“Golden” Religious Colleges

Out of curiosity I decided to find what it costs to attend a religious college.  As a believer in Jesus Christ who attended a Missouri Synod Lutheran school from grade 1-8, I was taught what it meant to follow in the footsteps of Jesus of Nazareth.

That meant that I also believe in “Providence,” that God acts in our lives, and I believe it was Providence that led me through several “accidents” to choose the career that I did and that I chose to attend undergraduate college at Pitt and graduate school of Notre Dame.

I was graduated from high school in Miami, Florida because my father moved to Florida from Pittsburgh.  My grades were not terribly good and had we remained in Pittsburgh, I would not have been admitted to the University of Pittsburgh.  But, I applied as an “out of state student,” and passed muster. I believe that was Providential.

At Pitt I became a political conservative, largely due to my interest in politics and the influence of a classmate whose parents were Taft Republicans,  read National Review and admired William F. Buckley.  At Notre Dame, in my very first semester, I found myself in classes with Fr. Stanley Parry, CSC, Eric Voegelin and Gerhart Niemeyer.  Only Fr. Parry was Catholic, but all three taught me classical political philosophy and Niemeyer and Parry invited me to attend early meetings of the Philadelphia Society.

That, too, was Providential, and I have enjoyed teaching and writing about Plato, Aristotle and St. Augustine, and recently read deeply about how the West was shaped by Christian believers after the fall of the Roman Empire.  All that occurred, I believe, because God intervened in my life. How, then, do we acquire the education that teaches us to live Christian lives?

Unfortunately, some of our better religious colleges where we might expect to learn this are not very interested in educating their students at reasonable cost.  They have all “gone along to get along” and done very little to reform how they serve the financial needs of their students.

The colleges and universities on this list are representative of what it costs to get a good education as well as the studies that will make us better human beings and American citizens. Frankly, it angers me that a college education costs as much as these institutions charge just for tuition.