No part of this task is without its
challenges. For thousands of years,
education has been one of humanity’s
most controversial topics. Even today,
in a society where Americans largely
operate under a shared understanding of
what education is, constant comparisons
to foreign education systems and foreign
students reveal that we still wonder if we
are going about it the right way. This deep-
seated uneasiness should not come as a
surprise. Education contains the power
to establish the future of society, and that
provides fertile soil for controversy.
Further, the enterprise of higher
education faces new difficulties. The
modern American university system
has produced the most massive and
sophisticated graduate program of
education the world has ever seen. Yet
this does not make it immune to the forces
that will completely reshape its nature in
the near future. On the administrative
side, there are economic realities to
consider. The financial paradigm of higher
education is not an indefinitely workable
model. How much longer can we expect
colleges and universities to continue in an
unconstrained cost spiral, with budgets
and tuition costs growing at a rate that
far outstrips the cost of living in the rest
of the economy? The university model
simply cannot survive by perpetuating this
pattern. Then there are changing realities
in the classroom. The technological
revolution continues to alter the very nature
of how we process information. In 2010,
a study by the Kaiser Family Foundation
found that most American adolescents
are spending between seven and 10 hours
a day with digital devices. When they sit
in college classrooms, they are no longer
looking at the professor; they are looking
at a screen. For better or worse, incoming
college students are digital natives, and we
must adapt our methods to this reality.
Challenges to Christian
Higher Education
While these are serious challenges that
demand consideration, they are in no way
the most serious difficulties confronting
us. No, the most serious challenges facing
Christian higher education are the ones
that accompany the word
Christian
. We
are not just about the business of higher
education, but a higher education that is
specifically and intentionally
Christian
in
content and conviction. However, this goal
is increasingly out of step with the values of
the broader world of higher education. The
secular academy operates on premises that
now stand diametrically opposed to the
foundational beliefs of Christianity. Over
the last half-century, those institutions that
have tried to carve out a Christian model
that also fits in terms of the educational,
intellectual, and cultural aspirations of
the larger world of higher education have
found it increasingly difficult to maintain
this position. Sadly, when push comes to
shove, many of these institutions have
chosen academic approval over theological
accountability.
Why is holding this position so
difficult?There are twomain reasons. First,
it is difficult because all the norms of what
establishes academic credibility are set by
secular institutions. In an article published
in
The New York Review of Books
, Richard
Lewontin, a research professor at Harvard
University and one of the leading figures
in genetics and evolution, reflected on the
concept of intelligent design and argued
that within the context of the secular
academy, “we cannot allow a Divine Foot
in the door.” In other words, the larger
world of higher education has concluded
that theistic truth claims must be excluded
up front. Any appeal to objective, revealed
truth is seen as illegitimate. Under this
premise, the larger academy is increasingly
convinced that Christian higher education
can be neither genuinely educational nor
intellectually plausible. Simply put, the
secular academy sees Christian higher
education as an oxymoron.
Second, we have reached the point
where we must understand that all
education is moral. All education is steeped
in a worldview. All education is an attempt
to train people to think and believe certain
THE LARGER ACADEMY IS
INCREASINGLY CONVINCED THAT
CHRISTIAN HIGHER EDUCATION CAN
BE NEITHER GENUINELY EDUCATIONAL
NOR INTELLECTUALLY PLAUSIBLE.
Cedarville Magazine
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