Podcast Synopsis
Join Gregg, Jeff, and Laurie as they address a crucial question facing today's students: Is college worth the cost? In an era where college enrollments have significantly declined post-COVID, with over a million students opting out, this episode explores the reasons behind this shift. The trio discusses the financial aspects of higher education and evaluates its value in the contemporary educational landscape. This conversation is vital for anyone considering the balance between the costs and benefits of a college education in today's world.

Transcript of College Conversations Season 1, Episode 2:
The Big College Debate: Smart Investment or Financial Trap?

Gregg Garner 0:03

Hello, and welcome back to the Institute for GOD’s College Convos. I am here with Professor Laurie Kagay. And Professor Jeff shared. Hey, everybody, and we are talking about everything post secondary education and seeing where it goes. Where are we at today, folks?

Laurie Kagay 0:22

Sounds good. I have a question related to the enrollment drop off. That's happened in recent years, there was a study recently, that found that 1 million fewer students went to college this year than what was expected. And it was similar. Last year, 1 million, 1 million people who were like expected to go to college just didn't. And the same last year. So this is the biggest drop off

Gregg Garner 0:45

And is this in the United States around the world at large us like typical college student age?

Laurie Kagay 0:49

So it's the largest drop off in 50 years, wow, is the stat. And some people thought, you know, after the pandemic, that students were just going to take a gap year, and come back the next year. But that's what surprised me even more was it took a gap year and then just didn't come to college. So it's, you know, it's this huge decline in students going to college at all. I talked to a young man the other day, he's like, I'm on my third gap year. I was like, I think that's just called, not going to call. Yeah. But I just wondered, like thoughts that you may have on this decline, what it what it will do to us as a country to just bypass hiring, but also as believers who are, are supposed to study themselves approved by God. You know, can we do that without some formal study? What what do you think this?

Gregg Garner 1:48

So I've actually been talking about this for a long time, I kind of saw it coming. Probably you guys have heard me talk about the fact that I knew. And largely in part, our school is a result of being able to see that the current venues for post secondary education, and I'm talking about for me is that maybe I started really seeing this about 10 years ago, the ones that were existing at the time, which not much has changed in post secondary, I would say maybe online schooling is a bit more available. But the the trends to me were pointing to the fact that folks were just getting in debt, going to school with this idea that when they graduated, they'd be able to get a job that would now pay for the debt and allow them to achieve the standard of living that they hoped for. Right?

So let's just do the math, especially when it comes to some of these, like, private schools that people really want to go to, because there's usually some kind of niche to the private school, whether it's like a musical Institute or, or Bible college, right. So like the Bible college I went to in the 90s, we're talking about 32k year, and you then take out some loans on that. So over the course of four years, you're at $128,000, that you put in your undergraduate education. And that's if you really stay on top of it. 1718 units a semester. Yeah. And then probably a lot of folks based on statistics come out with anywhere between 40 and $50,000. of school debt. That turns into like, $1,000 a month loan payment. Yeah. So now you already have an automatic $12,000 A year or $1,000 a month that you have to make. So people are like, no problem. That's it's pennies. I'm a college graduate. But by the early 2000s, you could already see that our parents bachelor's degree was becoming the older millennials, master's degree. And no longer did the bachelor's degree hold that kind of power, right? You had to get your master's degree. So then you go into more debt, right, and you get your master's degree.

Now you have in the funny thing is you think the master's degree would, because it's shorter time would be of less cost and create less debt? It's not the case, right? Turns out, can create just as much debt. Yeah, so now you've got $1,800 A month in a debt payment for your education, but you have a master's degree. So you have to make at least in this scenario, what are we looking at $21,600. baseline. So this if you go to a Bible school and you want to get into ministry, kind of puts you in a rough situation for most first time jobs. Yeah. in ministry. Like if you wanted to go be a youth pastor. You have to go to a really competitive type church, that there's not many of those kinds of churches that are going to start a youth pastor out Well, over something very minimum.

