With No Frills or Tuition, a College Draws Notice

By Tamar Lewin
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/21/education/21endowments.html?em&ex=1216872000&en=a77d3816b3d96c57&ei=5087%0A

Last summer I spent two weeks with my college-aged friends from England. Of course as they were both university students the cost of college was brought up, and they were in utter disbelief at the amount Americans shell out for a college education. And so am I at the constant rising cost of tuition in this country and the slashing of funding.

Just when I thought all hope was lost, I saw this very intriguing article about Berea College in Kentucky whose students, all from low income families, attend the institution free of charge. It seems the college has a 1.1 billion dollar endowment, making it one of the wealthiest colleges in the country, and unlike other institutions that are as well off, Berea has chosen to spend this money on the kids. Sounds strange, huh?

Lewin compares Berea to the also well-endowed institutions such as Harvard ($35 billion), Yale ($23 billion), Stanford ($17 billion), Princeton ($16 billion) and Amherst College in Massachusetts where he actually interviews the president of the college, Anthony Marx who defends the college's spending habits. He interviews a good variety of people on the topic including administrators and students from Berea and several financial experts from different universities along with Marx.

His article is overall done very objectively though that's hard because Berea appears to be the messiah of universities and the rich Ive leagues, no matter how many perfectly logical explanations they give for not following Berea, still look no better than money grubbing corporations next to Brera.

Lewin leads with a brief history of Brera, noting it used to be a "poor, white mounteering school" back when it started 150 years ago, and he ends with a comment from Larry Shinn, president of Berea who says some liberal arts colleges choose to spend the money they should be using to give fiancial aid to low income students to build fancy rec centers and coffee shops.

"Is it just a way for colleges to keep up with the Joneses?" Shinn asks of these colleges.

Amen, sir.