From NYTIMES:
With No Frills or Tuition, a College Draws Notice
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.
Read More
*******
I have never even heard of Berea until today. In my honest opinion, I wish I had heard of it earlier!
With ivy leagues, everyone wants to attend — it’s the name, it’s the prestige, but in the end you’re in debt over your head. I recently applied to an ivy league, just one, really since I couldn’t afford to apply to others. I mean it was expected but…
Ivy leagues attract a lot of people. Applications are $60 plus and I am sure millions of students are applying, thus only 20% are even accepted. Thus that mean applications alone rack in MILLIONS! And of course the money goes off to pay off the professors, construction, scholarships, Research and grants… It is money to support a lifestyle really. I am confident they are looking for students that are qualified financially as well as academically. And they find suckers willing to be in debt to graduate from Prestige, thinking they’ll be able to pay off their debt later. Some do and some don’t.
Schools are businesses. They want to attract the best, make money off of students and dreamers.
This particular ivy league, Columbia University, has been marketing their Post Bacc. in General Studies via e-mail flyers and what not. It has become one of those vocational school marketing individuals (anyway they can) into their school. They had easy deadlines you can miss because ‘THEY are still ACCEPTING applications’. They’ll have flashing e-mails saying, “It is not late to follow your dreams. Apply TODAY.”
Post bacc programs from my research are for people that either have money or are willing to be in debt for a long time. It’s for us suckers that are career changers and didn’t do well in our undergraduate studies — I call us the ‘Second Change’ group. A 3.3 GPA just doesn’t cut it people, you need that 3.5-4.0 GPA.
Thankfully, I wasn’t accepted into Columbia. All I received was an impersonal letter, a photocopy on nice paper with their watermark on it. IT was the same one that matched the one I had previously. I give them three more months for them to send me emails to ask me to apply again.