I know that the the median pay in Nashville because I did a study on this somewhere around 2012 was was something like most of them were volunteer, first of all right. But where they were paid. There, there was a stipend amount. And it was. So they're not even full time jobs. So if you it would be misleading to say on the hour, because it was on the hour. Yeah, they're going and doing youth group things for for five hours a week. And they're getting paid $125 You'd be like $25 an hour. But you can't make a living off $125 a week? No. So some of the statistics were hard to flesh through. And then you had outliers, there were some outliers, where you pastors were getting paid like 45, grand, and getting other benefits related to their job package. But these were very rare. So toss them out on the outlier side. What it ends up being is that even with a master's degree, a youth pastor being hired for the church was somewhere around $23,600, which at the time, allowed for that youth worker to be exempt from overtime pay, because they were managing a department. So you could tell that the church was kind of strategic Yeah, about how they were going to expense, their, their income or their their employee there. But we just said that if they got their master's degree, their debt would be like, 21. Six. Yeah.

And that's why you would see so many of these youth pastors also having other jobs. Next thing, you know, there, back then it would have been working at the stock house for UPS or, or waiting tables. Yeah. Now, today, the landscape of, of jobs, particularly now that we're subject to what they call the gig economy has made it so you could Uber drive, or you get Amazon deliver. And we've got these other types of temporary gigs that help you to supplement income that make you feel like you've got more flexibility. But this is also part of the reason why people don't care to go to college anymore. Because now, if you're going to pay off all that debt, and you've got those loan payments, those loan payments, payback plans are usually based on like 15 years. So for the next 15 years of your life $21,600 of your income. Now let's multiply that times a 15. Right, and we are over 300 grand. Yeah. So you start doing the math. And now you look back and go, if I just got a job at a warehouse, and I was paid, US warehouse, jobs will start you maybe at like back then 23 Six, but then they give you opportunities for raises. And bonuses. Yeah, three years later, you have a managerial position that's offered to you. And it's 35k. Right now, given let's say some of these other folks who graduated with that kind of debt, they ended up going to and getting a better kind of job, let's say they and their first job, they do land at around 45k.

Half of what they've got goes to paying off debt. The other half now is is barely what someone could live off of in the United States. So it's not like, it's not like that person is in any more better of a place that. So what ended up happening in the early 2000s Is that graduates would get these jobs and still live at home. Yeah, with their parents. Did you guys ever have friends who had to do that? Like, yeah, it was one or 2% because they couldn't afford to live life outside of paying back your loans. Yeah, but then they got like real aggressive about it. So they're gonna aggressively pay back their loans, and they're gonna gradually get another job. And then they become like really irritated and start despising what it was that they got in terms of education. Because there's, they're still paying for it. Yeah, it's just like the bill that never goes away. It's a complete burden. Rarely do you have someone who gets into a profession, without clout that is, is really happy with the fact they invested into their loan debt. But when there's cloud, like, you go to school, and you get a bunch of debt, because you decided to become a doctor of physical therapy. You at least got the doctor thing there. And you get to tell people your doctor, it's like paying for prestige. Right, right. Yeah. And I'm not saying I'm not criticizing anyone does that I'm just highlighting the psychology of status. We feel a little better. But if but in reality, because the debt that that person has, what kind of expendable income they have at the end of the day is nothing compared to the kid who went to go intern at the car dealership when he was 18 started selling When he was 19, and now at 23 brings home 70k with no debts, right?

