A Financial Times article I just read stated that Catholic school enrollment in the U.S. was at a high 50 years ago at 5.6 million students. Now it is supposed to be half that.
Granted there was a baby boom that would have caused attendance to increase in the 1950s, but since then the U.S. population has still grown and I would assume that the Catholic population has a higher birth rate than other groups.
Also, public school education in the last 50 years hasn’t exactly been a smooth ride.
Has public school enrollment gone up sharply in the last 50 years or are people who wish to send their children to private schools turning to other avenues?
Never mind, found out the answer. Nearly every expert says it’s simply a matter of dollars. Fewer people can afford to send their children to Catholic schools and the parishes have trouble subsidizing the schools.
I wonder how much of it could be attributed to the exodus from highly Catholic cities in the Northeast and Great Lakes region. Inner city schools in areas with changing demographics must have also played a role.
I might have hoped that the experts could have answered in a little more detail than this.
It it’s really “can’t afford to”, that must mean that the cost of Catholic schools have risen dramatically compared to the earning power of those who would send their kids to school there. Even in this case, one could still give a more detailed answer as to “why”.
Barring that, then “can’t afford to” merely translates into “have chosen not to spend their money that way”, which probably gets back to your original question and certainly has a more fundamental answer.
Now I’m starting to guess, but one problem could be that the people who can afford to send their kids to Catholic school still do, but also have more options available to them.
And the larger number of Catholics who have to come to the U.S. are from lower income brackets (especially new immigrants from Latin America) and can’t afford to go.
Catholic schools also have a reputation for being stronger in language skills and related subjects. They have never been big on science education and that may also be scaring some parents away from the schools as they might think that there children would be lagging behind in learning how to use shiny hi-tech stuff. But that’s a guess on my part.
The recent child abuse scandals in the Catholic Church aren’t considered a factor as the decline started before the scandals became a big story.
I worked with a guy who was considering sending his children to Catholic school. He and his wife toured the local Catholic school but were surprised at the poor equipment in it, so they sent their kids to public school. Now, this was an elementary school in a rich suburban school district, so the difference was probably dramatic. If you were comparing a Catholic school to a typical inner-city school, there may be less difference.
I remember when I was young that Catholics had strong pressures to obtain a “proper” religious schooling distinct from what was offered in the public sector. This was especially strong, as noted, in the northeast where large numbers of immigrant groups lived in distinct neighborhoods.
Catholics have dispersed greatly from those neighborhoods and immigration from largely Catholic countries is minimal compared to what it was up until it was suppressed by the change in the immigration laws in the 1920s. They’re following the “three generation” rule to assimilation. Hispanic Catholics haven’t replaced them in similar numbers in the northeast.
Interestingly, it’s the various evangelical Protestant denominations in which the growth of religious schooling is pronounced. Catholics appear to have fewer quarrels with secular doctrines like evolution.
Money certainly plays a factor, though. And demographics as well. On both sides.
Catholic schools are a LOT more expensive than they were 50 years ago, when they were predominantly staffed by priests, brothers and sisters (who were paid virtually nothing) or lay teachers who were expected to move on after they got a couple years experience.
When I attended Catholic high school 35 years ago, tuition was $200 per year. Tuition at the elementary schools was even less. High school tuition at the successor to my high school is now $5,600 a year.
In the baby boomer days, it wasn’t unusual for every Catholic parish to have several hundred families, often with three or more children. The parishes subsidized the local elementary and high schools. Now many parishes have 100 families or fewer, so only the mega parishes have enough members to provide anything more than a token contribution.
Interesting. 35 years ago, tuition at MIT was about $4,000 a year, 20 times the tuition in your school. Now it is about $35,000 a year, only a less than 7 times the tuition. And college tuitions haven’t exactly been standing still.
I agree. My brother and I were sent to Catholic (elementary) school way back when. Much of it was subsidized by the church (parishoners), however, my family did pay a portion of tuition and fees every year. We did without a lot of things so my family could make that tuition payment.
Fast forward 20 + years. My son is attending a private school (not Catholic, thankyouverymuch), but I sacrifice a LOT to make those tuition payments every month. Yeah, we could be blowing the money of something nice and trendy (like a car, or a nicer house in a nicer neighborhood, or even cable television and fancy schmancy groceries and clothing), but at this point, my son’s education is worth more than any of those things.
One reason I choose not to send him to a Catholic school (versus private school) is (1) I’m a recovering Catholic, and (2) he’s not Catholic and (3) I don’t want him brought up as a Catholic. I’m not prepared to deal with the dogmatic attitude of the Catholic church simply for a higher quality education than he’d get in a public school.
I worked a few summers with the band program at a local Catholic school, and from the makeup of the band I observed that it was about 75% black “citified” kids and 25% of your “typical” white, Irish/Italian Catholic kids.
The local public high school is huge and not known to be either horrible or wonderful education-wise. I suspected most of the kids were sent to this Catholic school to get a better chance at excelling due to the smaller class sizes, so they didn’t get “lost in the shuffle” at the huge public school.
Religious teachings, dogma and tradition have become increasingly less important to actual views and behaviors across many religious sects, including Catholics.
Catholics send their kids to public school, divorce and practice birth control more than their parents or grandparents. Except for what we call the Chrisitian right,
many people have shed their own church’s tenets or traditions if they decide it’s
appropriate for them.