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Christianity Today, September, 2009

A New Way to Finance Education

For-profit Christian education is becoming more attractive.

Jocelyn Green | posted 9/11/2009 09:18AM

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Phoenix-based Grand Canyon University (GCU) made history when it made a $230 million public offering on the stock market last November. GCU, the first regionally accredited nonprofit college in American history to become a for-profit company, was the most successful IPO in 2008.

Since 2004, when GCU's board of directors sold the near-bankrupt school to Christian investors, its student body has grown by 10,000, mostly through online enrollment. For the nine months ending September 30, 2008, GCU reported 4.2 percent net income on revenue of $109.6 million, compared with .8 percent net income on $68.5 million in revenue for the year-earlier period.

Some Christian colleges under financial strain have explored following suit. Facing a $4 million budget shortfall for the 2008-09 fiscal year, Crichton College in East Memphis announced in February that it had entered a Definitive Asset Purchase Agreement with Significant Psychology, LLC. Its founder, education entrepreneur Michael K. Clifford, also GCU's vice chairman, will invest in the nondenominational evangelical school to expand its offerings to adult learners, mostly online.

"Lowering tuition to help provide easier access to a quality, values based education…is a critical component of our objective with Crichton,"Clifford stated in February. "We're happy to get the word out that a regionally accredited 68-year-old Christian college…is now more affordable in these tough economic times."

"Market-driven colleges [for-profits] are growing because they know how to market online learning and deliver learning in ways that the research shows are effective," says Robert C. Andringa, president emeritus of the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities. "While they do invest in their 'ground' campuses, the owners generate net profits through tuition in their online programs."

Critics of for-profit Christian colleges lament a perceived loss of Christ-centeredness. However, Brian Mueller, chief executive officer of GCU, says there hasn't been a loss.

"Our Christian heritage has not wavered,"says Mueller. "Most of our on-campus faculty teach within the context of a Christian worldview, and many of our students choose GCU because of its intentionally Christian focus. Chapel is still held weekly, and there is an active campus spiritual life program facilitating community outreach, mission trips, and incorporating Christian values throughout the student body."

Andringa notes that finding ways to be distinctly Christian is easier for on-campus programs than for larger online student bodies. "The key is who you hire,"he says. "But we should not hold a publicly traded Christian university serving 30,000-plus students around the world to the same measures that we would apply to a residential, denominationally owned campus of 2,000 students. These are apples and oranges. Both can make our world a better place to live."

Related Elsewhere:

This is a sidebar to the article, "Hard Choices for Higher Ed: In a bleak economy, Christian colleges reinvent themselves."

Our earlier coverage of Grand Canyon University includes:

Christian Ed That Pays Off | Grand Canyon University becomes the first for-profit Christian college. (Feb. 2, 2005)

Grand Canyon University Downsizes Tenured Professors | First for-profit Christian college in U.S. says contracts were honored but not renewed. (May 24, 2005)

More on education and the recession are available in our full coverage areas.

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September 2009, Vol. 53, No. 9

Comments (5)

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Nana38

September 16, 2009 11:21pm

I have checked the tuition at this university and they are about equivalent to other large universities in the United States. For profit education will end up exactly the way for profit health care has become. Only the wealthy will be able to afford it (but perhaps that is what they want????) and you will pay more to get less.

Allen

September 16, 2009 3:13pm

As someone who has been associated with this school for the past 8 years, having seen closely the transition from non-profit to for-profit, this I can tell you based on my experience, students, former students, colleagues, and former colleagues: when operating an investor driven for-profit model, the bottom line is $$$. Period. It can't be any other way. The culture I am familiar with at GCU is one driven by fear & control because higher education has been reduced to good customer service. Christianity Today you should be ashamed of yourself for your weak attempt at this article. Try a little investigation next time. Try interviewing a couple of students or staff and see what kind of response you get. GCU markets better than you publish. They took you to town on this one.

John

September 16, 2009 12:24pm

Nothing wrong with fiscal prudence, but market-driven Christian education is an oxymoron. We ought to be listenting to the guy who told us you can't serve both God and Mammon. Don't you think he might just have been right?

Concerned in Chicago

September 13, 2009 7:27pm

How is it that Christianity Today can print an article like this with absolutely no critical commentary on what Grand Canyon University is doing? The educational, ethical and pedagogical implications of a "for profit" university (read as an oxymoron) are staggering...or at least worthy of recognition. Rather than celebrate the virtues of a market-driven education that minimizes scholarship so as to extend a mediocre education to a larger number of people, the community of Christian educators should be rising up with unified voice against such a movement. As once transformative educational institutions become profit-driven enterprises with fewer on-campus students, fewer tenured professors and no ongoing scholarship, the opportunity for a true Christian presence in our culture disappears even further. This is simply another way in which Christians are following after market trends to their peril. I expect more from CT than an affirmation of educational McDonaldsization.

Paul Winters

September 13, 2009 5:58pm

Wow, I just attended GCU and Mueller's assessment of its spirituality is far too hopeful.

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