Controlling college costs: Do Christians have the answer?
What costs more: $89,200 for a new Mercedes GLS SUV or a year at Harvard or the University of Southern California?
According to the Associated Press, it’s the latter. There are now multiple…

What costs more: $89,200 for a new Mercedes GLS SUV or a year at Harvard or the University of Southern California?
According to the Associated Press, it’s the latter. There are now multiple colleges charging $90,000 or more for a year at their school, with USC topping the list at $95,000. Multiplied by four years for a college degree, that’s nearly $400,000 – or enough to buy a nice home in most states.
Even if most students aren’t paying the full price because of financial aid, loans and grants, the cost alone raises some obvious issues.
College has long been expensive, but it seems the price has gone off the charts in recent years (inflation-adjusted, it’s up 200% since 1963, and 37% since 2010, according to the Education Data Initiative).
The record inflation of the Biden administration didn’t help, nor his bumbling efforts to discharge massive amounts of student loan debt, which might have emboldened schools to raise prices. (Barack Obama also bears some of the blame, since his administration led the charge for the federal takeover of student loans, which caused lending and the ensuing debt to skyrocket.)
Even though the rate of increase has actually slowed this year, it’s too little, too late.
For more than a decade, millions of students and their families have been questioning the necessity and value of a college education. Gone are the days when it was just assumed that successful high school students would go to college and that you had to earn a degree to make a good living (although on average, degree holders still earn more).
With the growth of the internet and the boom of things like cryptocurrency, alternative means of wealth generation are available to people regardless of their education level.
Add to that the astronomical costs of many universities and it’s no wonder more young people are sitting it out, choosing instead to work, start a business or enter a career that requires substantially less training (the trades, while less “cool” than some jobs, often pay well and have great earning potential, for instance).
Contrast the ballooning tuition costs at state schools with three Christian universities that offer degrees for a fraction of in-state tuition, which is $29,000 per year on average. You could earn a bachelor’s from all three of these schools and spend less combined than one year at a state school, and less than half the cost of a high-priced place like USC. (Maybe then you could afford the downpayment on the Mercedes!)
Plus, these programs encourage community, collaboration and the formation of the whole person, not just the mind. They are free of woke ideology and indoctrination, offer accessible training, which is even free in some cases, and graduate students with little or no debt.
It’s good to see Christians innovating and taking the lead back from the secular culture, even if it means redeeming a broken system that too often depersonalizes education.
Here at the Lion, we report often on education innovators in the K-12 space, men and women who’ve dared to ask “Why?” They’ve questioned if school has to meet five days per week (it doesn’t), why it requires so many staff and administrators (it often doesn’t), and why it must be done in a sterile classroom setting instead of integrated with the outdoors, community and home.
The rising homeschool. hybrid and microschool movement is a testimony that more can be done with less. Private schools have proven for years they can produce superior results with far fewer resources than traditional public school. And yet we continue to fund the insatiable education beast.
The entrepreneurial spirit that accelerated during COVID-19 is here to stay. As school choice grows and takes hold in new states, the hunger for higher education alternatives is sure to grow as well.
Gone are the days of accepting the status quo that college is necessary, expensive and has to result in excessive debt. Gone, too, is the acquiescence that after raising our kids for 18 years we must ship them off to a system designed to rob them of their faith, their heart and their soul.
It’s encouraging to see Christians innovating in the higher education space. And these programs can help high schoolers now through dual credit options, not to mention homeschooling parents and Christian educators of any ilk who want to brush up on their skills.
The news in education, and higher education, is we are not trapped and better ways exist.
Christians are leading the way.
In 2025 and beyond, let freedom ring!