September 2025 President’s Pen with Preston Kendall
At CRSM, we are in the process of renewing our medical Insurance Coverage. If you have ever been through this process, especially lately, you can understand how rewarding and wonderful it all is. Of course, I’m kidding. The last several years in a row have been absolutely brutal. After the obligatory initial quote and then some haggling for a revised quote and the threat of moving to another plan, CRSM ended up this year with a 13% increase over last year. We were told how lucky we were that it wasn’t even higher. Yay! Others actually have it worse than us. Woohoo!
Insurance carriers cite rising medical costs as the primary reason for their increases. It got me to thinking, which has risen more over the last few decades, medical costs or college costs? Well, according to one analysis by J.P. Morgan, the cumulative percentage price change since 1983 for college tuition was a whopping 899% whereas, for medical costs, the increase was a more modest (but no less jarring) 486%. The price of college has risen at nearly twice the rate as medical costs for the same period. For context, gasoline rose 192% over the same period.
Affordability has become a primary concern for those considering a college degree. It is no surprise that many are questioning a degree’s value. Even some friends of CRSM have challenged whether getting a degree should be our main focus. But it is not a simple formula.
Several recent studies still affirm that a completed bachelor’s degree substantially raises lifetime earnings and improves chances of moving up the income ladder for low-income youth. However, the gains vary a lot by institution, field of study, and whether the student actually completes the credential.
On average, workers with a bachelor’s degree earn far more over a lifetime than those with only a high-school diploma (estimates in the U.S. often range in the hundreds of thousands up to over a million). For example, a Social Security analysis finds median lifetime earnings differentials on the order of $630k–$900k for bachelor’s holders versus high-school graduates. But completion matters. Studies that track parent income and students’ later incomes show that attending and—critically—finishing college is what drives mobility.
There is also a large variation across colleges and majors. Some institutions and majors produce much higher mobility rates than others. On average, returns are positive. OECD and U.S. government analyses conclude that tertiary education delivers positive private net returns on average (large lifetime financial gains), yet the net benefit for any given student depends on tuition/debt, time to degree, and post-graduation employment and wages.
Low-income students face lower enrollment rates, lower completion rates, higher probability of attending lower-return institutions, and non-financial obstacles (academic preparation, work/family responsibilities). Even controlling for degree attainment, students from poorer families often earn less than peers from affluent backgrounds — indicating that a degree reduces but does not eliminate the advantage of coming from higher-income families and communities that bring with them greater and more extensive social capital.
At CRSM, we follow the research and continue to develop programming to combat such variances.
- Academic Readiness: CRSM offers a rigorous college-prep curriculum with wide access to AP and dual-credit courses. Your CRSM GPA is the single best indicator of whether you will complete college. The Class of 2025 is the sixth class in a row to have 100% of its members accepted to at least one bachelor’s program. Students are graduating and enrolling in college at very high rates compared to national averages for low-income peers.
- College-Going Culture: CRSM’s mission explicitly frames college as expectation despite the fact that 96% or more of our students are the first generation in their family to attend college. We want our alumni to flourish and, even if college is not for you, by attending CRSM you know it is a viable option if you want it.
- Social Capital & Networks: Our Corporate Work Study Program (CWSP) places every student in professional jobs, allowing them to expand their career horizons while also developing relationships with business professionals and college graduates.
- Data-Driven College Counseling, Financial Support & Literacy: Students need guidance on fit (academic, financial, social) and on high-mobility colleges/majors. Furthermore, they and their families need guidance on what is truly affordable. College scholarships, financial aid, and college mentoring programs are also part of the arsenal that CRSM counselors bring to bear when supporting students for success to-and-through college and reducing dropouts.
- Persistence Support: Alumni counselors provide check-ins during college, helping students navigate college and access resources on campus. They also encourage summer internships and assist CRSM college graduates getting their first job out of college.
I often return to a prayer by Ken Untener called, “Prophets of a Future That is Not Our Own”
Untener reminds us, “We accomplish in our lifetime only a tiny fraction of the magnificent enterprise that is God’s work… No program accomplishes the Church’s mission. No set of goals and objectives includes everything.”
Cristo Rey St. Martin College Prep’s fosters upward economic mobility for its students. A Mission that is, at its heart, an act of faithful planting. We acknowledge that supporting students in changing their own economic trajectories is not a quick or linear task. Our mission does not presume to solve generational poverty all at once. Instead, it commits to the slow, steady work of preparing students well for college, walking with them through the turbulence of young adulthood, and accompanying them as they discover their God-given vocations.
CRSM’s efforts to expand academic rigor, deepen college advising, and extend persistence supports beyond high school are not about instant results—they are about laying foundations, as the prayer says, “that will need further development.”
“We provide yeast that produces far beyond our capabilities.”
We will never see all the fruits of this labor—graduates becoming leaders, lifting families out of poverty, reshaping their communities—but the CRSM community chooses to trust that grace will multiply the seeds it plants.
CRSM recognizes it “cannot do everything,” but it can do something – “and do it very well.” We are creating opportunities for students and trusting God to complete what begins here at CRSM.
As Untener writes, “We are workers, not master builders; ministers, not messiahs. We are prophets of a future not our own.”
Being college-prep is not just part of a strategic plan – it is a spiritual posture, an act of faith. It aligns CRSM’s daily efforts with the long arc of hope, reminding ourselves that every step taken to help a student persist is a small act of prophecy, pointing toward a future that will blossom far beyond our sight.
¡Viva Cristo Rey!
