Free to Choose?

In these days of rapidly escalating college tuition costs, the very mention of an institution like Berea College can make the heads of pricey schools a bit defensive. After all, Berea, located in Kentucky, educates only low-income students, and stands apart from almost every college by offering free tuition, according to the New York Times.

“It’s difficult to find a college that balances thrift and altruism as deftly as Berea,” noted Anthony Paletta in a recent posting on mindingthecampus.com.

While high-profile Ivies with their megabucks endowments attract the super-rich and offer a leg up to the less affluent, Paletta says it makes sense to compare Berea to the “countless less-than-fabulously wealthy American colleges” that are “caught up in endless cycles of expansion, refurbishment and tuition increases.”

Berea College president Larry D. Shinn noted that when liberal arts colleges charging $40,000 a year suddenly sprout upscale coffee/juice bars and glass-walled physical education buildings, you have to start wondering, “does this contribute to the public good?”

Clearly the Berea model is not for everyone.

The question is, could a student at Amherst or Yale even survive at a school like Berea with “no football team, coed dorms, hot tubs or climbing walls” where one has to make do with “food from the college farm and handmade furniture from college crafts workshops?”

Deborah Lambert writes the Squeaky Chalk column for Accuracy in Academia.

Deborah Lambert