Jeff Sherrod 10:07

Yeah, people just start doing cost benefit. Yeah, analysis, not hard. It's not

Gregg Garner 10:11

hard at all. Now, the values of the boomer generation, were given to them by their often Great Depression era born parents. So for them, the solution was really just like, televised and communicated quite widely in, at first in the 50s, when a lot of the boomers 40s 50s. And a lot of them were being born. It's the idea you got to finish high school. Yeah, that was the first completion there. And then, and then for the ones that were later on, like in the mid 50s, or early 60s, it really was get to college. Yeah, get to college. Now the war disrupted a lot of that for a lot of them. So that the draft took place, Vietnam, and a lot of boomers went off to Korea, they went off to Vietnam, the Nicaragua and other kind of wars that existed in Central America. And because of that, there, there wasn't that big. It was great to have a bachelor's degree. But not everybody had them. Yeah. So it still had value, right? Like anything rare.

Well, by the time the 90s rolled around, in the post secondary education space, you get you started having accelerated adult programs, where people could finish their degrees, right? So then you had all these people come back school, so there's a surge, right? This whole generation that didn't get to finish. Now, they're all jumping into programs, and they get to finish now post secondary education spaces like, Ooh, look at this. You got these people doing distance learning? That was a Yeah, as we talked about it today, it's online learning, which still falls under the council distance learning, but nonetheless, back then it's like distance learning, they send you a folder with all the sheets, Bill respondents court, yeah, correspondence courses. And so it really felt like in the 90s, that colleges coming back, because those parents now who felt like their lives would be different, because they became plumbers and they became insurance salesmen. And they became all these kinds of folks who had to really grind to make a living, they still lived with the idea, had I gotten my degree, I would be a manager right now, because businesses are still creating hurdles with respect to promotions, and what capacity a person could have in terms of having an income was directly correlated to your education.

So it's like how to go back to college. So then the those kids, the millennials, the older millennials, and to some degree, the younger millennials, all felt like, yeah, we better we better go to school. And then they got their bachelor's degrees. And then they started flooding the job market with those bachelor's degrees, and then the technology revolution hit. So not only did they start flooding the market with their the job market with their bachelor's degrees, but they were also more native to technology than their Boomer predecessors. And so there there was like this surge of industry that a lot of boomers didn't even know how to think about or feel about except those who had like a forecasting visionary things think Silicon Valley in the 90s. Oh, right. Yeah. All right. You got like Zuckerberg dropping out of Harvard, and then heading on over to California. And in making happen, what it is we've been, as are gates in the 80s. And like, all these guys are finding ways to bypass education in order to produce products that people feel like they need. And in that case, they make incomes. And so I think, in the 90s, was probably the maybe the early 2000s, in my opinion, was the last era of young people who felt like if they got a degree, it would give them security. Yeah, because the great recession hits in the United States and 7-8-9 around that area with The Big Short in the housing crisis. And now they were watching their, their boomer parents, or even the older millennial parents, Gen Xers in between, just struggle.

And even though all those Gen Xers God knows they had their coffee and their bachelor's degree, like even though they had all that and they have the jobs. Now they were they were finding themselves losing whatever work and maybe even their home. Yeah, that they had bought and these young millennials and Gen Z years are witnessing this. And they're like, I don't want that to happen. And then the economy is just just shifted in such a way that expendable income wasn't really available. And the kind of jobs that typically people make a lot of money off of are in those industries where you do have expendable Come. So the government at that time even, I'm sure if when people were around, they would get some checks from the government, that to boost the economy to get it excited. And that felt really good. But whenever that's happened, that's a desperate measure on the country, because they recognize if we don't get put money in these folks hands to spend to pay things, this is going to be really bad for us.

So these generations, young millennials, and the Gen Z's, they're coming up. And they're starting to look at money in a different way than their their folks did before them. Because instead of just figuring out how to, like, fulfill an ambition, or a dream, or to do maybe what you thought was was something you're created to do, which would have been the earlier generation, this next one's coming up with the pressure to make money. Like they got to make money. And then, because of that technology revolution, they started getting into their hands, the ability to network with all kinds of people and get ideas and an information readily available outside of the former established institution and post secondary education, they could turn on a YouTube and learn how to start a business, they did not have to get an MBA. So then a lot of them started doing it. And in doing so, they found success. And then they told their friends, they had a hobby for photography, they became a photographer, they started doing weddings, it started getting invited to birthday parties, they started learning how to manage that business and control it and then dropped out of school didn't finish this didn't finish that. Now, I think the reason why we're seeing the million drop off is not just because of the pandemic, the pandemic kind of excited it.

