Dolly Parton’s amusement park to pay 100% college tuition of all employees

Dolly has done it again.

Per an announcement released on Tuesday, employees of Dolly Parton’s Dollywood amusement park – a beloved attraction that draws millions of tourists to the small town of Pigeon Forge, Tennessee – will be eligible for 100% coverage of their tuition costs, books, and fees, should they choose to pursue a higher education degree.

Dollywood draws over three million visitors per year, making it the 24th most popular theme park in the US. According to recent reporting by the Washington Post, this offer will extend to all employees, regardless of part-time, seasonal, or full-time status. Interested individuals will be able to enroll in the program from their first day on the job.

The announcement comes at a critical time, as conversations circling rising tuition costs and the student loan crisis are reaching a fever pitch. Student debt has reached a national total of $1.7 billion, a staggering number that illustrates the suffocating financial burden a higher education degree can have on young Americans. Add to that the slowing pandemic economy and unstable job market, and it comes as less of a shock that undergraduate enrollment is down 5.1% across the country since the start of the pandemic in 2020.

The new tuition program, coined GROW U, will launch on February 24th and will be available to employees at all 25 attractions in the Herschend Enterprises portfolio, which includes Dollywood as its crowning jewel.

Still, this is only the newest addition in Parton’s long resume of philanthropic and social service-oriented endeavors, the vast majority of which center around education.

Born the fourth of twelve siblings in Pittman Center, Tennessee, Parton was raised in an environment where she developed a sharp awareness of the role money and education play in one’s upbringing. The Parton family lived in a one-room cabin on a small subsistence farm, and Parton’s father was illiterate. His illiteracy and the family’s poverty play clear roles in the award-winning charity work Dolly Parton carries out today, over 70 years after her farm and family-filled childhood.

The Dollywood Foundation, which is funded by Parton’s career profits, prioritizes education access in poor and rural communities like the one Parton herself grew up in. The foundation’s literacy program, Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library, provides a monthly book to each child involved in the program from birth to elementary school. The Imagination Library currently provides books to 850,000 children each month, and Parton was honored by the Library of Congress in 2018 to mark the program delivering its 100 millionth book.

The addition of a tuition program for Dollywood employees is a full-circle moment for Parton’s passion for education and literacy, with the Imagination Library providing books at the start of a child’s life, and the GROW U program providing funding for the higher education that often marks the transition to adulthood.

Parton’s charity work is largely funded by her long and highly successful career in country music. After moving to Nashville the day after her high school graduation, Parton went on to become one of the most illustrious country artists of all time. With 11 Grammy awards (including the Lifetime Achievement Award), 51 Grammy nominations, 25 number one songs on the Billboard country charts, and a 1998 induction into the Country Music Hall of Fame to her name next to countless other accolades, she fundamentally redefined the role of women in country music, paving an entirely new path for the next generation of young female artists.

While still writing, producing, recording, and performing to this day, Parton’s philanthropic efforts have become equally as popular – and equally as influential – as her music career. Most recently, Parton donated $1 million towards vaccine research at Vanderbilt University Medical Center at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. She famously received the vaccine she helped fund in March 2021.

Parton has twice turned down the Presidential Medal of Freedom due to COVID-related traveling restrictions and a desire to be at home with her husband who was battling illness. In an interview with Hoda Kotb about the offer of such a high honor, Parton responded in the humble Southern fashion that has defined her philanthropic legacy from the early days of her Imagination Library to this most recent tuition initiative: “I’m just happy that anything I do can help somebody else.”