Want to Get More Families Into a City? Pay Their Kids' College Tuition

Have you considered moving to Kalamazoo?

It’s nice! It’s about the size of Santa Fe or Youngstown, it has a couple universities, a fine cultural district. Sure it’s in the Rust Belt, so it’s shed much of its its industrial identity. But Pfizer -- owner since 2003 of the once mighty Upjohn pharmaceutical manufacturing company -- employs many people there. The city’s population is finally increasing after a long decline, and Kalamazoo is a famously cheap place to live. It’s also well situated -- only a couple hours’ drive west of the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor and less than three hours east of Chicago around Lake Michigan. Plus: do you like hockey?

No? Still not interested?

Well let’s take this a step further. Let’s assume you’re a parent or that you may want to be a parent at some point in your life. And let’s also assume that you might have ambitions to send your child or children to college. What if the City of Kalamazoo offered to pay that tuition in full?