It's because there's so much information available to folks for free. Yeah. And in the end, people do not want to go into debt, they watch their parents go into debt with a big mortgage, and then lose their homes. So they do you not want to go into debt. School is an investment, and they're not sure it's worth it. Because at the end, what am I going to be able to do? Like, even as a college president, somebody who's like interviewed students for, you know, however many years it's been now, the, the scenario that often see that has changed is like for students who came to school here between 2004 and 2008, the question from the parents was more about like, their kids calling. Like, like, I just, I'm not sure, they'll say I'm not sure my kids called to this. My kid believes it. But I just want to know what that looks like. Those are the kinds of conversations

Laurie Kagay 17:46

That was my mom, when I came here. Yeah, she was like, if you're called to this, like, I can't get in your way. Ya know, like, that was what would have a calling in 2005…

Gregg Garner 17:54

After about [2009-2010], it kind of got solidified in when when people wanted to come to school here the parents questions where I just don't know what kind of job they could get. If they graduate from here, where where do you place them? And what good, I know that people in ministry don't get paid a lot. I just feel like my kid would be better going to business school. And at least that's an investment because then they could figure out how to run a business and they get paid a lot. And then they can do ministry. Yeah, like this just was this is the refrain, it's still like that to this day. Yeah. So all this readily available information, the expendable income of the globe has changed. Developing World economies in the late 90s and early World, Dow or early 2000s, namely China and India. Now you can go there and find some really wealthy people who can do a lot of things.

I mean, if you are in the wedding, and photography, business, you know, if you get an Indian wedding, that's, that's, that's our rainfall right there. Because they're going to be financed by all kinds of folks who have figured out how to make the economy turn in their country. So you've got all these shifts, and post secondary education, in my opinion, is not been calculating these shifts. And they just feel like we've got a great product. Because you know, when you have government backing for your product, you kind of feel like, it's not a thing. Like we're always going to be needed. The government supplies a lot of good jobs, and the government is going to, of course, because they want Sallie Mae paid back. They're going to make sure that those government jobs, incentivize the the kind of people that would be able to run their systems appropriately, and they want to vet that they need a certain kind of college education. Yeah.

And there's so there's already a built in constituency when it comes to post secondary education if you're part of the big clubs, right? It's just going to be it's going to be there. So those guys why change why doing anything different, let's just keep exploring academic. And then at this point, there's the really big dogs have endowments. And they have other monetary devices that allow them to function, despite the fluctuation of enrollment. And given if their enrollment numbers are down, they're going to figure that out. But they'll have the money to do the studies and hire the consultants and do everything necessary to make that happen. Where the smaller schools are just shutting down. Yeah, because they don't have that. And Christian schools are converting into liberal arts colleges, right, because they have to widen the net, as it were. Yeah.

But what I don't see happening, and what I think should be happening is colleges recognizing that the first obstacle to overcome is getting this student through school without any debt. The second obstacle to overcome is ensuring that when the student graduates, they have some kind of capacity that gets them engaged in profitable work. And then the third thing that doesn't seem like it's being addressed, especially for Christians, is the necessity for a biblical worldview, prior to engaging the economy and its markets as a participant, namely a laborer and worker. Yeah, and I didn't put those in any particular order.

