As ‘Free College’ Plan Turn 20, Advocates Celebrate, Brace for Political Changes

Zjanice Carter was just a child in Seattle when her parents moved the family more than 2,000 miles to Kalamazoo, Michigan, all for a chance at free college for their six children.

“My parents always dreamed of having a big family,” said Carter, now 25 and a college graduate. “But as they realized that dream was really expensive, they began to game plan and pray about how (were) they going to afford to give us the life that they wanted us to have?”

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Kalamazoo had what was then a rare program. Anonymous donors in 2005 created what they called the Kalamazoo Promise, a pledge to pay college tuition for any graduate of the Kalamazoo school district. Students would no longer worry about whether they could afford college or if they would graduate with thousands of dollars of debt.

“My parents packed their whole lives into the back of the van and just drove for 33 hours, the whole way, trusting that this community would keep its promise,” Carter recalled.

Kalamazoo did keep its promise — for all six Carter children, who each earned college degrees without tuition bills — along with about 9,000 graduates who have had college tuition bills paid since the program launched. A little more than half of those students who started college earned a certificate or degree.

The Kalamazoo Promise marked its 20th anniversary in November by pairing a celebratory banquet with a conference of researchers and advocates of similar “promise” programs across the country that Kalamazoo helped inspire.

In some cases, donors in communities rallied to raise private funds that would guarantee tuition payments for decades. In others, individual colleges, cities or states commit tax dollars to covering tuition.

The anniversary was also occasion to take stock of challenges that promise programs face as the Trump administration reshapes school laws and federal funding of schools, states and social service organizations.

“It’s an important time for the Promise movement,” said Michelle Miller-Adams, senior researcher at the W.E. Upjohn Institute and organizer of a panel on the federal changes. “We’re here celebrating two decades of innovation around place-based scholarships, as well as the many thousands of students served by Promise programs. At the same time, though, we need to attend to policy changes that could make the coming decade more difficult.”

She said “attacks” on the U.S. Department of Education, changes to student loan rules and accreditation, as well as potential threats to Pell grants students rely on are “altering the landscape of federal higher education policy and may challenge the foundation on which Promise programs are built.”

All of those factors could affect promise programs in different ways — in how well students are supported while they prepare for college, how much tax money is left for publicly-funded promise programs and how much money a promise program will need to cover tuition to keep their promise.

Ryan Fewlins-Bliss, executive director of the nonprofit Michigan College Access Network, told The 74 that navigating the political climate today is “scarier” than before.

“I think people are really worried about the existence of their organizations and their missions, and their fundraising, their donations…their federal funds,” he said.

There’s even concern that federal cuts to Medicaid will push health care costs to states, which will leave less money in state budgets to support state colleges and to support state promise programs.

 “We could again see declining college affordability as a result of state budget choices,” said Sameer Gadkaree, outgoing CEO of The Institute for College Access & Success.

Though it might be the best-known, Kalamazoo isn’t the first such “promise” program — the first came in the 1960s in Philomath, Oregon — but the city of 73,000 was key in drawing attention to a strategy to give students hope that if they finish high school, college was within reach.

In the 20 years since the Kalamazoo Promise was announced, similar programs have grown dramatically across the country, from just 10 in 2005 to more than 200 today, by one count, as cities like Pittsburgh, New Haven, CT, and El Dorado, AR, have started their own programs.

Several states also started statewide scholarship efforts, including California, Massachusetts, New York and Tennessee, while Michigan added promise programs in Detroit and other cities.

College Promise, a Washington, D.C., non-profit that advocates for the programs, reports an even greater growth when including other broad and inclusive scholarship programs — 53 such scholarships in 2015 to more than 450 today.

“Absolutely, we can trace many of the community-based programs to the Kalamazoo Promise modeling effect,” said Michelle Miller-Adams of the Upjohn Institute for Employment Research. “The Kalamazoo Promise got a ton of national publicity when it was first created, and that is part of the reason many other communities decided to give the model a try.”

