Sunday, August 29, 2004

Send Cleveland to College

As promised boys and girls, (see previous post) I'm gonna add my two cents to Bill Callahan's great idea:

So let's assume Cleveland decides to send 2,500 Cleveland residents to college a year.

Tie strings to that money--keep it in the city.

  • Residents could be any adult who has lived in the city for at least two consecutive years. Do you know anyone who would move to Cleveland if it meant a free college education? I do.
  • Scholarship money must be spent at a college located within the city limits. How long would it take for Kent State, Ashland, Baldwin Wallace, etc. to open Cleveland metro branches?
  • Residents who received scholarship money must continue to reside in the city of Cleveland for 4-8 years after graduation (depending on the amount of scholarship money received) If the recipient moves out of the city during that period of time, the scholarship must be repaid as a student loan. Hmm.. in that amount of time many of those young, college educated people might even get married and want to start families. Developers might have to start building family-friendly residences.
  • College educated young parents would want to make sure their children were getting a good education. They would probably get involved with the schools....see where this is going?

In ten years, 25,000 college educated Clevelanders would change the core of Northeast Ohio.

What would happen after 15 years? 20?


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