College of the Ozarks: Hard Work U
Near Branson, Missouri
Just south of Branson, on a bluff called Point Lookout above the White River, sits a college where no full-time student pays a dime in tuition. It is College of the Ozarks, and it proudly calls itself Hard Work U. The idea goes back to nineteen oh one, when a Presbyterian pastor in nearby Forsyth proposed a school for the mountain children who could not afford an education.
The School of the Ozarks opened in nineteen oh six in a modest building atop a hill, and from the very beginning it made a bargain with its students. Instead of paying tuition, they would work. That bargain still holds today.
Full-time students labor fifteen hours a week at an on-campus job, plus two full work weeks during breaks, and in exchange the college charges them no tuition, covering the cost through their labor and through donations. Fire destroyed the first building in nineteen fifteen, and the school relocated up the river here to Point Lookout. It became a four-year college in nineteen sixty-five and took the name College of the Ozarks in nineteen ninety-four.
It remains one of the most unusual and disciplined schools in America, where an education is earned in the most literal sense.
