Higher education in the LCMS: Part 3

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By Roy S. Askins

This article is the third installment in a series on higher education in The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod (LCMS). This installment considers how LCMS universities are operating to maintain fiscal strength. Read the first installment and second installments of this series.

There was a time when higher education didn’t have to operate like a business. “It was very much about education itself,” said Dr. Russell Dawn, president of Concordia University Chicago (CUC), River Forest, Ill. “There was a purity to it. … The last 25 years have made that a thing of the past. … It is a business, unfortunately. I wish it weren’t.”

Dawn is not alone. “We are businesses,” said Dr. Erik Ankerberg, president of Concordia University Wisconsin/Ann Arbor (CUWAA). “It’s essential that we discuss mission faithfulness and the churchly things. It is also an equally important reality that we are fragile financially, and we can’t carry out our mission without the resources to do it.”

The first article in this series discussed the trends faced by all institutions of higher learning across the U.S., particularly increasing costs amid a highly competitive marketplace. The second article addressed the mission fidelity variable of this equation, particularly through the lens of the Lutheran Identity and Mission Outcome Standards (LIMOS). This article will explore how the Concordia University System (CUS) schools are operating to maintain fiscal strength.

Graduate programs

Graduate programs are an essential part of any university’s mission. Dr. Bernard Bull, president of Concordia University, Nebraska (CUNE), Seward, Neb., explained that the goal is “to provide a truly distinct and Christ-centered graduate education shaped by the goals and challenges of Lutherans in Lutheran organizations … who want to be equipped [to be] faithful witnesses in their workplace while helping their organizations thrive.” Thus, graduate programs must grow out of the institution’s mission while also meeting real workplace needs.

At the same time, because of the significant difference in cost between educating graduate and undergraduate students, graduate programs can help a university’s bottom line. While scholarships and financial aid may encourage youth to enter church work vocations, they do little to lower the cost of undergraduate education incurred by the CUS schools. “From a raw financial picture, traditional undergraduate [study] is very expensive to deliver, and we need a significant, sizable, post-graduate student body to help cover the cost,” Ankerberg said.

Dr. Michael Thomas, president of Concordia University Irvine (CUI), Irvine, Calif., explained that cost: “We run a school, obviously, but we also run a health care clinic and a mental health clinic. We operate a police station, a post office, a library and a dining service. … We have a coffee shop, an apartment complex, a church, a performance hall and a theater. We also run athletic fields, an athletic club, a weight room and a fitness center.”

In other words, the expectations about the college “experience” of many incoming students have put the schools into something of a catch-22: Without the extracurriculars, the school is less competitive in a tight market, yet the extracurriculars incur additional cost. Many of these expectations do not exist for graduate students, however. Administrators are left with some simple math: The cost of providing an undergraduate degree — currently one of the most competitive areas of higher education — significantly outweighs the cost of providing a graduate degree. So, they look for graduate programs that fit the institution’s mission but also supplement their revenue stream.

Enrollment numbers bear this out. For 2024–2025, graduate student enrollment across the CUS institutions outpaced undergraduate by nearly 900 students. Over 70% of CUC’s student population and nearly 50% of CUWAA’s student population consist of graduate students.

Endowments

Endowments also play a key role in funding higher education. Harvard University’s endowment, the largest in the world, is currently over $50 billion, enabling Harvard to offer free tuition for students whose families earn $200,000 or less, and free room, board and travel for families earning $100,000 or less. While endowment numbers appear quite large, certain regulations restrict the distribution of these funds to 3–5% of the total amount.

The Rev. Dr. Jamison Hardy, CUS president, believes endowments are important for future sustainability: “All five of our universities acknowledge the importance of growing their endowments, and they’re all actively doing it.”

Yet a number of factors complicate the endowment-building efforts of the CUS schools: a long-held belief that the LCMS would (and should) be the school’s “endowment” into the future; the subsequent dramatic falling off of congregational offerings through districts to Synod; the diversion of direct annual subsidies from the Synod to cover the Synod’s increasing CUS liabilities in the early 2000s; the restriction — rightly so — of endowments for funding church work students and programs; and much more. Each of these factors could be a full article. Nevertheless, the CUS schools are building endowments that will help ensure the future success of the schools.

Furthermore, these realities point to the philanthropic nature of higher education. Dawn said: “[Higher education] has always been a philanthropic enterprise.” Depending on tuition to survive, he believes, “takes what is naturally a philanthropic enterprise and puts the full cost of that onto students who may or may not be able to afford that fuller cost rather than putting it on donors and friends, partners in the mission, partners in the ministry.”

