An Interesting Read

I am going to post the entire article at the end of this blog, but some key portions raise a few quality questions.

Basically, the article is about Berea College. Berea is interesting in that it only recruits student's from low income families and charges them nothing to attend school. The food they eat is grown on campus, the furniture is made in various courses and each student is required to work a 10 hour-a-week job. The majority of the student's expenses, however, are paid for with the college's massive endowment of $1.1 billion.

Most universities have large endowments, although many are no where near the size of Berea's. It does raise an interesting question though: As the economy hits the shitter, are we doing enough to help students pay for their educations?

Here at the University of Florida we're having programs, as well as jobs, cut left and right. Tuition rates are steadily rising, funding is being cut yet UF sits on top of $1.2 billion -- a number that will probably continue to rise.

Obviously, I don't think it would be a good idea for every institution of higher learning to adopt the Berea model, but maybe we could do more. I mean that is a hell of a lot of money just sitting there. Are we waiting for a rainy day to crack the massive piggy bank? It would seem this is some sort of a rainy day. Maybe we need to look more closely at the piggy bank.

Here's the article. Give it a gander.