But those three things just, they got to be addressed. Yeah. And the Institute for God attempts to do that, right, we attempt to do that, our students do have that record of all our graduates graduated with zero debt related Institute. We have, as soon as you enroll in your accepted, we give you a job, right, and our per hour rates are competitive with the rest of the town and usually beat them sometimes by several dollars per hour. And then you get the flexibility, that knowing that your your job, knows that you go to the institute, you can turn participate in all the things that happen there. And then finally, we drive home and our students the importance that you can, we don't know what God's gonna call you to do after you graduate here. But what we know is you're gonna have a biblical worldview based not on philosophies, or even theologies, necessarily, but on biblical studies that produce those theologies and philosophies that you'll learn to read the Bible for yourself, you'll learn to hear from the Lord yourself. And in order to win students back into that experience, I think that if they don't have that value of Christ, which we've done last them, they're going to be there, they're more likely to just ride the coattails of their parents finances, for a certain period of time, while they discover themselves.

And and knowing they're not putting themselves in debt, because they don't know what they're going to do. They can work any of these gig jobs, they can, they can drive Uber and make more money than they would have as a youth pastor that first year after having graduated yet without debt. Right. And then from that, they can take some of that income and invest it into an Amazon business. Or they decide that they want to take some of that money from their Uber jobs and, and buy another car and start themselves a little Uber business. Like there's, there's so many of these kind of freelance gigs that are available to people now. Yeah. And it's kind of household people are cool with it. I don't think it's gonna last, frankly, but it's there. And it's an option. Yeah. So when it comes to Christian kids, the first thing we need to tell them is you need you need a biblical worldview. Right.

And this is where I was saying last time the church has got to get involved. The church has got to get involved by saying, Every kid who graduates from our church congregation, we need to get behind them, to help scholarship them to go to Bible schools, yeah, to learn God's word, leprosy, because then after that, they can graduate and they can go on to get their doctorate of physical therapy, given they had, you know, those those prerequisite classes, but even if they didn't, bridge programs are not hard. Yeah. And at that point, the young person will be solid enough in their faith, that they go to any institution where seeing churches put their kids out of high school, even if they went to a Christian High School. The difference is they they had the free rein autonomy in college and they didn't when they're in high school, yeah, but now you put them in a secular institution that does not have Christ values and you're expecting them to shine like a light. There's a reason why all those lights are getting snuffed out. Right. And we have such a strong extra angelical movement are among those those age groups.

So, yeah, I'm, um, I think that we're trying to be an appropriate response to this drop off. And I don't think the drop off affects us as an institution necessarily. But I also think it's unnecessary happening. I think this has to happen. This has to happen a to close down some useless post secondary education institutions, who were who were just there maybe as degree mills or didn't didn't have the capacity to actually sustain their programs independent of just the cultural escalator dropping students in their lap. Yeah. And then I think what it does is it, it poses an important threat to the larger institutions to have to reevaluate their models, so as to make them more appropriate and relevant. And then it seems it does a great benefit to niche schools. Because now people see, I really want to do this kind of job. Yeah, I'm not gonna learn it with a necessarily a general studies degree, right? You know, the back when I was in college, the degree that everyone got when they didn't know what to get was communications. Yes. Say, right. Yeah. So it's like, that doesn't work anymore. And why go do that when you can just go apprentice with the midwife and become a midwife? Yeah. So when it comes to Bible school, the big benefit of this time period, is that it, especially the Bible schools, designs for the students not getting in to any debt.

It can awaken that demographic of students that recognize I'm going to get off the escalator. I don't want to just be dropped off into some program. That is that I'm supposed to do because they said I was supposed to do it. And then they'll start seeking God. And of course, God is predictable in this element. He's going to want us to learn of him. Yeah, come to me all ye are heavy laden and burdened. And I will give you rest. Take upon you, My yoke. And because it's easy, and the burden is light. Come and learn from me, because I'm humble and gentle, and you'll find rest for your souls. So we know that if we want to be alleviated from the burden of work, that is inevitable, we've got to learn from Jesus. Yeah. And once churches and preachers start helping young people understand this, they'll see the incredible benefit of getting a Biblical education and, and more accurately, a Bible education. Yeah, right. Because once they get that Bible education, and they learn of him, now they can get on the work world, and it won't be as burdensome and having to be a participant in in the workforce, it just won't be hard for them, because they've now access a relationship with the Living God, who will sustain them through all of it and help them make the right decisions and give them wisdom amidst those venues. Yeah.

