On June 28th, The Wall Street Journal posted an article titled, “Does Free College Work? Kalamazoo Offers Some Answers”.
The article states that in 2005, in the midst of an economic and educational downturn, Kalamazoo, Michigan, launched a program to help students go to college. Known as the “Kalamazoo Promise”, it allows for anonymous donors to pay of the tuition for any student that wanted to go to college in the area. As result (claimed by WSJ), rates of college enrollment have boosted, college tuition has lowered, graduation rates have risen, and the local economy has grown.
However, there are problems for arriving at the conclusion that Kalamazoo “[Offered] Some Answers”.
Firstly, this college enrollment program is not free. Someone else is simply paying for it. While it’s free for the applicant, it’s just someone else paying for their college. The idea of “free” college, is that the government can provide it for people, rather than having a student or anonymous donor pay for it. Thusly, it’s not even “free”.
For the college enrollment rates, of course they’re going to rise. Someone is paying for a student’s college; many of the youth will take advantage of this opportunity.
The cheaper tuition is attributed to the many going to college now; since there’s an influx of students, the cost per person doesn’t need to be as high.
College Graduation Rates in Kalamazoo were already on an incline. Prior to 2005, the graduation rate was at 34%. Today, they are at 38%, after nearly 15 years. According to Michigan Radio (a branch of NPR), graduation rates did not by much, and was more likely attributed to an incline that was already occurring.
The local economy boost can be attributed to this in part, because obviously these anonymous donors are making transactions with the local colleges, and the students who graduate go into the work field there, which eventually generates more money. Plainly, to say that this alone boosted their local economy isn’t true. It very well could have helped, but the growing national economy could have also affected them in a positive manner.
In conclusion, did this article really answer any questions? No. In the future, more articles will be posted to our website, explaining the general problems with free college, rather than one article specifically.
Comments