This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Grace Mullins, a rising senior and sociology major from Indiana at Berea College, a private liberal arts work college in Kentucky. This story has been edited for length and clarity.
I wouldn’t have been able to afford college without taking out a lot of student debt.
As a student at Berea College, I don’t pay tuition; the school was the only way I could graduate without an insane amount of debt that would follow me for the rest of my life.
For me, the only things that I really have to cover are housing and meal plans. Most people I know are paying less than $500 a semester, and I know a lot of people who are getting money back.
My parents are college-educated, but they also had a lot of debt and were paying it off while I was growing up. I saw that part of our budget was paying off their student loans, and I feel so incredibly blessed that I won’t have to worry about that.
I’m not graduating completely debt-free — I have a little under $10,000 in loans — but I think I’ll be able to pay them off by the time I graduate.
I always thought I was going to be a teacher
Courtesy of Grace Mullins
I always loved working with kids. Up until my freshman year of college, I was dead set on being an elementary school teacher. I had spent pretty much 18 years of my life planning to become a teacher and doing everything I could to prepare to be the best teacher possible.
I found out about Berea during my college search, and I realized with the current world and how high the cost of education is — and how little educators end up getting paid — that Berea was going to be the best model for me to actually be able to graduate and afford to live and afford to be a teacher.
The first people I told about it were my grandma, my aunts, and my uncle, and they didn’t believe it existed. They were like, “That’s not a real school.” I remember nobody in my high school believing that it was real.
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At Berea, every student has a job
Everybody has a job on campus. All students are required to work at least 10 hours a week starting their freshman year.
You submit your résumé, they assign a job based on it, and then, for the next three years, you’re allowed to apply and pick your own job.
In my freshman year, based on my experience in childcare, I was assigned to work in the child development lab. Every morning, I would wake up at 7 a.m. and walk down to the lab, and I would change diapers and feed babies. I loved it.
Jim West/UCG/Universal Images Group via Getty Images
Now, I work as a Resident Advisor in the dormitories.
By the time I graduate, four years of work experience will already bulk up my résumé. Being part of a labor college is something that I’ll always be very proud of.
Time management is a huge thing — especially in my job now, I’ve learned so many leadership skills because I’m in a management position.
Students have classes, work, and clubs; some are student-athletes. It can be stressful — we call it “Berea Busy” — but people find a routine because this is how we get to the end goal: graduation.
The tuition-free model gave me room to change my mind
When I got to Berea, I took a sociology class and realized there was a lot more to the world for me than just being a teacher.
Berea gave me the ability to kind of not know what I wanted to do at first, and I had enough support to figure it out, learn, and gain experience that would get me into a job someday.
You can’t really get a job right out of graduation with a sociology degree that isn’t working in a nonprofit, but because I’m graduating with zero debt, I feel a lot more inclined to pursue grad school.
Berea has so many opportunities to help us get into grad schools, make connections that will get us there, and secure funding that I feel a lot safer going with sociology.
I feel ready for the future
Courtesy of Grace Mullins
At Berea, you can do pretty much any job that you might want to pursue. You can find a job on campus that will help you build those skills.
Even if I step out into the world and I’m not as prepared as I thought, I think I’ll be able to get through it thanks to the support network the school has given me.
Editor’s Note: Berea College is one of 10 federally recognized work colleges, in which every resident student is required to work as part of their education, and has not charged tuition since 1892. In August, the school announced it would begin covering the full cost of attendance for all students through loan-free financial aid packages starting in Fall 2027.