A Lesson from New Haven

I went to college in New Haven, Connecticut, and lived there for four years. Trenton has always reminded me of New Haven: it’s similar in size (New Haven is somewhat larger in size, with about 120,000 to Trenton’s 80,000 and change); similar histories as colonial towns, industrial powerhouses become post-industrial shells; similar demographics; similar economies; similar problems.

New Haven does have a few differences with New Haven. Namely, the presence of several colleges, Yale being the best-known. Like the State government here, Yale occupies prime, tax-exempt real estate in the city’s downtown and throughout the city. The history between city and university has been a checkered one: Yale makes payments to the city in lieu of taxes, employees several city residents for its staff and faculty, and students and faculty do contribute to the local economy. But far too often, the University has existed apart from the  city, standing aloof while the city around it has struggled for decades after its economy collapsed.

Sound familiar?

New Haven’s schools have seen hard times. The student body hails from predominantly disadvantaged homes, and is primarily African American even though New Haven as a whole has an African American population slightly under 40% compared to Trenton’s 52%.  The school districts have had comparable problems of student performance, dropouts, crime and an unacceptably low percentage of students who graduate high school and go on to college.

That’s why this is good news. The City of New Haven, with significant funding from Yale University, has announced a program, beginning with current 9th graders in the entire city school system: stay in school, maintain a 3.0 Grade Point Average, fulfill a few other conditions, and the City will pay for a four-year education in any Connecticut public university.  Free.  Should a student choose to attend a private college, there will be a fixed stipend available short of full tuition.

According to the article linked above, similar programs have been started in other towns such as Detroit, Denver, Pittsburgh, Kalamazoo Michigan and San Antonio, Texas. They are new programs, so there isn’t any track record to measure success. But what’s encouraging is that this program is available to all students in the city schools. It provides a fabulous incentive to students, gives them reasonable goals and standards to reach over a period of time, and makes available adequate non-taxpayer resources. Sounds like a good recipe. I hope it works.

I am very happy to see my alma mater step in to do something for the city it’s been located in – but too often not part of – for over three centuries. I’m proud of the leadership (on this as well as many more items over his tenure) of Yale President (and San Francisco native!!) Richard Levin. I’m also more than a little jealous that Trenton is not home to a similar institution, corporation or foundation that could support such an effort. The State of New Jersey? Somewhat unlikely, I’d say.

One of the most (small-d) democratic things this country ever attempted was the GI Bill of Rights after World War II. It allowed millions of returning servicemen to attend college . Since so many Americans served in uniform then, the impact was huge. There is general agreement that the prosperity of this country during the postwar decades was in no small part due to increased access to higher education, and higher numbers of highly-educated, highly-trained Americans.

There is also general agreement that the continued prosperity of this country is in danger due to the falling number of highly-educated, highly-trained Americans and economic opportunities for them after school. Close to home, we know that the prosperity long-vanished from Trenton can’t be restored without educated, trained, capable workers.And that won’t happen if more Trenton students don’t stay in school, graduate, and go to college.

Programs like this aren’t the entire solution, but this morning, reading that story, I sure wish Trenton had something like it.