Kalamazoo Promise: Does Making College Free Improve Performance? | New Republic
If a college degree is becoming as essential
as a high school diploma was a generation ago, why not make college
free? This was the essential question behind an ongoing experiment
called the Kalamazoo Promise, launched in Kalamazoo, Michigan, in 2005.
Any student who has attended Kalamazoo public schools since ninth grade
or before can use Promise funds, which come from private donors, to pay
all or most of the tuition at any of Michigan’s public universities or
community college. The program has inspired upwards of 30 similar
efforts in cities around the country, and the idea has seeped into the
policy debate: Tennessee’s Republican governor recently suggested making two years of technical or community college available to any student, free of charge.
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