Why Catholic Schools Got WAY More Expensive | The Deep

In 1955, Catholic school tuition in the United States averaged $20 per year. That's about $248 in today's money. Imagine telling a Catholic parent in 1955 that one day, annual tuition would hit $10,000, $20,000, or even $40,000 for their kid to go to a school without daily mass, or even majority Catholic teachers. They would think you were crazy. For most of the 20th century, parents paid little or no tuition. A working class immigrant family with five or six children could still send every child to a Catholic school just on dad's factory job.

And yet today, many Catholic families looking for Catholic education face tuition bills that rival a college education. So what happened? Was there really a golden age of free Catholic education? Why did it disappear, and could we ever bring it back?

Long before urban parish campuses and mass migration of Irish, Italian, and German Catholics to the country, there were Catholic schools in America. Franciscan missionaries in St. Augustine, Florida, founded the first school run by Catholics in 1606. The school was entirely paid for by the order and the Spanish crown. For the native children who attended, it was free. After the American Revolution, Bishop John Carroll initially hoped that his Catholic flock might unite with their non-Catholic fellow citizens in founding a common American education system.

His 1972 pastoral letter to the Church in America called for Catholic schools that would offer a pious and Catholic education of the young to ensure their growing up in the faith. But building schools was expensive, and just like today, families struggled to afford the education of their children. To help subsidize the expenses, many Catholics petitioned their local cities and states for public funding. Some were successful for a brief time, but as anti-Catholic prejudice grew in the early 1800s, many state governments pulled funding from parochial schools.

Cries to defund the papist schools reached the state legislature. At the time, tax dollars paid for most local common schools, what we would today consider public schools. These taxpayer-funded institutions taught a robustly Protestant version of history and morality, requiring scripture memorization and participation in prayer services, which Catholics could not attend in good conscience. Bishop Hughes of New York defended Catholics' constitutional rights to free exercise and the same funding for schools to which they could send their own children. He lost. The backlash against him, coming not only from know-nothing politicians, but also from every mainline Protestant church in Albany, was so malicious that Bishop Hughes left the fight, determined that no matter what the cost, No Catholic child would ever have to enroll in a non-sectarian public school run by men who had just demonstrated so much hatred for the Catholic faith.

In that environment, Catholics set about building a vast network of parochial schools attached to their own parishes and unsupported by the state. They were massively successful. Whole parishes, not just parents, subsidized these schools through Sunday collections, parish fundraisers, festivals, bazaars, volunteer labor, and donors. The school was not a separate institution. Or something just for families with school-age children. Educating the next generation was everyone's business. There was the church, and next to it stood the school. Nearby was the convent where the teaching sisters lived, and a separate rectory for the priests.

Many parish campuses also housed a hall with a gym and a stage. Everything sat there on the same property, and most parishioners lived within walking distance. The parish provided the physical and spiritual infrastructure for an entire human life, from baptism to burial. That one block of the city had everything the Catholic family needed for Sunday Mass, processions, dances, sports, and socials. Immigrant communities in particular organized their lives and preserved their unique cultures around the parish. The Catholic school was at the heart of that ecosystem.

And it was so successful that American Catholic education became one of the largest private school systems in human history. It included over a million pupils, operated $100 million worth of property, on a budget of just over $15 million annually. At their peak in the 1960s, Catholic schools educated almost 12% of all school-aged Americans.

Things were not perfect. Schools were still poor. Sisters were sometimes thrown into classrooms without much training. But how could so many Catholics afford to send their children to private school? It wasn't because Catholics were just the richest Americans. The economic model of the schools was completely different from what we have today. In 1920, more than 90% of Catholic school teachers were religious sisters, brothers, or priests. Even as recently as 1960, roughly three-quarters of Catholic school were still members of religious orders.

Because of their personal vows of poverty and the simplicity of their communal life, this vast army of professional educators required very little salary. Teaching sisters lived in convents right next to the school. They shared housing and meals. They received tiny stipends rather than professional salaries. In the first half of the 20th century, salaries ate up less than $50,000 a year. of the school budget, only slightly more than supplies and books. Today, when we think about a school budget, the top expense is hands-down salaries and benefits.

Personnel costs consume 70 to 80 percent. The hidden subsidy wasn't more money or wealthy donors, although those helped. It was vocations. Religious orders were effectively donating millions upon millions of hours of labor. The priests and sisters made universal Catholic education possible. As a result, parents didn't pay tuition.

Their contribution was the students, their time, and their talents instead. That's why working-class immigrant families could afford Catholic education on one salary, and for several generations, it worked. Then, in the span of roughly 20 years, the entire model began to unravel. By the mid-1960s, many secular and religious researchers were concluding that Catholic education had, quote, become almost indistinguishable from public education, both in structure and content, and that despite the obvious inequality in educational resources, the nation's Catholic schools did not lag behind their public school counterparts in terms of student academic achievement.

The same researchers also concluded that, quote, these differences were due primarily to parental religious belief and socioeconomic class, not to Catholic schooling. There was a growing feeling that Catholic schools were not, after all, so necessary for the survival of Catholicism in America. Back in the cities, the old Catholic school buildings from the 1800s were aging. Facilities built for the immigrant generation required major investments, even as enrollment declined. But the real blow was the loss of the sisters. By 1970, roughly 50% of Catholic school staff were still religious or priests.

Today, it's 2.6%. For a deep dive on why that happened, check out my video, What Happened to the Nuns? As sisters left classrooms, schools had to hire lay teachers. And in justice, those employees required benefits, retirement contributions, and paid time off, everything that any modern employer must provide. And compliance required a school to hire lawyers, HR, and a larger administration. The economics of Catholic education fundamentally changed, and the consequences were dramatic. Over the past 50 years, Catholic schools have lost more than 3 million students.

