Kalamazoo, Mich., the City That Pays for College Jeff Minton for The New York Times Clockwise from top left: Molly Gritter, 15; Magnificent Hanana, 17; Hirving Hernandez, 16; Shaquona Gardner, 15; Gregory Hale-Sandifer, 16; Cheyenne Gandy, 15; Tinashe Chaponda, 17; Zhi Xuan Wee, 17; Hope Nicholas, 14; Troy Swodzinski, 17. Wings Stadium, a dim, beery sports barn in Kalamazoo, Mich., is an appropriate home for the K-Wings minor-league hockey team and the Killamazoo Derby Darlins. Yet every year, in June, the site hosts a spectacle more uplifting than a season of flip checks. This is when it is the setting for the graduations of the city's two main high schools. A couple of nights after Kalamazoo Central High fills the arena, it's Loy Norrix's turn. The rink is covered, and students, friends and family take over most of the 5,100 seats. When I Grow Up The kids of Kalamazoo talk about college and other plans for the future. According to census data, 39 percent of Kalamazoo's students are white, and 44 percent are African-American. One of every three students in the Kalamazoo district falls below the national poverty level. One in 12 is homeless. Many of them are the first in their families to finish high school; many come from single-parent homes. Some are young parents themselves: Kalamazoo has one of the highest pregnancy rates among black teenagers in the state. And yet, for the vast majority of the 500-plus students who graduate each year in Kalamazoo, a better future really does await after they collect their diplomas. The high-school degrees come with the biggest present most of them will ever receive: free college. Back in November 2005, when this year's graduates were in sixth grade, the superintendent of Kalamazoo's public schools, Janice M. Brown, shocked the community by announcing that unnamed donors were pledging to pay the tuition at Michigan's public colleges, universities and community colleges for every student who graduated from the district's high schools. All of a sudden, students who had little hope of higher education saw college in their future. Called the Kalamazoo Promise, the program - blind to family income levels, to pupils" grades and even to disciplinary and criminal records - would be the most inclusive, most generous scholarship program in America. It would also mark the start of an important social experiment. From the very beginning, Brown, the only person in town who communicates directly with the Promise donors, has suggested that the program is supposed to do more than just pay college bills. It's primarily meant to boost Kalamazoo's economy. The few restrictions - among them, children must reside in the Kalamazoo public-school district and graduate from one of its high schools - seem designed to encourage families to stay and work in the region for a long time. The program tests how place-based development might work when education is the first investment. "Other communities invest in things like arenas or offer tax incentives for businesses or revitalize their waterfronts," says Michelle Miller-Adams, a political scientist at the W. E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research, which is located in the city. The Kalamazoo Promise tries to develop the local economy with a long-term investment in human capital that is intended to change the town from the bottom up. In this regard, the Promise can be seen as an exorbitant ante, staked by private funds, that calls to Kalamazoo's better angels. It stokes hometown pride, prods citizens to engage and pulls businesses and their leaders into the public sphere. To date, Miller-Adams says, Kalamazoo's Promise has inspired donors in 25 other cities and towns around the United States - including Pittsburgh, New Haven and El Dorado, Ark. - to start, or consider starting, similar programs. Student orators at the June graduations thanked their teachers and parents. A few moms shouted out, "We love you!" When the speakers, their eyes scanning the stands for signs of their unseen benefactors, thanked "the anonymous donors of the Kalamazoo Promise," Wings Stadium filled up with hollers, horns and whistles. Without your gift, Kalamazoo may have swirled into a downfall, similar to many of the other cities in Michigan. From a letter to the donors by Sam Barton, Loy Norrix High School, class of 2012