degrees, specialized certificate, industry-specific bootcamp, language learning, and more programs.

Our Learning Marketplace curates institutions that design programs specifically for working adults. In many cases, this means programs are online, asynchronous, and self-paced.

We are also continually researching and evolving our Learning Marketplace to meet employer demand and offer programs that align with the future of work. Today, 63% of our programs are aligned to the top 10 major occupation groups ranked by growth.⁵

We work with learning partners to build stackable credentials as well as credit for prior learning and on-the-job training for Guild members. 

Stackable learning refers to the practice of offering education options that build on each other over time, enabling value in the short term while “stacking” to the economic value of a full degree in the long term. This practice can boost learner confidence and support a culture of opportunity through a focus on lifelong learning.

Credit for prior learning has become a way for companies and universities to work together to validate on-the-job learning and experience while accelerating skills acquisition.

By categorizing and counting this learning toward an employee’s degree, they start closer to the finish line. This saves valuable time to completion for learners while decreasing the cost of education for the company by avoiding redundant coursework.

There is no typical Guild member! We enable tuition-free education for individuals across zip codes, disciplines, role levels, income, class, race/ethnicity, age, and more. Explore our Member Stories to meet some of our members. 

Guild’s business model is one in which all stakeholders — working adults, employers, and learning partners — build shared success together.

For employers, offering tuition-free education and skilling aligned to career pathways can help them better attract, retain, and develop talent into high-demand roles. 

Employers that partner with Guild see an average 3x return when investing in education and upskilling.⁶

Guild works with employers and learning partners to facilitate tuition payments. We started by focusing on making education benefits and skilling accessible and equitable to as many people as possible, especially working adults in frontline roles, whom traditional tuition reimbursement programs were not built around. We built a system to facilitate tuition assistance — a payment mechanism through which Guild removes the need for employees to pay for tuition upfront, as they do in tuition reimbursement — by connecting employers and learning partners.

Tuition Assistance

Through Guild’s payment technology, employers directly pay learning partners so employees don’t have to pay tuition out of pocket. More than 90% of our Learning Marketplace learners incur no cost from tuition, textbooks, or fees.⁷

Tuition Reimbursement

In addition to tuition assistance, there are other options such as tuition reimbursement to facilitate tuition payments if you're interested in pursuing a program outside of your employer's catalog. 

According to the IRS, an employee can exclude up to $5,250 annually in employer-provided educational assistance benefits from their gross income. Qualifying educational assistance payments include tuition, fees, books, supplies, and similar expenses.

If your total tuition and other educational benefits exceed this amount within a given year, the excess is generally considered additional taxable wages, subject to the same tax withholding and other rules applicable to wage income.

In some cases, an employer might offer its employees a “tax gross-up,” which is an additional salary payment that results in the employee receiving the same net pay as if taxes had not been withheld on the excess funds beyond the $5,250 for educational benefits.

Tax information can vary for each individual.

To begin using your Guild benefit, create an account and complete your profile. From there, you can explore the program catalog and, when you’re ready, start an application. 

Once you’re a Guild member, you can contact Guild support for assistance with benefit information; program, application and enrollment questions; and more.

Learning programs offered through an employer’s Guild catalog often include high school completion, college prep, college degree (associate, bachelor’s, and master’s), certificate, bootcamp, and language-learning.

Program offerings vary depending on the policy of each employer partner.

To determine which program is the best fit, you can begin by reflecting on your interests, strengths, and personal and professional goals. From there, research the education and career options that best align. 

Guild can help make choosing a program a little easier. Members have access to Guild Specialists who can help map out career goals. Plus, members can take a program recommendation quiz as a simple, interactive way to get started on their search.

When reviewing Guild’s catalog, you can also review eligibility requirements for each program, as well as information on the location (most, but not all, Guild programs are online) and schedule flexibility.

Eligibility for benefits and program acceptance vary by employer and learning program. To understand your eligibility for your Guild benefit, you can work with a Guild Specialist, review information upon logging into the Guild portal, or contact your employer. 

The courses and programs offered by Guild’s learning partners are ideally structured for working adults. Most learning programs are offered online and have flexible schedules.

Many learning programs are entirely online. Online programs typically require you to have high-speed internet access and a computer that supports up-to-date browsers and some software. If a program calls for more advanced technology, it will be listed in the course description or on the school’s website. 

University programs often require proctored exams and sometimes videos for orientations or assignments, so you may need a webcam on your computer.

Currently, the majority of programs are only available in English, but Guild offers English language learning programs and bilingual specialists who can help answer questions in both Spanish and Haitian Creole.

Guild’s team of Specialists and Coaches can help you get started in a program and succeed along the way. Once you’re a Guild member, the Guild support team is just a call or chat away. It’s completely free, and you can talk with them as often (or as little) as you’d like.

Guild support team members you might work with include:

Member Support Specialists

You’ll hear from a Member Support Specialist soon after you create an account. They're your person if you have general questions about your Guild benefit, eligibility, payments, or any details. They can also help you think through next steps and explore programs that fit your goals.

Growth Coaches

Each Guild member has personalized, 1:1 access to Growth Coaches who support you in succeeding once you enroll in a program. They can help with time management, goal setting and accountability, motivation, celebrating success, and more. Coaches are available to you throughout the process by phone, text message, or email whenever you need support in your education and career journey. 

We also offer Career Exploration coaches, resources and tools to help you explore your career options, write your resume, prepare for interviews and map out career pathways into your next role. 

As a Guild member, you have access to Guild Specialists and Coaches for support in your learning and career journey. To contact a Specialist or your Coach, log into your Guild portal on the Guild website. From there, you can give us a call, send an email, or live chat with Guild support. 

You can also complete a contact form, and a member of our team will follow up with you.

To access your employer’s Guild partner page, visit the Member Signup page to create an account or log in. 

Currently, Guild’s benefit is exclusive to its employer partners and their employees. For companies interested in partnering with Guild and learning more, please visit How Guild Works.