Tuition-Free Since 1892: Berea College and Finaid Ultra-Minimalism

You have to squint to see the loans

The cool thing about financial aid is that there are so many ways to go about it - so many different structures can work. There are six building-blocks in the federal financial aid system, all of which are being used in size, somewhere. Some universities originate hundreds of Direct Stafford Loans every day, whereas others have models that are increasingly skewed towards PLUS and GradPLUS. It is refreshing to see a financial model that is into neither of those.

Berea has one of the most interesting financing structures, as it fueled entirely by federal grants (Pell Grants) and endowment returns.

In 2023, Berea College issued $413,096 in Direct Stafford Loans and $7,076,166 in Pell Grants. Berea College is small - there were 1,450 undergraduates in 2023 and there are no graduate students.

As endowments continue to compound, it will be deligthful to see whether there are more attempts at the Berea model.