Back to School 2022: “Cost to Educate” a Student

Over the past few weeks we’ve been sharing updates at the start of the 2022-2023 academic year. You can follow these links to learn more about finances and enrollment.

Before moving on to a new topic next week, I want to provide one additional update for our current year related to how much it costs to educate a single student at Winebrenner. I am becoming more and more convinced that this single number provides great insights into the true commitments of a school.

The formula for identifying the Cost to Educate (CTE) is very simple: divide total expenses by the total number of students served. Fortunately, Winebrenner consistently spends slightly less than the expenses budgeted for a given year so we can have confidence in our calculation.

For the 2022-2023 fiscal year, Winebrenner has an approved budget with total projected expenses of $1,350,120. As of today, we are planning to have a total of 190 students enrolled in various courses throughout the fall.

2022-2023 Cost to Educate (CTE): $7,105.89

For comparison, the 2021-2022 CTE developed using the same formula was $7,718.67.

I don’t want to miss the significance of these two figures. How often have you heard the term “inflation” used throughout this past year? And yet, when comparing this one figure you’ll see that it actually costs less to educate a student at Winebrenner this year than last!

We have a deep commitment to being good stewards of what God has provided. At $300/month, graduate student tuition accounts for $3,600 of this expense with the remainder arriving through giving, denominational support, and grants. We are working hard to keep expenses low as we seek to serve the greatest number students for the lowest possible expense.

We believe that our decreasing CTE is evidence of how organizational and financial stewardship continues to serve as a priority at Winebrenner.

– Dr. Brent C. Sleasman, President