Pity U.S. colleges coping with political feuds, “diversity,” declining applications and enrollments, student debt and tight budgets.
Add religious and moral issues and things get even more complex.
Some religious colleges are on survival watch. On June 29, the 140-year-old Alliance University (formerly Nyack College) decided it must shut down, and a second New York City Christian school, The King’s College, will also close unless there’s a last-minute reprieve. Early in the week, Religion News Service reported:
The last remaining evangelical Christian college in New York City, The King’s College, announced Monday (July 17) in an email that the school, which has faced dire financial challenges, would not offer classes in the fall. In an earlier meeting with faculty and staff it was announced that many teaching contracts would not renew or were canceled.
“This decision comes after months of diligently exploring numerous avenues to enable the College to continue its mission,” read the email, which was addressed to “members of the King’s community” and signed by the Board of Trustees. “In connection with this decision,” it continued, “it is with regret we share that our faculty and staff positions will be reduced or eliminated.
The running tally by www.HigherEdDive.com lists 96 colleges that have gone out of business since 2016, and Christianity Today counts 18 Christian colleges that shut down since COVID, with more likely.
Amid all those newsworthy developments, let’s not neglect the content of higher education. There’s been considerable media coverage on conservatives’ complaints over neglect of “dead white men,” liberal faculty bias, oppressive secularization, imbalance on American history, “cancel culture” and “woke” pressures.
Yet with considerably less fanfare, a different 21st Century trend is recasting the very definition of a well-educated citizen. College education as it existed in the West across the centuries was a huge invention and contribution of the Christian religion and, in turn, it enhanced value formation and spiritual depth. Any religion builds upon the past and non-technological reflection on what’s “good, true, and beautiful,” as the old formula expressed it.