Education Assistance

Educational Assistance

Hitachi encourages employees to become life-long learners to allow you to grow as an individual, improve the way you work and enable you to more effectively compete for jobs in pursuit of your career aspirations.

Hitachi will reimburse tuition expenses up to a maximum amount of $6,000 per calendar year for employees attending an eligible college or university.

The Educational Assistance program is designed to support employees in pursuit of a formal degree. The degree must be relevant to performing a job within Hitachi. Individual courses within the degree program must be job-related and must assist you in the performance of your job or facilitate promotion or transfer to another position within Hitachi.

To be eligible for tuition reimbursement, you must:

• Be an employee of Hitachi for at least six months. Refer to the Educational Assistance Policy located in AskNow for more details.
• Complete an application form before enrolling in a course and/or degree program. Once this is completed, an approval request will be sent to both your manager and VP.
• Attend classes regularly and receive a passing grade. Reimbursements will be processed as follows:
1. Undergraduate: A, B and C are reimbursed at 100%.
2. Graduate: A and B are reimbursed at 100%; C is reimbursed at 75%.

Individual courses within the degree program may be reimbursable even if they are not job-related, as long as they are required to earn the degree.

Scholarship Program

Here’s to U! Hitachi is proud to sponsor an annual Hitachi Scholarship Program for college-bound kids in Hitachi families. It’s our way of thanking employees for helping Hitachi prosper and rewarding their children for hard work and commitment to education.

How the program works

Every year, Hitachi awards five scholarships to students in bachelor’s degree programs. The awards range from $500 to $5,000 per student, per year, for up to four years.

Scholarship amounts are determined by the tuition and fees —  including the cost of books — at the student’s school. Scholarship funds are paid directly to the college/university, so students can focus on class.

Students receiving four-year scholarships may enroll in a two-year community college, then apply the remainder of their scholarship toward two more years at a four-year school.

Scholarships will be renewed for full-time students, so long as they stay in good academic standing according to school requirements.

Eligibility

To be eligible to apply, students must:

• Have at least one eligible parent (see below)
• Be a high-school senior planning to attend an accredited U.S. or Canadian college or university (for four-year scholarships), or be a first-, second- or third-year student at a four-year college/university (for scholarship grants that apply toward the remainder of their education).

For their child to be eligible, at least one parent must be:

• A full-time U.S. or Canadian employee of Hitachi on the first day their child begins college classes;
• Totally disabled or have died while working for Hitachi; or
• A retired Hitachi employee, as defined by the Retirement and Savings Program.

Selection

International Scholarship and Tuition Services, Inc. (ISTS) administers the entire Hitachi Scholarship Program. They process all applications, then select and notify all award winners.

A scholarship selection committee appointed by the College Scholarship Service will review and rate the applicants based on academic merit, not financial need. The committee will consider:

• High-school grades and class rank.
• SAT and/or ACT scores (required only for U.S. scholarship applicants who are seniors in high school or freshmen in college).
• Participation in extracurricular activities and community involvement.
• Special awards or achievements.
• Essay.
• Recommendations from a teacher or member of the community who is familiar with the student’s academic performance and community involvement.

No Hitachi employees will be involved in the review or selection process. All decisions by the scholarship selection committee are final.

Application Requirements

To be considered, students must:

• Apply online by January 22. Program Key Code: Hitachi
• Take the SAT or ACT by the end of December and upload their scores to ISTS by January 22.

Award winners will be notified by ISTS, and then announced in late spring in the Hitachi Signal Weekly; scholarships will apply to the school year beginning the following fall.