As Christian schools adapt their educational models to a hostile market, many are attempting to offer free tuition to some or all of their students.
Starting this semester, Sattler College, a small Anabaptist college in Boston, announcement that it will not charge any tuition fees to its students. President Zack Johnson said some students came to his office in happy tears after the announcement.
Uriah O’Terry is a student at Sattler and the first in his family to go to college. He said that in recent years, finding the money to pay his tuition fees was “a point of stress” and he had to take out a loan. He is happy with the change.
“I am being prepared for an effective Christian life, without the burden of debt,” he said in an email. “So the way I pay for my ‘free’ college education is by serving Jesus and the people around me with the skills and knowledge I learned at Sattler.
Geneva College in Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania, also announced that in fall 2024 it will would not charge tuition fees for Pennsylvania students whose families earn less than $70,000 per year. In fall 2023, Grace College in Winona Lake, Indiana, began to offer free tuition for Indiana students whose families earn less than $65,000. This program continue to next school year, now for families earning less than $60,000.
Hope College, in Holland, Michigan, is in its early stages third year of a pilot program to offer free lessons. It currently covers tuition for a small group of students who go through a character-based application as it attempts to raise funds to cover more of its students.
“The response has been very varied, from people who are inspired by it to people who think we’re completely crazy,” said Matthew Scogin, president of the college.
Hope asks students benefiting from free lessons to sign an alliance that they will give each year, regardless of the amount after graduation. “We went to this amazing phrase that Jesus uses in Matthew 10:8, where he says: You have received freely, now give freely. And we said, ‘Let’s see if we can apply this to our current business model,'” Scogin said.
Sattler President Johnson wants the tuition-free model to encourage students to choose an educational institution where they will experience Christian formation without worrying about money. This year, most of Sattler’s freshmen are the first in their families to attend college, Johnson said.
“Creating discipleship opportunities for young Christians is one of the most important jobs of the Church: truly investing in these years,” Johnson said. “If our young people do not choose to be discipled in these early years, some of us should be tearing our hair out over why people choose other alternatives. »
Sattler calls his plan an “entrustment” model, “offering education in exchange for a student’s commitment to the principles of kingdom service and financial gratitude…using the evangelical concepts of generosity and service to address the problem of student debt before it even begins. »
Sattler’s Johnson said his statistical modeling “showed that we would likely receive more money as an institution over time if we doubled down on our generosity and gratitude, instead of charging an amount that is usually reduced.” … It’s not certain, but I bet we will be better funded in the future because of this decision.”
Sattler, a school that began operations in 2016 and has between 60 and 80 students, could make it work, according to Johnson, because it has fixed costs, so additional students don’t add expenses. Students still pay for room and board, with subsidies in some cases.
Willem de Ruijter, vice president of enrollment and marketing at Geneva College, said in a statement that the school “continued to work to make a rigorous Christian education accessible to all.” The school said “strong financial leadership and good management by the boards and alumni” allowed it to offer free tuition.
Christian higher education is going through both the best of times and the worst of times. Some schools are view registration registrationwhile more than 18 schools have closed since the pandemic. New York City only two evangelical colleges have closed their doors last year, as their enrollment declined and their debt increased.
Some Christian schools have already firmly established a tuition-free model. Undergraduate students at Moody Bible Institute have their tuition fees covered by donors, but the school requires students to apply for federal aid. The College of the Ozarks has a “tuition insurance scholarship” for its students, where they continue their studies on a work-study basis, and donors cover the remaining costs.
New tuition-free programs at Christian schools are emerging as states also attempt to establish more free tuition programs. New York, Indiana and Washington currently offering various versions of four-year tuition coverage for public universities, while a number of states also cover community college tuition.
John Aubrey Douglass, a higher education researcher at the University of California, Berkeley, is more skeptical about how these programs will work financially.
“The political movement in favor of free education offers no meaningful plan to compensate for the loss of income”, Aubrey wrote in a 2020 article For International higher education. “Universities are like other organizations in society: if they lose significant revenue, the consequences can include a reduction in access and the number of courses offered, as well as an increase in the student/faculty ratio. »
But the WE Upjohn Institute for Employment Research studied such models for Illinois’ governor in 2021 and found that the state’s offering of free courses would more than cover program costs thanks to the higher earning potential of graduates and other ripple effects.
Christian colleges do not have the taxpayer dollars available to state governments and do not receive these increased tax revenues from graduates with higher incomes. And none of these schools require income sharing after graduation, an experimental model this can allow educational institutions to not charge tuition fees. But these institutions think they can make it work for theological reasons.
Sattler and Hope are trying to focus on a spirit of giving through better alumni engagement of these programs. Sattler’s Johnson had viewed Hope’s pilot project as a model for getting rid of tuition. Sattler’s program cites the same Bible verse as Hope, Matthew 10:8, to receive freely, give freely. Johnson and Hope President Scogin had a conversation this fall about the model and how it might work.
One criticism of this model is that students will not have “skin in the game” and may not perform as well academically. Johnson maintains that students are always invested, not only paying for room and board, but also paying for their time.
Johnson himself was educated at the U.S. Air Force Academy and has long thought about what military academies can model for Christian higher education. Like a service academy, Sattler calls students to “kingdom-oriented service” after graduation, which could mean being a software developer or a missionary. Either way, he’s betting that graduates will feel more involved in the institution — by giving, later working at the school or serving on the board.
Hope’s Scogin acknowledged that this is an “uncertain model.” Even if, in my opinion, the current model is even more uncertain because it is breaking.”
Scogin said Hope was able to offer free classes in its small pilot program because the school was in a “strong position in terms of enrollment and budget.”
“God said this to Abraham: He blessed people to be a blessing,” Scogin said. “We are charging students an extraordinary amount of money at the poorest time of their lives. …Jesus creates this crazy upside down economy, in which he says that it is the poor, the humble and the meek who are actually closest to God. We therefore believe that Christians should be those who insist most on access to education. “
Additional reporting from Harvest Prude.