Laurie Kagay 28:09

And I think that's something that we even have enough of a sample at this point to show some proof on the other side of the institute's efforts, like some other supplemental staff, or supplemental stats would be that we haven't graduated, graduated anyone who's now left the faith. They're all still walking. Yeah, my grace God. And another one is that they all like they have they got jobs when they came here as students, but they also found jobs that they felt prepared into as graduates as well, as some of those students are some of those jobs were student jobs, you know, they were exploring certain things, but our graduates have all received a career opportunity, a job offer, even before they graduated.

Jeff Sherrod 28:51

Yeah. Which is awesome. Yeah, even more specifically, than just not walking away from the faith, you know, 100% of graduates that we've surveyed, still regularly contribute to ministerial efforts, both here and abroad. You know, they're very involved in their local churches. You know, it's it's the fruits obvious if you invest into Can you talk about the investment. And I think when people hear investment, they just hear money. But we're talking about the kind of investment that God wants to do, which is an investment into the person. And that's going to always take time and education and learning, but then the reward is so great.

Gregg Garner 29:25

It still takes resources to run a school. Right? Yeah. Right. And those resources have to be paid for. And this is why I'm saying the church has to get involved. Yeah, the church has to get involved in creating those appropriate systems of help, for in particular, promising young people who they could tell if they brought them up in the church. They could tell this one as a ministerial calling. Yeah. And to be able to help them pay for a private Christian education, which is inherently a little more expensive, especially today, when we're wrestling with the threat of what Title four and Title Nine issues bring to an institution that supplemented by government funding and the move of most Christian colleges to figure out how can we sustainably exist independent of government funding? Yeah. And again, this is where the church are. And by the church, I don't necessarily mean like any particular institution, but I'm talking about the body of Christ at large, whether they form a foundation or an organization, or is there local body of believers who gather together weekly, there has to be some contribution towards ensuring that Bible based education is an opportunity for every single, every single young person who graduates in their faith. I mean, you look at the Mormon religion, right? Those guys graduate, and they already know they gotta go on mission, they got two years, that they're committing themselves over to the study of their faith, and the spreading of it. And it's, it's like, every one of those kids, right does that. We still have anything like that in Christianity, we're not like, you're gonna go to Bible college, and then you're going to participate in missions. That's what happens when you graduate.

Jeff Sherrod 31:19

Yeah. Laurie and I were actually talking about this a few months ago, where there was a Jewish synagogue in New York, and this was the practice that had been was just say, hey, you know, if we're gonna keep on going, we have to invest into it, are they you know, they were talking about Hebrew schools at the time, but you know, where people were complaining that it's expensive. And they're like, you know, the leaders came back and said, it's, it's a lot less expensive than what you think, you know, in the sense that if you lose this over your value of money, you're losing everything. The cost is too high that way. Yeah.

Gregg Garner 31:53

It's like we don't think we don't think it's happening. It's like the church at largest pretended This isn't happening. There isn't the cultural shift with respect even respect of God or love of neighbor? Yeah. And then it's like they can't see that's completely related to the fact that there's this incredible exodus from Bible schools. Yeah. And it's, it's unfortunate, but it's also devastating. Yeah. Which we're paying for it. Right.

Jeff Sherrod 32:25

Now. We're paying for it.

Also see: 

Gregg Garner
The Institute for GOD 

Business Insider: Is College Worth It? 

Forbes: Is College Worth the Cost? Pros vs. Cons

Inside Higher Ed: Is College Worth It? Recent Analysis Says Yes

For comments, questions, or topic ideas, email us at conversations@instituteforgod.org