Pat Stuart

A college where tuition is free? I read that subtitle in “The Atlantic” and did a double-take.  How could it be? No tuition? With average in-state tuition in the U.S. at $25,707 per year or $102,828 over four years and $44,014 per year or $176,056 for four years for out-of-state students, that seems impossible. The author, I thought, must be talking about a place funded by some billionaire or a school located in some socialist paradise.

Wrong. Right now, there are 18 colleges in the U.S. that offer tuition-free programs, primarily for in-state or other designated types of students. Many of these are attached to work-study arrangements. In particular, though, this article spoke of Berea College in Kentucky, an extraordinary and small institution with a funding model that has worked through recessions and inflations, through wars and civic turmoil for 128 years. Given that fact, the real question seems to be:  Why haven’t other colleges followed suit? Why is Berea almost unique? But, the biggest question of all: Can these models be adapted here? While Northwest College remains relatively affordable, the key word is “relatively.” Free is not just better, it would make a huge difference in many lives.  

Berea’s story has a great deal to do with its history. It was founded in 1855 in a slave-holding state by an abolitionist on land donated by Cassius Clay (no, nothing to do with the boxer), the son of the state’s largest slave owner. The idea at the beginning was to provide a free education to both whites and blacks with the caveat that all students would work. And, they did. But the school’s integration didn’t last long. It was a case of bad timing. With feelings running high on slavery and segregation, local whites soon ran off the abolitionists. After the Civil War, though, they came back. For most of the late 1800’s, then, the school was about half white and half black. In one year, 1889, there were 177 black students and 157 white, and they all worked on campus.

Next came the white backlash to integration. Once more, Berea became a target. With institutions right up through the Supreme Court making it legally impossible to educate blacks and whites together, Berea transitioned to a strictly white school. As such, though, it remained tuition free.  

Fifty years on, history again intervened in the form of the Civil Rights movement. The pendulum swung, and Berea went back to being a mixed-race college.

Throughout, it retained its funding model, using interest on its endowment to pay the bills. Here’s the situation at Berea now, as described in “The Atlantic” of Oct. 11, 2018 by Adam Harris: “More than 90 percent of Berea College students are eligible to receive the Pell Grant — often used as a proxy for low-income enrollment. Most of those students, 70 percent to be exact, are from Appalachia — where nearly one of every five people live below the poverty line. And that recruiting pipeline in Appalachia produces a rather diverse class — more than 40 percent of the student body identify as racial minorities.”

A lot happened to Berea over the years, and there were times when maintaining a large enough endowment (now at $1.2 billion) was problematic. That hasn’t been easy, of course, and it’s an ongoing challenge.

Clearly, Northwest College with its endowment of around $37 million can’t follow the Berea model. But if it could grow that endowment ... ?

Something to think about.