Berea College

Berea College is a private liberal arts work college in Berea, Kentucky, United States. Founded in 1855, it was the first college in the Southern United States to be coeducational and racially integrated. It admitted non-White students from as early as 1866 until 1904, and again after 1954.
The college participates in federal work-study and work college programs that cover the remaining tuition fees after subtracting the total sum a student receives from Pell Grant, other grants, and scholarships. Most of the college's students come from southern Appalachia but students come from more than 40 states in the United States and 70 other countries. Approximately half of them identify as people of color.
Berea offers bachelor's degrees in 33 majors. It incorporates a mandatory work-study program in which students do a minimum of 10 hours per week of work for the college.

History

Founded in 1855 by the abolitionist and Augusta College graduate John Gregg Fee, Berea College admitted both black and white students in a fully integrated curriculum, making it the first non-segregated, coeducational college in the South and one of a handful of institutions of higher learning to admit both male and female students in the mid-19th century. The college began as a one-room schoolhouse that also served as a church on Sundays on land that was granted to Fee by politician and abolitionist Cassius Marcellus Clay. Fee named the new community after the biblical Berea. Although the school's first articles of incorporation were adopted in 1859, slavery supporters forced Fee and the teachers out of the area that year.
Fee spent the Civil War years raising funds for the school, trying to provide for his family in Cincinnati, and working at Camp Nelson. He returned afterward to continue his work at Berea. He spent nearly 18 months working mostly at Camp Nelson, where he helped provide facilities for the freedmen and their families, as well as teaching and preaching. He helped get funds for barracks, a hospital, a school, and a church.
In 1866, Berea's first full year after the war, it had 187 students, 96 Black and 91 white. It began with preparatory classes to ready students for study at the college level. In 1869, the first college students were admitted, and the first bachelor's degrees were awarded in 1873. Almost all the South's private and state colleges were racially segregated. Berea was the main exception until a new state law in 1904 forced its segregation. The college challenged the law in state court and appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court in Berea College v. Kentucky. When the challenge failed, the college had to become an all-white school, but it raised funds to establish the Lincoln Institute in 1912 in Simpsonville, Kentucky, to educate Black students. In 1950, when the Day Law was amended to allow integration of schools at the college level, Berea resumed its integrated policies.
File:BereaCollegeAd1900.png|thumb|170px|An advertisement for Berea College from 1900, placed in a Black newspaper in Minnesota
In 1911, the college restricted students to eating at college-owned facilities. A local businessman sued but the Kentucky Court of Appeals upheld a lower court ruling that the college's restriction was legal.
In 1925, advertiser Bruce Barton, a future congressman, sent a letter to 24 wealthy men in America to raise funds for the college. Every letter was returned with a minimum of $1,000 in donation. During World War II, Berea was one of 131 colleges nationally that took part in the V-12 Navy College Training Program, which offered students a path to a navy commission.
Until 1968, Berea provided pre-college education in addition to a college-level curriculum. That year, the elementary and secondary schools were discontinued in favor of focusing on undergraduate college education.

Presidents

Presidents of the college have included:

	Name	Years as president
1	Henry Fairchild
2	William Boyd Stewart
3	William Goodell Frost
4	William J. Hutchins
5	Francis S. Hutchins
6	Willis D. Weatherford
7	John B. Stephenson
8	Larry Shinn
9	Lyle D. Roelofs
10	Cheryl Nixon

Academics

Berea College offers 33 majors and 39 minors from which its 1,600 students can choose. Students who wish to pursue a field of study that cannot be met through an established major may propose an independent major, provided they meet the criteria in the college catalog's definition of a major. The student must secure independent major advisers. Its most popular majors, based on 2021 graduates, were:

Business Administration and Management
Computer and Information Sciences
Biology/Biological Sciences
Psychology
Human Development and Family Studies
Mass Communication/Media Studies
Engineering Technologies/Technicians
Political Science and Government

To ensure every student has access to fully experience a liberal arts education, the college provides significant funding to assist students in studying abroad. Berea students are also eligible for the Thomas J. Watson Fellowship, which provides funding for a year of study abroad after graduation.
All students are required to attend the college on a full-time basis. They are also required to attend at least six convocation events each semester and receive academic credit. The convocations are designed as a supplement to the curriculum by encouraging educational experience and cultural enrichment. Topics range across academic fields and include lectures, symposia, concerts, and the performing arts. These events are free to Berea College students and open to the public.

