Lindenwood University, a liberal arts college in St. Charles, Mo., has made the national news circuit with a unique barter program that allows students to pay for schooling with market hogs.

It was 1998 when Lindenwood University president Dennis Spellmann was first struck with the idea. Hog prices were at historical lows and the financial distress brought upon students from hog-farming families made tuition money hard to come by. Spellmann, who grew up on a farm himself, took a detached, rural-born and common-sense approach. The university would accept hogs for tuition.

The bartering arrangement was set so that a student could deliver $3,200 worth of hogs at live-market price to a USDA-approved processing facility. In turn, Lindenwood took delivery of the processed pork for use in its dining services program, crediting the student's account for the retail price of the meat minus processing and delivery fees. Tuition for full-time students at Lindenwood is $11,200.

For several years, the program moved along quietly with a handful of students using it to pay their tuition bills--and probably, on a balance sheet, the spread between market-price and retail made those hogs some of the most profitable around. Then, a few months ago, with its formal launch, the program became famous.

Lindenwood spokesman Scott Queen says that Lindenwood, which has increased enrollment some 10 fold in about as many years, recruits in rural areas because school administrators believe that good students from smaller high schools might get passed over by bigger schools.

To get the word out about the pork-for-tuition program, he wrote a press release targeted toward rural news outlets. The result was a lesson in the power of the press. Several small papers picked up the story, as did the Associated Press (AP). The AP is a collective news service with a "wire" that serves thousands of news outlets, which meant the press release generated news across the country.

It hit newspapers and radio stations along with local and national television. Reporters for ABC, National Public Radio, The Los Angeles Times, The Wall Street Journal and other media called on the university as they filed stories about "pork for tuition." The news even jumped the Atlantic Ocean with coverage by the British Broadcasting Corporation. It was a public relations coup.

But Queen is quick to put the attention in perspective.

"We're not out for recognition with this program," he said. "President Spellmann wants to help students. And we believe that the program helps Lindenwood University hold to its character of trying to be inclusive at a time when so many schools are trying to build their reputation with exclusivity."

Spellmann attributes much of the news coverage to the fact that the school is dealing with two things from which the larger public has become distant: agriculture and bartering. But, he said, it works.

"Bartering is older than money," Spellmann said. "Our founders bartered right here at Lindenwood 175 years ago. There are records in our archives, for instance, of people trading sacks of flour or other products to pay for school."

On the other hand, there was some media attention generated by people who didn't much care about the unique angle of barter or the education of rural students. As the story circulated, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) stepped in to decry the practice of accepting hogs for tuition. PETA's stance about the program is that it encourages "factory farming."

Queen said that Lindenwood didn't seek to incite PETA, but he believes that students from family farms might not be accurate targets for PETA's objections to certain agricultural practices.

Spellmann hasn't let PETA affect the program. He told a St. Louis Post Dispatch reporter that the Midwest is still where food comes from and that the program will continue.

"We are proud to be an independent institution," Spellmann told Today's Farmer. "As to political correctness, that's really not something we pay much attention to. We try to help people get an education here. And we help them get jobs. We not only want them to walk out of here and be good employees, but we want to help them become good people and good citizens."

Since its original launch, Spellmann has fine-tuned the program so that students need only deliver $2,200 worth of market-price hogs to participate. He has allotted funds for 50 students to take part in the program.

Ralph Pfremmer heads up Lindenwood's food services program. He said that once credits are arranged between the university and the student, the hogs are delivered and he works with the processor on what cuts and products will be needed. He typically accumulates enough of a particular cut to serve an entire meal--some 700 to 1,500 servings. There may be more logistics in dealing with whole hogs than simply purchasing specific cuts from outside vendors, but Pfremmer said that the pork they get through the program is of outstanding quality and it is good to the people who provide it.

Given the success of the pork-for-tuition program, Spellmann is doing research on a beef-for-tuition plan. As he thought about how a fed calf dresses out, Pfremmer observed, "That would mean a lot of hamburger." Turning to the quick math skills gained when planning 15,000 meals every 7 days, Pfremmer added, "But we probably go through 600 pounds of hamburger a week."