Berea College

Founded more than 150 years ago with a mission to make higher education accessible to poor white and free Black students, Berea College was the first school in the US South to be sexually and racially integrated. Founder John Fee was an abolitionist who started an anti-slavery church in 1853, which also served as a one-room school. Fee and his colleagues were expelled from Madison County, Kentucky by pro-slavery factions in 1859, but they returned after the Civil War and officially incorporated the college, named Berea after an open-minded town in the Bible. Its first class, in the 1866–67 school year, consisted of 96 Black students and 91 white students.

Berea’s mission has adapted to changing times. Its 2022–23 student population of 1,450 boasted national and international learners alike, but the private, liberal arts college has remained committed to educating diverse students from the Appalachian region. In the fall of 2022, 27 percent of the student body identified as Black, 15 percent as Hispanic, and 40 percent of the student body came from Appalachia (including 33 percent of all Black and 34 percent of all Hispanic students). Additionally, 8 percent of all students are international, representing 71 countries. Berea has gender-inclusive housing, and the recently founded bell hooks center equips students with ways “to imagine and enact new relationships” beyond gender and racial hierarchy.

What unites students is their academic potential and economic need. Berea College covers all students’ tuition—valued at roughly $44,300 a year per student— with federal grant money for low-income families, ardent fundraising, and its $1.4 billion endowment. A “financial eligibility requirement” means that 97 percent of students are undergraduates who have significant financial need. The cost of housing, meals, and books are prorated based on family income, with average family income estimated at $29,296 in 2019. In the same year, 59 percent of students in the incoming class had their costs fully covered. Nationally, the average Class of 2020 graduate in the United States carries $32,731 in student-loan debt. In contrast, 49 percent of Berea students graduated debt-free. As the average amount of student debt increases across the United States, it is decreasing at Berea. Over half of Berea’s students are of the first-generation of their families to attend college.

The school fiercely and innovatively breaks the mold of today’s elite colleges in both cost to its students and its community and service-oriented approach. In the mid1960s, Berea initiated programs for students to engage in community service in the Appalachian region and beyond, a legacy that continues through the college’s Center for Excellence in Learning Through Service. In 1970, Berea created the Appalachian Center, which established a curriculum in Appalachian Studies that informs and empowers students both from and outside the region. With the motto “Tradition, Diversity, Change,” the Center’s work embraces all of Appalachia’s diverse peoples, celebrates their cultural richness, and explores tangible ways for students to work with these communities.

Berea regards students as regional and international investments, not as revenue streams. Student organizations at Berea are active in different religious, gender, environmental, and social justice movements—in the spirit of the college’s motto, drawn from the Book of Acts: “God has made of one blood all peoples of the Earth.” Community-service initiatives sponsored by the college are plentiful, such as Berea Kids Eat. In the city of Berea, over 85 percent of youth enrolled in school participate in the free National School Breakfast and Lunch Program. Through coordinating resources from local farmers, the college, and state and federal programs, the Berea Summer Food Service Program ensures kids in the region receive food year-round. Meals are free for youth with no income requirements, registrations, or limits on the number of meals.

Unlike other private institutions with robust endowments, Berea does not funnel funds to build extravagant amenities to attract prospective students. Instead, it maintains a careful budget and internally produces much of what it needs. To offset the cost of operating the college, all Berea students work at least 10 hours per week in over 120 different departments. They serve as teaching assistants, groundskeepers, information technologists, staff at the college-owned hotel, artisans in the workshop that produces and sells mountain crafts, and more. Students also tend to the 250-acre organic farm situated on campus, producing beef, goat, chicken, pork, and vegetables for the school’s cafeteria.

Students receive a Labor Transcript upon graduation that chronicles their work experiences. The Labor Program is guided by five learning goals and expectations that illustrate the program’s commitment to developing both hard and soft skills, critical thinking and problem solving. The program also supports students to gain experience in work roles that are relevant to their fields of study. Roughly half of all students do internships as well. In short, students are para-professionals who help operate all aspects of the college, an experience they recognize as preparing them to get things done. Berea is one of only nine federally recognized Work Colleges in the United States, which are subject to special regulation by the Department of Education.

Although graduates find jobs around the nation and are successful in national graduate and professional schools, Berea College’s attention to learning about and serving the region helps students see the value of long-term local commitment. Although educated youth are known to leave the region, 67 percent of all Berea’s graduates from Kentucky and elsewhere in Appalachia since 2010 have decided to stay.

Faculty and staff salaries at Berea are lower than at other colleges, but professors are no less qualified. Over 90 percent of the full-time faculty hold the highest available degree in their field. These professionals are deeply dedicated to the college’s students and ideals. To help faculty and staff better understand the lives of their students, Berea offers continuing education, including a pair of week-long tours. One brings staff and faculty into Appalachia to learn about the history, economics, politics, religions, and stereotypes of the region. Another is a civil rights tour through Tennessee, Alabama, and Mississippi. With a ten-to-one student-to-faculty ratio at the college, knowledge and understanding of students’ backgrounds is crucial for professors.

Despite pressures to commercialize and standardize, Berea College strives to realize its roots and reason for being: the values of inclusion, equity, and impartial love.