When I first read the summary of this article, the idea seemed brilliant. A group of patrons has promised that anyone who lives in the Kalamazoo school district since they were in kindergarden would have their entire college tuition paid for by the Kalamazoo promise. This is supposed to remove the barrier of going to college for a lower-income population, while rebuilding the community density and economy. But I’ve now realized that it is not as amazing an idea as I first though (although it is still a good one).
In the first year after the Promise, 1,000 additional students enrolled in the Kalamazoo schools. Altogether, the student population has increased by 2,450 students, or 24 percent. With every added student, the school district gets another $7,250 from the state. A new teacher can be hired for every additional 25 students; 92 have been hired so far. The district has been able to upgrade facilities and, for the first time since the 1970s, passed bond issues to build new schools.
The first issue is that this has been tried before. I remember reading that there are countries were post-secondary education is free. Although, Kalamazoo is special because neither its state (nor country) have the same benefit. But because it exists elsewhere in the world, we know that free post-secondary education helps, but is not the solution.
I can also imagine that people will move around to take advantage of this, so a family might move into Kalamazoo proper only to commute to work farther away. Or alternatively, they might not be able to move away because they want to guarantee their children’s tuition.
Finally, when the kids graduate from college, they will go where the (skilled) jobs are, which seem unlikely to be in Kalamazoo. Sure there is an overall social benefit of having (more) educated children, but without any skilled industries, they will just leave for greener pastures around the US.
While it sounded like a great idea, it has been done before and may not actually revitalize the city. But you can’t argue that there isn’t an overall social benefit.
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