Exploring the Relationship between COVID-19 and Immediate 2-Year College Enrollment and Persistence among Kalamazoo Promise Scholars

There are hundreds of recognized tuition-free college "promise" programs, but few are as generous or flexible as the Kalamazoo Promise (KPromise). Pre-COVID studies on KPromise have demonstrated effects on increased college attendance, credit completion, and persistence. Extending these findings to the COVID-19 pandemic context can help establish a baseline understanding of the ability and limits of tuition-free college to mitigate a shock to college enrollment and speed the recovery in the aftermath. This chapter explores incoming student college enrollment and first-year persistence among recent KPromise cohorts at the primary community college that scholars attend: Kalamazoo Valley Community College (KVCC). We found that enrollment decreased for two consecutive cohorts, notably among students with lower high school academic performance. We found that first-year stop out overall increased, and these two changes together resulted in demographic changes in the KPromise student population at KVCC. Our findings have important implications for tuition-free programs and the 2-year institutions that receive Promise students.