About 6 months ago, Dr. Scott Carson, president of Southeastern Baptist College in Laurel, Mississippi, issued a statement in which he noted that "During the Obama administration, [the college] received a letter from the U.S. Department of Education warning Christian colleges that they would have to make changes to their admission and hiring policies that would support the LGBTQ+ agendas or they would lose all federal funding. . . . SBC does indeed receive federal funding through participation in the Pell Grant program. Without Pell Grants, well over half of our students would have had to drop out of SBC because they could not afford one of the most economical colleges in the nation. . . . Under the Trump administration, religious institutions received equal favor along with secular schools. However, if Joe Biden is our next president, I foresee the threat from the previous Obama administration reinstated in quick order. There could be tremendous pressure for conservative Christian colleges to either compromise their statements of faith, or be faced with a significant reduction in revenue. . . . With any loss of revenue, we will once again become fiscally challenged and, if the Biden administration takes away our Pell Grant funding, we may find ourselves deep in the woods of financial troubles. Please pray for our country and for Christian schools everywhere as we anticipate a significant financial challenge in the near future."
I suspect that a lot of Christian colleges are already just barely getting by financially. It would not take a whole lot of pressure from the federal government to force them to go under completely. Even without fines being levied, the loss of students who rely on Pell Grants could be the death blow for some Christian colleges.
