With No Frills or Tuition, a College Draws Notice

BEREA, Ky. — Berea College, founded 150 years ago to educate freed slaves and “poor white mountaineers,” accepts only applicants from low-income families, and it charges no tuition.
“You can literally come to Berea with nothing but what you can carry, and graduate debt free,” said Joseph P. Bagnoli Jr., the associate provost for enrollment management. “We call it the best education money can’t buy.”

Actually, what buys that education is Berea’s $1.1 billion endowment, which puts the college among the nation’s wealthiest. But unlike most well-endowed colleges, Berea has no football team, coed dorms, hot tubs or climbing walls. Instead, it has a no-frills budget, with food from the college farm, handmade furniture from the college crafts workshops, and 10-hour-a-week campus jobs for every student.

Berea’s approach provides an unusual perspective on the growing debate over whether the wealthiest universities are doing enough for the public good to warrant their tax exemption, or simply hoarding money to serve an elite few. As many elite universities scramble to recruit more low-income students, Berea’s no-tuition model has attracted increasing attention.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/21/education/21endowments.html?th&emc=th

ain't much to do in Berea.

is to enroll every young person in the nation who can't afford to go to a university.

We need universal public preschool-college.

universities to spread their largesse a bit more instead of hoarding it.

to go towards what I wanted it to, whether it is for professor salaries, programs, capital investiture, tuition, scholarships, etc., and not be sent off campus. The same goes for my donation to our local school district which is building a $100 million endowment - my donation is to help our school meet its needs and wants, not an under-funded one in a county 200 miles away.

It's time for the government to start adequately funding education instead of trying to rely on a school and its successful alumni who are the contributors to these large endowments.

I'm an American living in Venezuela. Here, thanks to the Chavez government, the Constitution gives everyone the right to a free public education -- to the Ph.D. level. In addition to free tuition, each student gets living expense allotments. My son in the U.S. has to pay $16,000 a year for tuition alone at a state university.

Venezuela also provides free medical care and subsidizes housing purchases for the needy, start-up costs for cooperatives and small businesses. It also provides state subsidized markets which anyone can use and "Comodore restaurants" which serve full course meals at less than a dollar a meal. State subsidized gasoline is 14 cents a gallon.

Venezuela is able to do this because it has nationalized its oil resources and is not spending billions a month on war and the occupation of other countries. The trillions of dollars the U.S. is wasting on war and war profiteers could provide every American with free medical care, education and food. We must change our priorities and put human needs before war and corporate profiteering.

Completely.

:thumbsup: :thumbsup:

I've read about it before, and it sounds intriguing. Does anyone here know anything specific about the school?

It's a good school - liberal arts education, primarily. The students have to work on campus or at the school's farm as part of their "tuition."
They do a "Convocation Series" that consistently brings in great speakers and performers.
What kind of info are you looking for?