How are cities currently trying to encourage students to go to college? In the past decade, an increasing number of cities have initiated savings accounts for young children enrolled in public school. These accounts are college savings accounts that can accumulate thousands of dollars by the time the student graduates from high school. Due to the nature of savings accounts, even a small initial deposit can exponentially grow in value over time. Cities’ incorporations of college savings accounts have instilled hope and aspiration in children who otherwise may have never considered enrolling in college.
The initiative of city-started college savings accounts first started with San Francisco. In 2011, San Francisco initiated the Kindergarten to College (K2C) program. With K2C, the city automatically opens a college savings account with a seed deposit of $50 for all children in San Francisco that are entering kindergarten in public school. Families can make deposits and participate in contests and incentives to grow their account balance. Presently, the total of balances in K2C accounts have grown to a total of $15 million, and will only keep increasing as time passes.
Research has shown that simply having a college savings program, no matter the balance, encourages children to pursue post-secondary education. The price of college tuition is continuously rising, with the cost of college having doubled over the past 20 years. Some students who cannot afford such fees are deterred from considering the prospect of college. According to CNBC, a study from the Center for Social Development at George Warren Brown School of Social Work at Washington University reports that, “even when families have saved less than $500, low- to moderate-income children are three times more likely to enroll in college and more than four times more likely to graduate from college than those with no savings account.” Regardless of the actual amount of money in a college savings account, purely having one can increase a student’s likelihood of attending college after high school.
The success of San Francisco’s K2C program has resulted in the implementation of similar programs in other cities in the United States, such as New York City, Los Angeles, Atlanta and Boston. Today, there are over 120 college savings account programs in 39 states, which benefit more than 1.2 million students. Additionally, in 2022, California launched the California Kids Investment and Development Savings Program (CalKIDS), which is the largest children’s saving account program in the country. CalKIDS automatically creates a college savings account for all children born in California on or after July 1, 2022. Moreover, California has allocated $1.9 billion for CalKIDS to create savings accounts for students enrolled in low-income public schools in California. While a city-initiated college savings account is unlikely to be able to cover the complete cost of college, it opens a door to the possibility of a child going to college. Merely having a college savings account inspires young children to consider pursuing a degree after high school, as well as provides the opportunity for parents and children to have important conversations about college.
Sources
