Their priorities are not our priorities

As the implications of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act begin to emerge, America’s Christian college presidents are not sleeping very easily. It turns out that the law includes an “Accountability Standard.”

This standard requires that graduates of these colleges must earn demonstrably higher salaries than individuals without a degree. After all, if those tuition dollars didn’t produce an improvement in salary, then wasn’t that degree a bad investment? According to this new law, college programs that can’t demonstrate financial profitability for their graduates will be labeled “failing” and will lose their federal funding.

There is something darkly poetic here, when you realize that the institutions that have (for centuries) been assigning grades to students are now suddenly in the unfortunate position of hearing that the colleges and universities themselves are the ones who deserve a failing grade. And I can understand why the average American would applaud any move to bring accountability to our nation’s out-of-control spending on higher education. Federally subsidized student loans have not only inflated the price of college tuition, but they have simultaneously taught our college students all the worst lessons about debt. Part of me wants to cheer for anything that threatens to kink the hose of federal funding for higher ed, yet something else is going on here that I think is truly alarming.

As America has become increasingly secularized, our understanding of the purpose of education has shifted massively. Originally, for Christians (and for Americans as citizens of what was once a Christian nation) the purpose of education was the enculturation of our children into the heritage of Christendom. Or, to put it more biblically, the purpose of education was to raise future generations “in the nurture and admonition of the Lord” (Ephesians 6:4). But, as our nation wandered from the faith, the ultimate purpose of education has dwindled into nothing more than simple financial gain. The better the education, the greater the salary.

The problem with this law is that it presupposes the secular purpose of education, and it subverts a Christian understanding. It rates the value of an education purely and simply in terms of financial profitability. In doing so, it subverts that which Christians ought to value much more highly. This really is a problem.

For instance, there are a number of invaluable vocations that attract some of our greatest and most talented intellects, but those callings are not rewarded with high salaries. The fields of education and ministry both stand out as obvious callings which draw bright minds, sharpened by years of rigorous education, and yet high salaries are not the attraction. The lofty purpose of the work itself is the draw. The meaningfulness of the work is its own reward. If you think my assessment sounds like a scam, consider the tribe of Levi, to whom God once offered a similar deal. When the other tribes all received land in Israel as their inheritance, the Levites, who served the temple, were told, “Wherefore Levi hath no part nor inheritance with his brethren; the LORD is his inheritance” (Deuteronomy 10:9). There are some professions where the salaries and the benefits don’t fit nicely into secular spreadsheets.

Or consider the noble calling of the Christian women who serve as wives and mothers to our families. If we think of an education as simply a means of earning a higher salary, then an education is lost on women who end up serving a family instead of a corporation. But if we reject this secular framing, and we return to the Christian conviction that an education is an enculturation in the riches of the Christian faith, then it seems obvious that those who are charged with building our homes and raising our children are some of the most deserving recipients of a rigorous education.

On the one hand, I do think that a robust and rigorous Christian education will result in great gain. I think this because Jesus promised that when we seek first the kingdom of God, all these things will be added unto us. And if “all these things” are going to be added unto us, then one dimension will often be financial gain. But the wealth that this kind of obedience produces won’t figure nicely into the kinds of reports that the Department of Education will be producing.

So, what should we do? I invite all the Christian colleges and universities of America to reject the secular mission of education and to return to the charge that the apostle Paul gave us. We are here to facilitate the raising of the next generation of Christians in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. And if we are going to reject the secular mission of education, we ought to also reject the secular funding of that education. This is a great moment to walk away from Pell Grants and federally subsidized student loans, which require us to evaluate our performance in purely secular categories. We don’t conduct secular education, and we don’t need secular funding to do it, especially to do it well.