Rankings and outcomes

In 2024, Washington Monthly ranked Berea College first in the U.S. among national liberal arts colleges based on its contribution to the public good, as measured by social mobility, research, and promoting public service. The New York Times also ranked Berea first in its 2023 College Access Index based on economic diversity. The 2025 annual ranking of U.S. News & World Report categorizes Berea as "more selective" and rates it 40th overall, first in "Service Learning," second for "Most Innovative Schools," tied for 9th in "Best Undergraduate Teaching", and fifth in "Top Performers in Social Mobility" among U.S. liberal colleges. Kiplinger's Personal Finance placed Berea 35th in its 2019 ranking of 149 best-value U.S. liberal arts colleges.
According to 2022 data from College Scorecard, Berea College graduates earn a median salary of $40,000 ten years after their entry into the institution. Mathematics majors earn around $18,000, biology $29,000, psychology $35,000, and nursing $57,000. 51% of Berea graduates earn higher than a typical high school graduate of the corresponding area.

Scholarships and work program

Berea College provides all students with full-tuition scholarships and many receive support for room and board as well. Berea College charges no tuition beyond the total amount a student receives in Pell Grant and other grants and scholarships. Every admitted student at Berea College is granted the equivalent of a four-year, full-tuition scholarship that covers the remaining tuition fees after deducting any grants and scholarships the student may have received. Admission to the college is granted only to students who need financial assistance ; in general, applications are accepted only from those whose family income falls within the bottom 40% of U.S. households. About 75% of the college's incoming class is drawn from the Appalachian region of the South and some adjoining areas, and about 8% are international students. Generally, no more than one student is admitted from a given country in a single year. This policy ensures that 70 or more nationalities are usually represented in the student body of Berea College. All international students are admitted on full scholarships with the same regard for financial need as U.S. students.
In order to support its extensive scholarship program, Berea College has one of the largest financial reserves of any American college when measured on a per-student basis. The endowment was $1.6 billion as of June 30, 2021. The base of Berea College's finances is dependent on substantial contributions from alumni and from individuals, foundations, and corporations that support the mission of the college. A solid investment strategy increased the endowment from $150 million in 1985 to its current amount.
In 2017 the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act enacted an excise tax of 1.4% of endowment incomes that exceed net assets of at least $500,000 per student. Due to the size of Berea's endowment and number of full-time enrolled students, this tax bill would have reduced the number of students it could serve. The Bipartisan Budget Act of 2018 provided an exemption for colleges and universities with fewer than 500 tuition-paying students, making Berea College exempt as it provides tuition-free education to all students.
As a work college, Berea has a student work program in which all students work on campus 10 or more hours per week. Berea is one of nine federally recognized work colleges in the United States and one of two in Kentucky to have mandatory work study programs. Employment opportunities range from busing tables at the Boone Tavern Hotel, a historic business owned by the college, to leading campus tours for visitors and prospective students, or making brooms, ceramics and woven items in Student Craft. Other job duties include janitorial labor, building management, resident assistant, teaching assistant, food service, gardening and grounds keeping, information technology, woodworking, and secretarial work. Berea College has helped make the a center for quality arts and crafts.
As of 2022, students are paid an hourly wage from $5.60 to $8.60 by the college, based on the WLS level attached to individual labor positions. The college regularly increases student pay on a yearly basis, but it has never been equivalent to the federal minimum wage in the school's history. Because of the scheduling demands of both an academic requirement and a labor requirement, students are not allowed to work at off-campus jobs.