Education

Walmart’s Lifelong Learning Program is getting a boost from a new partnership with educational technology and services company Cengage Learning.  

Parents are opening their wallets for the upcoming academic year, but being selective in what, where and how they buy.  

Parents are increasing their back-to-school budgets, although overall spending is stagnant compared to recent years.   According to a new survey of 1,830 U.S. parents of elementary through college students by Mintel, 52% of respondents plan to spend more on back-to-school (BTS) shopping than in 2015. Only 4% plan to spend less, with 44% planning to spend the same. However, overall planned BTS spending dropped to $68 billion in 2015 after ranging from $73 - $76 billion annually from 2010-2014.  

Restructuring costs helped increase fourth quarter net loss at Barnes & Noble Education Inc. to $2.8 million from $300,000 in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2015.   Not all the fourth quarter fiscal news was negative, however. Total sales rose 8% to $294.8 million from $274 million, aided by a 4.5% increase in same-store sales.  

Every seven seconds, a Baby Boomer turns 50. Boomers represent a substantial and critical employee demographic for retailers. The retail trade industry in the U.S. employs 15 million people, or nearly 10% of the workforce, and approximately 38% of this workforce is over the age of 50.   

Whole Foods Market continues its expansion in the Chicago market, opening a store in the city’s Hyde Park neighborhood. It’s the grocer’s 26th Chicagoland location.  

Apple is training the next generation of coders — in its stores.   The company is expanding its Apple Camp workshops to include a course designed to teach children the basics of coding, Techcrunch reported.   The “Coding Games and Programming Robots” course, open to children ages 8 to 12, will also allow kids to program Sphero robots.   

Amazon.com has been announcing a lot of new distribution centers lately, and now is opening a new IT office dedicated to logistics, as well as a new physical pick-up location.

The e-tail giant is planning a new technology development center in downtown Minneapolis that will create 100 full-time, technology-focused jobs. Amazon currently has hundreds of employees in Minnesota and is also in the process of hiring an additional 1,000 full-time employees for its new Shakopee, Minnesota, fulfillment center.