“Given the upfront cost, it pushes a lot of risk onto the student,” Rachel Fishman, an education policy analyst at the New America Foundation, wrote in a blog post dissecting the program.

One class is usually worth three credits, and Arizona State charges $480 to $543 per credit for undergraduate courses, so 21 credits would cost between $10,080 and $11,403. But Starbucks would provide some financial aid up front in addition to holding out the prospect of reimbursing the remainder of the cost, Ms. All said. Between that aid and aid from the government, she said, no student would really pay more than half the full price out of pocket. And she said the university would help them arrange student loans to cover the cost until they are reimbursed.

Students who hold jobs often take something less than a full course load, and Arizona State’s online classes are more demanding than most because they operate on a compressed schedule, with five terms per year. The university’s website tells students to expect 18 hours of work per week, per class. A student taking one class per term, year-round, would take 17 months to earn 21 credits.

Another change that was not publicly trumpeted is that as of next year, Starbucks will eliminate its previous tuition reimbursement program. That program was not especially generous, with reimbursement capped at $1,000 per year, and the company said very few employees took advantage of it, but it covered any college or university. The new program will apply only to Arizona State’s online courses.

Arizona State has a highly rated online program that, with 40 majors, is also one of the most varied, but it offers only a small fraction of the possible fields of study at brick-and-mortar schools.