WASHINGTON, D.C. — Church universities are successfully finding ways to affordably provide higher education to more students around the world while providing positive social impact, the Church commissioner of education and the presidents of two BYUs said this week at a summit in Washington, D.C.
Brigham Young University–Idaho and BYU–Pathway Worldwide are now scaled in ways that allow them to grow without adding operating costs for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which sponsors them, said Elder Clark G. Gilbert, commissioner of the Church Educational System and a General Authority Seventy.
Growth is vital because the Church is trying to provide higher education opportunities to hundreds of thousands of members worldwide while controlling costs at a time when inflation is pummeling higher education.
BYU–Idaho’s enrollment tripled between 2000 and 2020, but operating costs now are growing below inflation because of innovations designed to make the university more affordable both for students and the Church, said Elder Gilbert, a past president of both BYU–Idaho and BYU–Pathway.
“Variable tuition at BYU–Idaho exceeds variable costs, so the bigger you get, the less it costs to run the institution,” he said.
The Church already spends about $1 billion a year to support higher education, Elder Gilbert said, citing a statement made last year by Elder David A. Bednar of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles.
Elder Gilbert, BYU President Kevin J Worthen and BYU–Hawaii President John S.K. Kauwe III made presentations at a Jan. 12 summit on the fate of religious universities, sitting on panels with presidents from the University of Notre Dame, Yeshiva University, the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities and others.
“You all represent a super significant part of American higher education, and we need to figure out ways to take the work that you do and make it as important in the national dialogue as [your numbers reflect],” said Ted Mitchell, president of the American Council on Education.
The American Council on Education convened the summit in its building on Dupont Circle, less than a mile from the White House.
Latter-day Saint beliefs and higher education
Elder Gilbert, President Worthen and President Kauwe each shared Latter-day Saint theological underpinnings for making higher education accessible to as many Church members as possible.
“It is our fundamental belief that all human beings are beloved spirit sons and daughters of heavenly parents, with a divine nature and destiny. That is [a] firm, core belief of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints,” President Worthen said.
President Kauwe added: “We believe every person on earth deserves a chance to magnify their talents.”
Despite that belief, Elder Gilbert said, “the Church can’t afford to build another BYU in Manila [Philippines]. The Church can’t afford to build another BYU in Accra [Ghana].”
That has led to a quest to innovate and provide new models for providing higher education that have positively benefited students at BYU–Idaho and BYU–Hawaii and also to the launch and global rollout of BYU–Pathway Worldwide, which now reaches about 60,000 students in 180 countries.
For example, President Kauwe explained how BYU–Hawaii’s work programs make college education affordable for its first-generation students from Oceania and the Asia Rim.
BYU–Hawaii offers a work-study program called IWORK, which stands for International Work Opportunity Return-ability Kuleana (Responsibility). Students work 19 hours a week during school and 40 hours a week during breaks and receive housing, food, tuition and fees and a stipend. The program funds about half of the university’s 3,000 students, President Kauwe said.
The goal is to expand to provide IWORK to reach two-thirds of students.
Also, 800 students work at the Church’s Polynesian Cultural Center, which President Kauwe said is Hawaii’s most visited and most culturally authentic tourist attraction.
President Kauwe was joined on the panel by Brad Johnson, president of the College of the Ozarks, who said his school’s work program requires students to work 15 hours a week and covers tuition for all 1,500 students, the vast majority of whom could not otherwise afford college.
The College of the Ozarks is aligned with the Presbyterian Church, and Johnson said its efforts to provide low-cost quality education also is motivated by the Christian belief in human dignity.
Notre Dame President John Jenkins said that was a theme of the summit, alongside the successes religious schools are having in graduating students and in other areas that are challenging many sectors of American higher education.
“One of the things that struck me as it came through in several presentations is the importance of a mission that sees each and every student as possessing a particular dignity and engaging them at the level of a personal call to be something worthwhile,” the Rev. Jenkins said. “That’s a kind of theological framework, but that’s a very powerful educational attitude to have, as you can see in the graduation rates, as you can see in the great work with low-income students. That’s true of us, and I think it’s true of these other institutions.”
Undergraduate research
President Worthen joined a panel with the Rev. Jenkins and Rabbi Ari Berman of Yeshiva University. He told them the Latter-day Saint belief in the divine nature of God’s children also informs BYU’s education in Provo, Utah.
“This core belief is that each of our students has the potential to become like God, and that part of our process is to help them progress changes how we think about our entire educational endeavor, including scholarly research,” President Worthen said.
He said that belief in the worth of students led to BYU’s unique emphasis on having faculty include undergraduate research work with students.
President Worthen said 28.5 cents of every dollar in external research funding is used on undergraduate students doing research.
“That is four times, five times, six times of what high research institutions do,” he said.
The outcome for students can be tremendous. For example, BYU punches well above its weight by ranking ninth in the nation for the most bachelor’s degree students who go on to earn doctorates.
The other 49 schools in the top 50 are classified as R1 institutions, meaning they have high research activity done mostly by faculty and graduate students. BYU is an R2 institution with high research activity.
“Our research does require some kinds of tradeoffs,” President Worthen said. “As it turns out, undergraduates are not as effective or efficient in doing research as graduate students.”
The fallout is that BYU does less research than it would if it reoriented as a more expensive R1 institution. However, President Worthen said, that research quantity suffers because it is slowed by less experienced students and the need for faculty to ensure quality doesn’t lag and reduce the positive impact on students.
“That requires a different motivation and a different kind of faculty,” President Worthen said.
Impact on American society
The summit’s participants said they hope the successes they shared can be replicated beyond religious institutions.
They also expressed support for each other’s religious identities as faith-based schools and the overall impact they make on American society.
Eboo Patel, the president of Interfaith America, spoke to the university presidents and said their uniqueness is needed in an American society where identity communities increasingly stick to institutions that serve only their identities.
“There is no diversity without particularity,” said Patel. “There is no diversity without your particularity.”
He encouraged them to model interfaith cooperation.
“America is in a place right now where people think that, ‘For me to be me, I need to extinguish you,’” Patel said. “But you prove every day that there is a different way.”
He also argued the schools play an underappreciated role.
“I think [this summit] highlights a dimension of American democracy that too many people take for granted, which is that institutions founded by particular faith communities serve people of all faith communities in some way, shape or form,” Patel said. “You cannot have a diverse democracy, unless you have civic institutions that are able to express a particular identity and build positive relationships across diverse communities.”
Faith-based colleges and universities as a group tend to have higher graduation rates and have found success reducing tuition costs.
Students pay 25% less for tuition on average at the 185 schools in the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities, said its president, Shirley Hoogstra.
They also find meaning, Rabbi Berman said.
“I would say the crisis of our generation is a crisis of meaning,” he said. “Our students are looking for meaning, and you don’t have that often in a [broader] society where many have turned their back on these generations of tradition.”
Peter Kilpatrick, president of The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., said students can find meaning and purpose in religious service. Students at his university who don’t engage in campus ministries graduate at rates seven to eight points below the school’s average.
“Students who engage in five or more of our campus activities graduate or persist at a rate 15 points higher,” he said, “and 92% of our students persist if they get engaged [in ministries].”