Lean operations

As a philanthropic enterprise, colleges and universities must be accountable for financial decisions. “We are very lean,” Dawn said of CUC. “We steward our resources,” which means making hard choices about which programs continue and which do not. “The practice of onboarding new programs and sunsetting old programs is a continuous aspect [of our work],” he said.

Each institution uses a different process for evaluating programs. For example, Concordia University, St. Paul (CSP), St. Paul, Minn., uses a five-gate model; any program being evaluated, whether new or existing, must pass through five gates to be launched or retained: 1. Is there a student market for this program? 2. Does CSP have the capacity to implement the program? 3. Are there others with whom CSP can partner to deliver the program? 4. Does the program fit CSP’s mission? 5. Will the program generate positive net revenue and return for CSP?

The annual discipline of reviewing programs keeps CSP from having to make dramatic cuts to programs all at once. It also means, at times, having to make difficult decisions to help ensure the fulfillment of the university’s mission.

Diverse revenue sources

Hardy is encouraging the CUS institutions to actively consider ways to generate what he calls “third source funding,” meaning revenue apart from the standard revenue streams of tuition (including fees) and endowments (including gifts).

While the model might be new for CUS schools, it is not new elsewhere. The University of Pittsburgh is partnering with ElevateBio, a gene-therapy medicine company, to build a new facility that will benefit both. California Baptist University (CBU) partnered with Chick-fil-A to place a restaurant on the school’s campus. Students can use their meal plans at the restaurant and have opportunities to work at the site, thus also reducing CBU’s staffing needs. Such third-source funding for operational support “is not only normal and natural in another business setting, but it’s what we must do,” Hardy said.

Alternative programs

CUS institutions must also consider students’ educational goals. For example, many parochial and high school students who have spent the last decade in classical schools want colleges that will either continue the model or train them to become classical school educators. CUC is responding to that need, but Dawn said the program, which focuses on critical thinking skills formed by reading major works by western civilization’s most influential thinkers, is not only for educators. Instilling these truths into students is not optional for Dawn. “The liberal arts have to be subsidized,” he said. “The purpose of the liberal arts is the pursuit of truth.”

A similar approach is found in CUNE’s Luke Scholars program, which begins with a foundational course on the pursuit of truth and lifelong learning. Over an additional 18 credit hours, professors guide students through the study of both Christian and non-Christian thinkers to help them understand the world from a Lutheran worldview. “We have a growing number of LCMS students who are choosing Luke Scholars over Hillsdale College [in Michigan],” Bull said. “Our top professors design their dream courses, and only Luke Scholars can take them.”

CUNE also has Micah Scholars, students who have a “heart for service and a head for science,” and Paul Scholars, a work-education program that provides academic study alongside real-world work experience. Students admitted to the program receive a full tuition scholarship funded entirely by donors and business partner contributions.

What can you do?

When asked how the people of the LCMS can support CUS institutions, here is what the presidents said:

Pray. Pray that the Lord of the harvest would send teachers and students, and that He would continue to provide opportunities to train church workers and laity for service to Christ in the church and the world.

Apply. The sticker shock of the cost of tuition is real. But as Thomas pointed out, “No student, no family, can possibly know what a Concordia education will cost until they apply because it’s only when they apply that we can put the [financial] package together. You will be pleasantly surprised [how much aid you receive], especially if you’re coming … to pursue a church work vocation.”

Send. Send your children to a Concordia. Increasing enrollment is key to the future of these institutions. “If only 15% of the children in our churches went to a Concordia, we’d probably be so full we wouldn’t know what to do. We’d be in a positive crisis,” Bull said.

Give. Education is, essentially, a philanthropic endeavor, and that is especially true of higher education for church workers. Part of the reason that CUS schools have smaller endowments is that they’re training church workers who will likely lack the expendable income of their peers with similar levels of education. Other institutions offer degrees in career fields that will generate more wealth and thus provide the opportunity for their alumni to invest in the school.

If the LCMS wants to continue providing a Lutheran education to church work and non-church work students alike, it means supporting these institutions with significant financial gifts. These gifts are not only for church workers, but also to provide a haven for Lutheran students to earn degrees that enable them to serve as good citizens without the frontal assault on the Christian faith they will face at many other institutions of higher education.

A final word

One of the most important things parents can do, in addition to bringing children up in the faith, is to help their children make a decision that upholds that faith while they attend college. Our CUS schools are not the only way to do so, but they are a treasure we dare not neglect. With the support and care of the church, they will continue to bless the LCMS for years to come.

Posted July 9, 2025