Giving Compass' Take:

· The Atlantic profiles Berea College, a small school in Kentucky that has paid for every enrollment using its endowment for the past 126 years. And every student gets a job.

• Could other colleges replicate the "work study on steroids" model that Berea uses? Why couldn't Ivy League schools — with their sizable endowments — tread the same path?

• Read more about other "work colleges" and how they operate.

There’s a small burst of air that explodes from every clap. And when hundreds of people are clapping in unison, it begins to feel like a breeze — one that was pulsing through the Phelps Stokes Chapel at Berea College in Kentucky. The students and staff that had gathered here were stomping, clapping, and singing along, as they were led in a rendition of the Civil Rights era anthem, “Ain’t Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Around.”

They had packed into the wood-framed building for a convocation address, where the speaker, Diane White-Clayton, would be talking about “Jesus, the Ultimate Rebel with a Cause.” Berea does not have a sectarian affiliation, but the remnants of its Christian foundation are readily apparent — so much so that, as Alicestyne Turley, a history professor at the college, told me, “we have students who come here who think they’re coming to a Christian college,” à la Liberty University or Notre Dame.

White’s address was dotted with the markings of a Sunday sermon — not the stuffy kind, but the kind I’d heard time and again growing up — the jokes, the whooping, the lessons that come in threes. In her speech, White explained to the students that it didn't take supernatural abilities to do great things — only a purpose — and that all the evidence they needed could be found on the campus where they stood.

Berea College isn’t like most other colleges. It was founded in 1855 by a Presbyterian minister who was an abolitionist. It was the first integrated, co-educational college in the South. And it has not charged students tuition since 1892. Every student on campus works, and its labor program is like work-study on steroids.

Read the full article about the Kentucky college where tuition is free by Adam Harris at The Atlantic.