Cultural renewal requires ethical politics and truthful media. It also requires soul-shaping education. If Alabama wants stronger families, churches, and civic life, it will need stronger institutions of higher learning, including private colleges.
Alabama is rightly concerned about education, debating curriculum, testing, workforce readiness, and economic competitiveness. We pass reforms, host conferences, and write strategic plans. But education does not reform itself by slogans.
Alabama’s 2018–2030 Strategic Plan for Higher Education contains goals for improving post-secondary outcomes. This includes increasing credential attainment, strengthening workforce alignment, and improving completion rates. Yet the plan largely assumes that improvement will come only from within government colleges.
Nationally, Alabama consistently ranks in the lower tier of higher education outcomes. Florida, however, ranks near the top. Many factors account for the difference, but one stands out: more than 20% of Florida undergraduates earn degrees from private colleges. In Alabama, fewer than 10% do. The disparity is not incidental. States with a robust private college sector tend to exhibit stronger overall higher education performance.
Alabama’s Strategic Plan does not seriously consider that renewal sometimes requires the formation of new private institutions. Public universities – Auburn and Alabama most notably – are doing what public universities are designed to do. They are large, research-driven, state-supported institutions, competitively ranked among their peers. They are not designed to be small, confessional, Christian colleges forming students within an integrated moral and intellectual tradition. Nor should they be expected to fill that role.
If Alabama wants private colleges, it must create conditions in which they can exist. Fortunately, that requires only modest policy refinements.
These modifications can be accomplished through targeted amendments to the existing Alabama Private School License Law. What is needed now is thoughtful legislative adjustment that protects students while also encouraging the formation of new private colleges.
Here are five.
Accreditation Flexibility
Currently, Alabama requires private degree-granting institutions to be accredited by an agency already recognized by the U.S. Department of Education or the Council for Higher Education Accreditation, or to be pursuing accreditation through such a recognized body. This prevents new colleges from affiliating with new accrediting agencies that are themselves in the formal federal recognition process. For a start-up college, this narrows options, delays formation, and effectively confines new colleges to legacy accrediting structures that are overdue for reform.
New colleges should be permitted to pursue accreditation through emerging accrediting bodies that have formally applied for federal recognition. New accrediting agencies should not be barred simply because they are new, especially when new agencies are correcting deficiencies in the existing system.
Five-Year License Term
Currently, private colleges must renew their state license every two years. For a start-up college in its formative years, this hinders the real work. Leaders should be building curriculum, recruiting faculty, and raising funds. Instead, they are required to build an expensive bureaucracy to cycle through renewal paperwork.
Extending licenses from two years to five aligns with academic and accreditation cycles and reduces bureaucratic churn while preserving full oversight authority.
Tiered Performance Bond
Currently, every degree-granting institution must post a flat $50,000 performance surety bond, regardless of size, enrollment or revenue. A small start-up college enrolling a handful of students must meet the same bond requirement as a larger institution serving hundreds. This creates a disproportionate upfront financial barrier unrelated to actual student exposure.
A tiered structure based on revenue, however, protects students while aligning safeguards with real financial risk.
One-Time Licensure Fee
Currently, the fee structure is tied to a percentage of gross annual income, with wording that is ambiguous and potentially recurring in effect. For a new college, this creates uncertainty in financial planning and can function as an ongoing burden rather than a one-time threshold approval cost.
Licensure should be structured as a clear, scaled one-time fee. Licensure ought to be a threshold approval, not a recurring tax. A simple structure provides clarity and lowers unnecessary barriers to responsible institutional formation.
Pre-Licensure Organizational Activity
Currently, institutions may not “commence advertising in any manner” until a license is issued by the state. This prohibition is so broad that it can prevent start-up colleges from holding conferences, raising funds, building a website, or publicly communicating their mission prior to licensure. In effect, it requires a college to materialize before it can speak, securing licensure before it can raise the funds required to do so.
Institutions should be allowed to organize publicly once legally incorporated, including raising funds, hosting events, and communicating their mission, while still being prohibited from enrolling students or advertising degree programs prior to licensure.
None of these proposals weakens student protection or lowers standards. They simply refine the machinery so that it better serves the interests of the state.
Alabama has taken steps in K-12 reform with the CHOOSE Act, giving families greater educational options. That effort will mature over time, and it should grow to ensure that Christian schools can participate fully without compromising their convictions. But reform cannot stop at 12th grade. If we encourage Christian education for children, then funnel them into institutions shaped by different philosophical commitments, we should not be surprised when the culture remains unchanged.
To correct these cross purposes, Alabama needs private institutions of higher learning capable of sustaining belief, cultivating virtue, and training intellect. It requires colleges that take theology seriously, integrate faith and learning, and prepare students not only for careers but for callings.
There has been much talk, but not enough improvements. Alabama does not lack intelligence, industry or faith. What it needs are conditions that allow serious private colleges to be planted and grown. The proposed policy refinements are modest; the long-term impact could be substantial.
If we desire renewal in Alabama, we would do well to give new Christian colleges every opportunity to take root and thrive.
Jason Cherry serves as an elder at Trinity Reformed Church in Huntsville and teaches literature, American history, and economics at Providence Classical School. He is among the founders of a Christian college now in formation, an institution whose name must remain unspoken until the proper bureaucratic paperwork permits it the dignity of introduction.
The views and opinions expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the policy or position of 1819 News. To comment, please send an email with your name and contact information to [email protected].
Don't miss out! Subscribe to our newsletter and get our top stories every weekday morning.