Nearly 5,800 schools have disappeared, many of them from the neediest communities in inner cities. Detroit, Chicago, and Newark have seen dozens of Catholic schools close. Middle-class students suffered the most from the rising cost of Catholic education. Some churchmen saw the disaster coming. In 1977, the Vatican's Sacred Congregation for Catholic Education warned that Catholic schools were losing their identity and becoming incapable of serving poor and working-class children. This situation is of great concern to those responsible for Catholic education, because first and foremost the Church offers its educational service to the poor or those who are deprived of family help and affection, or those who are far from the faith.

They were arguing that if Catholic schools became inaccessible to the poor and non-Catholics, something essential would be lost. What the document did not mention is the underlying historic tragedy that was already underway. In America, as Catholic schools became unaffordable and insolvent, widespread closures contributed to the loss of faith in the church and the hollowing out of parish communities. The reason Catholic schools were founded was not just about academic excellence. Great schooling is downstream of an underlying, unifying culture. In the case of Catholics, that culture rests on the conviction that the faith is true, and that everything else is secondary to bringing children up in the teaching of Christ.

The loss of that culture, combined with the collapse of its economic model. ...meant that the American Catholic school system could not adapt at scale. The desire to reclaim true Catholic identity and a missionary spirit in our schools is growing. The question is, can we find a financial solution to make that renewal possible? I found three major movements attempting to revitalize Catholic education in an affordable model. First, stewardship.

This is the model most Catholics know, and it's the model that became financially untenable without relying on high tuition. But one American diocese found a way to go tuition-free while actually growing its school system, Wichita. In 1985, Bishop Eugene Gerber launched one of the most ambitious experiments in Catholic education in America, a diocesan stewardship model designed to make Catholic schools accessible to every practicing Catholic family by going tuition-free. All parishioners were encouraged to view stewardship as a way of life, generously contributing their time, talents, and financial resources to support the Church's mission.

Priests and the bishop himself spent years connecting that mission directly to the Catholic schools. The results were remarkable. By the early 1990s, tuition had been eliminated for children of active parishioners throughout the diocese. Parish communities collectively funded 80% of school operating costs, allowing Catholic education to remain available across income levels. Enrollment grew by roughly 30%. New classrooms and facilities were built, and Wichita became one of the few dioceses in the country that were able to provide education for children of active parishioners.

...to expand its school system while many others were closing schools. Church leaders in Wichita consistently emphasized that the goal was not merely academic excellence, but the formation of disciples who would evangelize the entire city for decades to come. Families of schoolchildren are expected to participate actively in parish life, attend weekly Mass, and embrace stewardship as part of their Catholic vocation.

The model demonstrated that traditional parochial Catholic schools can remain affordable for families when they are surrounded by a thick, committed community. Model number two, the Chesterton Academies. Founded in 2008 and now operating more than 60 independent classical schools across the United States, the Chesterton Schools Network subsists on a donor-supported financial model. A Chesterton high school assumes from its founding, even before it opens its doors, that tuition will cover only part of the budget. The solution?

Committed donors cover 30 to 50% of operating budgets and are a permanent feature of the school community. The Chestertons are also conscientious stewards of their funds. They run extremely lean operations. Like most classical Catholic schools, they have a headmaster, one administrative assistant, and perhaps a part-time bookkeeper. Typically, the headmaster also teaches. The schools plan to rent modest spaces such as Catholic schools for their early years, and they generally spend far less on athletics and extracurricular infrastructure than the large suburban schools.

Chesterton Academies are not, for the most part, staffed by religious. They replaced the teaching sisters with philanthropy. And the third model, Cristo Rey. Cristo Rey may be the most innovative Catholic school financing model developed in the last half century. Unlike traditional Catholic schools, which rely primarily on a tuition and parish support model, Cristo Rey schools are built on a three-prong approach. Modest tuition, donors, And corporate work-study revenue. At Cristo Rey's schools, every student works approximately one day each week in a professional setting, such as a law firm, hospital, bank, or local university.

The employer pays a fee to the school's corporate work-study program, and students job-share their positions, allowing one employer contract to generate significant revenue. The model creates something unusual in Catholic education. A substantial non-tuition revenue stream coupled with real-world resume-building experiences for students. They are bringing back the work-your-way-through-school model.

In each of these three models, the men and women who thought Catholic schools were worth saving asked two fundamental questions. What exactly is necessary for a good Catholic education, and who is willing to pay what it costs? Catholic parents are fond of quoting the catechism line, parents are the primary educators of their children, and in America's pull yourself up by your bootstraps. That sometimes morphs into a sense that Catholic education is just a lifestyle choice for the affluent, or a charity project for the inner-city poor.

It is also true, however, that helping parents fulfill that mission is the solemn responsibility of every baptized Catholic, every parish, and every diocese. Catholic schools are not glorified daycares or posh parrots of the public school system. They should be an extension of the sacramental and home life of their students, in their teachers, curriculum, and activities, through prayer, formation, and a joyful redemption of secular knowledge and educational forms. And that rare atmosphere should never be out of reach for any sincere Catholic family, no matter how many children they have, where they live, or where they fall on the economic scale.

And figuring out that very worldly financial puzzle will pay eternal dividends in families redeemed and souls saved. The old system worked because the sisters paid for it with their lives. We hope they return, but it's going to take decades. The men and women trying to build new things today to bridge that gap are heroes, and they deserve our support. They are the new missionaries in our new educational wilderness.

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