Free tuition: a premise with a promise drives community capitalism

If you're trying to attract students to your school district, stimulate the real estate values in the community and get more minority students motivated to go to college, it might pay to start at the end and work backward.

That's the premise of the Kalamazoo Promise, a donation that provides up to four years of free college tuition to graduates of the Kalamazoo Public Schools in Michigan. The Promise was announced in 2005. A story in the Detroit Free Press says that since the promise was announced by anonymous donors, about 400 families have moved into the district from 88 cities in Michigan and 32 other states.

The district's had to hire 40 new teachers to handle enrollment of 1,000 more children. Last year, 332 students used the money to attend 14 colleges and universities. The cost was $1.5 million. And the administrator says that much of the increase in students attending college comes from African-American males and other minority students. Already this year, 458 students have been granted scholarships. Fast Company magazine has named it one of its The Fast 50 -- a list of 50 profit-driven solutions for what ails the planet. The list is Fast Company magazine's annual readers' challenge, a worldwide search for ordinary people doing extraordinary things. Their goal is "to remind the world of all the good that's created when passionate people with big ideas and strong convictions are determined to make a difference." They refer to such initiatives as Kalamazoo's as "community capitalism."

All that sounds great, but there's just one hitch: the school district is still struggling with low academic achievement. That leaves the obvious question: What good is a free ride to college if you aren't prepared to succeed when you get there? Let's wait to see the data in four years. How many of those students actually will earn college degrees or use their college classes to prepare themselves for their professions?