Welcome back with Joe Biden's $400 billion student loan handouts.
They're facing legal hurdles now in the High Court
and with the average tuition.
Get this at private, non profit colleges today at almost
40,000 dollars,
39570 for the current academic year,
Graduates, as you know, are stuck with a mountain of
debt
except for one Christian college,
which is reimagining the college experience
by lowering tuition by 40%.
That's a big chunk less they're going to be paying.
Starting in the fall, tuition prices at Trinity Christian College
in Illinois will go from
33,000 to
19,800 down a significant amount.
Their president, Aaron Keeker, joins us now.
Aaron, thanks so much for being here.
How are you doing this?
I think it's a wonderful thing.
Most other colleges are increasing tuition.
You're reducing by 40%. How do you do that?
Yeah, for us, it's been a matter of trying to
pay attention to our student experience and create financial aid
pathways that are much easier to understand.
You know, the current model
in higher Ed is the price high
and then to encourage families to celebrate the the amount
of the discount that they get.
And what we're doing is taking a model that really
helps families focus not on the size of the scholarship
but actually on their overall bottom line so that they
can pay attention to the overall amount of debt that
they're taking on as a part of their college experience.
You know it, I I mentioned it
on average other colleges and will show it.
Elite private colleges are increasing their tuition for
2324 by 4%. How do you make it on your
balance sheet?
I guess that's my they're claiming they have to do
this,
yet you're reducing by 40%.
How?
Yeah. Well, there's a couple of pathways to understand that.
One is across most institutions,
the way that that high pricing works is that that's
simply an unfunded discount and it's a it's a scholarship
that writes down to a much lower tuition rate.
And So what we'll be doing is recalibrating that again
to help students focus on the overall bottom line.
But the second thing that's been really important to us
is that we've really looked at what does it look
like to bring into this sort of broken system the
entire web of stakeholders and who in our communities benefit
from higher education.
For us, that's meant shifting our academic schedule so that
we can connect our students more quickly here in the
greater Chicago area to businesses and nonprofits that are seeking
to do good. We're giving our students the opportunity to
connect with those businesses very early,
as early as their sophomore year in paid internships
that are resulting for our students in as much as
$5000 a semester in tuition grants.
It's mutually good for our business partners.
They've got access to hiring pipelines that they need.
And for us, it's a way of saying,
can we reimagine the way that the economics of higher
education lives inside of an entire community in ways that
benefit students,
certainly in ways that benefit institutions,
but also in ways that benefit our partners in the
neighborhood.
So you're getting rid of the shell game.
I mean, the elite universities are saying you're always going
to pay more.
You're going to leave with a mountain of debt.
And oh, by the way,
you get to be indoctrinated.
What you're saying is, no,
we're going to shave it down to what it really
costs.
We're going to introduce you to God.
And by the way, you're going to have skills too.
That sounds like maybe what college was supposed to be
or used to be. Well,
we do want our we do want our tuition to
be realistic near what it actually cost to educate a
college student.
Accessible. We want families to see that price tag and
not turn away because maybe if they don't have a
long family history of college,
they're less apartment to explore those aid processes.
And we want to be as transparent as possible.
And for us that all comes down to what's good
for our students and their families.
Trinity Christian College. I hope you got a few more
people clicking on the website after this.
Doctor Aaron Keeker, thank you so much for being here.
Thanks for having that college.
You got it.