STAYING COMMITTED
It’s a challenging time for higher education. One of the most important sectors of our society has seen a loss of esteem by many Americans in the last decade. Many are disturbed by the increases of debt among students, now reaching more than $1.814 trillion. Others are questioning its value to economic changes amid such debt, believing that for many careers, a four-year degree is not worth the cost. Some raise doubt whether higher education prepares its students for the world awaiting them amid what many perceive as a world increasingly marked by rapid change. Finally, challenges from the federal government have quickened, with increased rulemaking, lawsuits and executive orders.
Gallup has been charting this decline. In 2010, 75 percent of Americans said a college education was “very important”; this year, that percentage fell to 35 percent, an astonishing drop.
Berea has not been immune from these challenges, and they have compelled us to work to protect and promote Berea’s distinctive mission. Questions and new interpretations about access to higher education have led us to amplify Berea’s founding mission to open Berea’s doors to those long excluded from higher education, such as women and newly freed
people of color. Berea is a
beacon nationally.
As affordability questions mount, Berea has not just sustained its no-tuition commitment since 1892 but has now broadened the level of affordability, announcing to prospective students that Berea’s Financial Freedom Pledge will never ask them to pay more than what the Student Aid Index in the FAFSA® requires.
Amid doubts about colleges not preparing students for the world of work, Berea is strengthening its historic work program to enhance learning, exploration and discernment, and offering a free internship for every student. Today, Berea students merely have to dream their internship dreams unencumbered by worries that they can’t pay to make those dreams possible. At Berea,
the impossible becomes
the possible.
Because of these changes, we are conveying a bit less humbly to a national audience that Berea has been the future of higher education for 170 years. It has answered some of the most vexing questions to higher education since Rev. John G. Fee had a vision for a different kind of school that would prepare its graduates for a different kind of society, one based on impartial love.
In a divided society, Berea’s multifaceted and distinctive mission can bring people together, all grounded in the ideal that God has made of one blood all peoples of the earth. Students from all perspectives and experiences come to a welcoming campus to discover how to learn across differences. Alumni and friends from all perspectives come together to support a college that continues to live out its Great Commitments. And even politicians from both sides of the aisle can champion a college located where the Bluegrass meets the Appalachians that represents the kind of higher education for which people can rally.