Former President Barack Obama brought some of that attention when he spoke at a 2010 graduation rehearsal at a city high school, telling students their chance to “chase your own dreams without incurring a mountain of debt” was an “incredible gift.” 

Since then, researchers have found that promise programs can improve college readiness, enrollment and completion, along with increasing property values modestly, as families like the Carters increase demand for houses. 

Because promise programs can differ greatly — most notably in the type of colleges they pay for or whether students must contribute their federal Pell Grants first — comparisons are rarely simple.

But researchers have shown:

• College promise programs lead to more students enrolling in college than before the programs started.
• The pandemic caused a break in that pattern, with fewer students everywhere enrolling in college than pre-pandemic. But students in promise programs are still enrolling in college more than in comparable cities.
• Students are 8.5 to 15 percentage points more likely to earn an associates degree or higher with help from a promise program, with disadvantaged racial groups sometimes seeing a 30 percentage point gain.

“The adoption of a promise program had meaningful impacts on local high school students’expectations to ultimately attain an associate degree or higher,” University of Wisconsin-Madison Assistant Professor Taylor Odle reported in 2022.

Promise programs can also help cities. Though they don’t draw flocks of families looking to take advantage of them, multiple studies have shown they draw some. Communities tend to either lose fewer residents if the region is declining or gain some population — about 1.7 percent, according to one study — compared to similar communities.

Programs like Kalamazoo’s, that give students 10 years of scholarship eligibility, can also help students whose career path isn’t clear. Jacqueline Bell, a 2021 graduate of Kalamazoo Central High School, tried culinary and cosmetology programs at two separate colleges before deciding to pursue becoming a pastry chef at Kalamazoo Valley Community College.

“I would still be doing this, even without the promise,” Bell said. “This is just what I love to do. But having that promise definitely helped and kept me here … and in less debt. I’m very grateful that I don’t have to worry about that.”

At the same time, some question whether the programs truly help low-income students that most need it. Federal Pell Grants can typically cover community college tuition for the poorest students already, even if there is no promise program in place.

Promise programs also rarely cover room, board and transportation, costs students have to pay themselves while attending college full time. Since about 75 percent of promise programs cover tuition only after Pell Grants have been spent, students can’t use the grants to cover those costs. 

“Since most promise scholarships only cover tuition and fees, low-income students may not receive any money,” University of Georgia researcher Meredith Billings reported for the Brookings Institution. “Instead, these programs tend to subsidize middle- or high-income students.”

Promise advocates also have additional concerns about low-income students and those of racial minorities. They worry that if federal grants to nonprofits that help these students are cut, students might not get the support they need before graduating from high school, leaving them less prepared for college. And philanthropies that would otherwise support a local promise program could shift money to cover gaps for those students from lost federal grants instead.

“The offices that supported them are going away,” said Fewins-Bliss. “The scholarships that supported them are going away. The people that supported them are going away. 

Those concerns are tempered, however, by what backers say is strong bipartisan support from states, who see appeal both in helping disadvantaged students find a path forward, but also as a way to build a more skilled and educated workforce to boost the state economy. Many promise programs have evolved so that connecting students to internships and jobs is as much a part of their mission as paying college tuition.

“You have students that are less likely to use social assistance,” John Barnshaw, senior leader of research and policy for College Promise told The 74. “You have students that are now more likely to have jobs full time and contribute to an educated workforce (and) higher tax base.”

Even within Kalamazoo and other urban areas, promise programs are constantly fighting to have families take school seriously and believe that college is right for their children. Kalamazoo Public Schools Superintendent Darrin Slade said his district had more than 50 percent of high school students chronically absent after the pandemic and there are still students who don’t take advantage of the scholarships, even just for trade school.

“We’re fighting old narratives, cultural biases, any number of things that will keep a student feeling that even though the opportunity is here and it’s the most universal offering that we could imagine, that they still think it’s not for them,” he said.

As Miller-Adams added, “It’s not enough just to understand the value of what’s on offer. People need to show up and see it through.”