I just dropped off my youngest cousin at Westmont last week. It is her freshman year. My aunt & uncle were strong as they said goodbye to their youngest. Hayley is for sure to have a great time and a great experience at Westmont. I pray for her and that God would grow her into the young lady that he wants her to be. Tim and Debbie (my aunt and uncle) are scheduled to pay $38,000 a year for the next 4-5 years. This amazes me.
I can't quite understand how Christian schools can ethically charge this much for tuition. It simply amazes me. It doesn't matter what Christian school you choose to go to. Invariably, you are looking at plus or minus $120,000 in school loans by the end of your time there. I really don't know when this became okay.
It's as if all of the sudden if you are a young person who wants to get a Christian education and get trained for the ministry you are looking at immediate debt. The trade off doesn't seem fair.
Little selfless plug time- Eternity Bible College (where I teach Theology and Hermeneutics) is a smaller/newer Christian institution that is looking at the current trend of cost in Christian education and coming up with creative and healthy ways to train young persons for the ministry and graduate them without debt and ready to do God's work in the Church and the world... because of their funding and faculty choices, classes run around $50 per unit (you can check out the link to their site). How about that for selfless plug time?
But seriously, something needs to be done about Christian education. Since when did a Christian education mean automatic debt? This brings up other questions to my mind.. but I will ask these in my next blog. I've got to go for now. just wanted to toss that out on the table for you to chew on. If you've got any thoughts in this area of where we are in Christian education, how we got here, and how we can think this is okay- let me know.
2 comments:
you know, i'd never thought about that... which is odd considering I went to Point Loma... talk about debt :)
It really is too bad. I guess they figure that if people will pay it, they can charge it. It would be interesting to find out who sets those prices... because I'm sure that it CANNOT cost that much to actually go there.
Now you've got me thinking...
I wonder how it affects the priorities of graduating students when the first thing they are faced with after graduation is hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of debt. It makes it hard to focus on living/working missionally when you are forced to make a certain amount of money out of college in order to pay off the education that supposedly taught you how to think and live like Jesus.
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