My son is a first-year student at Kalamazoo College in Michigan. K College is a delightful school, and satisfied the three criteria he established for what he was looking for in a college in the first place: one, it had to be small; two, it had to concentrate in the liberal arts; and, three, it had to be expensive.
The city of Kalamazoo is not merely the home of now-retired Yankee great Derek Jeter, it is the home of the “Kalamazoo Promise.” “What,” I hear you ask, “is the Kalamazoo promise?” Well, let me tell ya:
The Kalamazoo Promise, now in its 8th year, is a pledge by a group of anonymous donors to pay up to 100 percent of tuition at any of Michigan’s state colleges or universities for graduates of public high school in Kalamazoo. To receive the minimum 65% benefit, students must have lived within the Kalamazoo School District, attended public high school there for four years, and graduated. To receive a full scholarship, students must have attended Kalamazoo public schools since kindergarten.
Since the Promise was introduced, enrollment in the school district has increased by 16%, test scores have improved, and more Kalamazoo students are going on to higher education.
When my wife and I dropped our son off this fall, we spent a couple of days in Kalamazoo, and liked what we saw: a vibrant downtown, a hopping music scene, a first-class art museum and a symphony orchestra. Not bad for a city of 75,000. The Kalamazoo Promise is the icing on the cake.