How Berea College Makes Tuition Free with its Endowment
Beware friendly Berea-- of the temptation to change your tuition free-stance, even a little bit.  It&#x27;s a slippery slope.<p>Rice University was founded in 1912 with an endowment and grants and the stipulation in its very charter saying &quot;no tuition&quot;, but then the administrators moved to change the charter (to eliminate the racist &quot;white&quot; requirement) and as part of that also, guess what, moved to start charging (1965) rather than depending on the endowment.<p>The tuition has grown steadily since, from 0 to a third the price of comparable private schools in the 90s (and comparable price to public universities) to now be a pretty full-freight $50k&#x2F;year.<p>This, combined with the steadily increasing tuition across all universities -- (inflation eased in 1982 but colleges kept increasing rates discovering the market would allow them to charge more) -- has cynically angered me for some time.<p>Unlike a business, the tax-sheltered endowments fuel a bit more cynicism than just a raw price increase.  There was a joke at Princeton back in the 90s that if the board of directors ever allowed the university to spend down the endowment, they could fund ever-increasing tuition for all students for the next thousand years.  Is perpetuity truly needed&#x2F;healthy?<p>An education is supposed to free a person, not put them in bondage&#x2F;slavery.<p>An endowment should free and empower the students (and thus our civilization) as they start their lives, not the administrators and faculty and institution.<p>Beware, you educators and administrators who put chains on your students to feather your nest and attempt to increase your prestige!<p>Beware you administrators who create unnecessary buildings with dozens of spaces empty 90% of the time all to woo professors or create your own mini-legacy. And then claim the university is meeting glowing &quot;sustainability&quot; and energy efficiency objectives! (You may get to stay in your office but the degree of walking for students ever-increases and now shuttles are needed!)<p>Beware you ranking agencies who weight how much a university spends per student as a factor in how good the university is!<p>Beware you congresspeople who make it easier for universities to charge more by creating huge student loan programs that allow students to go into great debt and subtly mis-direct their ambitions and outcomes towards those which allow them to service their debt!<p>OK, rant out. Thanks for passing along the article.  There has been some progress at the above named institutions to provide tuition for lower-income families.  I don&#x27;t consider it adequate to address all my points.