An association of religious schools has formed a new commission to share recent successes in areas of access and affordability with their secular counterparts.
The Commission on Faith-based Colleges and Universities recently was announced by the American Council on Education, a lobbying group for about 1,600 college and university leaders. The new commission comes after data from the National Center for Education Statistics showed that religious schools grew by 82 percent from 1980 to 2020, while the national average was 57 percent, according to research by Religion News Service.
In one report, students impacted by Covid and lockdowns were shown to be drawn to private religious universities. According to Christianity Today, “Grace College, marking its 75th anniversary in Winona Lake, Indiana, grew by 465 new undergraduates, and Taylor University, also in Indiana, added 606 students to its rolls.”
George Fox University, Taylor University, The Catholic University of America, Pepperdine University, Yeshiva University, the University of Notre Dame and Dillard University are among the participating members. Yeshiva, a Jewish college in New York City, is now offering a masters degree for Christian students.
“ACE is honored to support and convene this important commission,” said Ted Mitchell, the organization’s president. “Faith-based institutions connect feelings of belief and belonging with intellectual expression and considering the social, economic and environmental challenges facing us today, we can ill afford for religious universities to be hidden.”
The commission will be cochaired by Shirley Hoogstra, president of the Council for Christian Colleges & Universities, and Clark Gilbert, commissioner of the Latter-day Saints’ Church Educational System. Hoogstra pointed to initiatives at Southeastern University in Lakeland, Fla/, which offers lower-cost access to higher education.
Southeastern, affiliated with the Assemblies of God, has reduced most of its requirements for its courses of study in fields such as psychology, business and ministry to 120 credit hours, which can include off-site study at evangelical churches in 44 states and some online learning. At those sites, students seeking bachelor’s degrees pay $8,486 a year, or a total tuition of about $34,000 for four years. Tuition for a year on its traditional campus is $30,432.
“Too many institutions are looking at the dollar amount, and they’re not looking at the time and effort,” said Michael Steiner, Southeastern’s vice president of innovation of his school. “And what we found is that when you focus on the time it takes a student to graduate, you naturally decrease the cost.”
Hoogstra said member schools are “confident and unapologetic about the fact that faith helps people have meaning and purpose.”
–Dwight Widaman | Metro Voice