Asbury Theological Seminary plans to leave the federal student loan program and stop processing Title IV loans beginning in May 2027. Title IV governs federal student aid under the Higher Education Act.
The Kentucky seminary, which is rooted in the Wesleyan-Holiness tradition and serves students from numerous denominations, said the move reflects a desire to reduce student debt and concerns that a future administration hostile to its beliefs could use federal funding as leverage against the school.
Asbury President David Watson said the school’s extensive use of internal scholarships has helped make the transition away from federal loans possible.
“Right now, we scholarship on average 65 percent of master’s tuition costs, 100 percent of Ph.D. student costs and about 50 percent on our doctor of ministry program,” Watson told The Christian Post in an interview. “We want to get that number higher, but the big issue really was student indebtedness.”
Watson said Asbury wants to “chart out our own course” without allowing the federal government to influence its financial decisions. “If the federal government controls your finances, then the federal government can control other things about your institution,” he said. “Asbury is a school that is Wesleyan, orthodox and Evangelical and it’s very important for us to maintain those commitments.”
He said the seminary also wants to avoid a future situation in which an administration hostile to Asbury’s beliefs could use federal funding as leverage against the school. “We just don’t want to get there,” he added.
“I think it could become a trend in Christian higher education because depending upon the ideology of the administration that’s in power, things could become very difficult for schools that take their Christian identity seriously,” Watson told CP.
Along with its own scholarships, Asbury works with churches and other Christian organizations to help students identify additional financial aid.
“If students must take out loans, we can work with them to identify the best lenders, private lenders for them, but we really don’t want them to do that,” Watson said. “We have some capacity to provide some internal loans but in general, we want to discourage students from taking out loans unless they really have to.”
Watson said significant seminary debt can burden graduates entering ministry, where starting salaries are often modest, and that moving away from Title IV funding will “be good for our students” while allowing Asbury to “chart our future in the most faithful way possible.”
According to the seminary, the share of students using Title IV funding has fallen from about 30% to roughly 17% in recent years.
