Advice about Christian colleges from a former VP of one

College Search & Selection
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It’s certainly understandable that college-bound young people moving away from the settings in which they were raised would value college settings that reflect their own current comfort zones. And it’s also understandable that young people with strong commitments to their faiths would assume that they would grow more in their faith at a Christian college than at a secular one. But when your college experience is complete and you become a young adult who has been impacted by that experience, the greatest value that you will have received will be your exposure to the widest possible range of human difference. The degree to which you will be perceived as a broadly-educated person will be the variety of different vantage points from which you can understand the world and society.

I spent seven years as a VP at a Christian college and 23 years as a VP at a state university. The campus ministries at the state university were among the largest and most active student organizations on campus. Christian students who sought out religious fellowship at the state university found at least as rich a faith experience as did the students at the Christian college, and many went on to faith-related professions after college. But the student body at the Christian college - indeed, at most Christian colleges - was far less diverse in backgrounds, philosophies, and outlooks than the students who attend non-denominational colleges and universities. And many of the students at the Christian college left with skewed visions of what the wider world considers appropriate and valuable, only to find that they were subsequently viewed by a their post-college colleagues as being limited in their global citizenship.

If you are determined to consider attending a Christian college, closely evaluate how inclusive and welcoming of diverse viewpoints each one may be. For instance, Georgetown University - one of the world’s leading Catholic institutions - has not only Catholic priests available to their student body, but Protestant chaplains and a Muslim imam as well. If you think that having access to people of differing faiths on your college campus will be of no utility to you, you will be forfeiting one of the great learning and growth experiences that your life may afford you. Understanding human difference will be one of the great assets that you will eventually be able to bring to your career. For example, if you see that a college is unaccepting of LGBT students, you should rule that school out. It is functioning within a system of values that is entirely contrary to that of the 21st century Western world, possibly because it has appointed wealthy, older people to its Board of Trustees and cannot afford to risk offending them since their financial contributions are essential to the institutional budget. In evaluating colleges, it will be wise for you to research the balance of funds that the school has in their financial endowment. Colleges and universities build endowments in order to be able to survive lean times, such as those created by a downturn in the number of HS graduates or a pandemic (both of which are currently in effect). In order to be able to hold fast to institutional values and to not sell out to the demands of a wealthy patron (or simply, to be able to keep from going out of business over the long haul), a private college will need to have an endowment in the hundreds of millions of dollars. (A public university generally does not need as large an endowment because its financial viability is bolstered by the resources of its state.)

Finally, the 21st century world assesses truth by generating hypotheses, objectively testing those hypotheses, and arriving at conclusions that are supported by the evidence. Some religiously-affiliated colleges are intolerant of points of view that differ from the pre-determined aspects of what they claim to be true. They are insistent that faculty and students cherry-pick only the evidence that supports those pre-determined conclusions and ignore anything to the contrary. This is essentially the equivalent of shooting arrows into a blank wall and then walking up and painting bulls-eyes around them. The 21st-century world does not function in that way, and an attempt by a college to train you to do so amounts to malpractice. Be open-minded and willing to consider any new learnings that your college experience affords you. Your faith should be enlightened enough and open enough to accommodate those new insights without demanding that you close your mind to them. Good luck and God bless.

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Great post.

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Very well written and you articulated what our family has felt and believed.

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Excellent post, thanks for your insight!

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Thank you for the post.

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Thank you, sir. Would you be willing to share your opinion on which Christian colleges do a good job in regard to inclusivity and welcoming diverse viewpoints, not just in their declaration but also in practice?

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@ArtsyKidDad

I know I’m not the writer, but in terms of California colleges, I’d look at Santa Clara University, University of San Francisco, and USD.

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great post! it made me think a lot which kinda hurt lol.

i wonder what your thoughts are on the ‘all comers’ policy especially in light of this amicus by the Gays and Lesbians for individual liberty filed on behalf of the Christian Legal Society, CLS, in CLS v Martinez? do you believe this will undo many of the progresses minority groups have enjoyed?

here is the link https://www.americanbar.org/content/dam/aba/publishing/preview/publiced_preview_briefs_pdfs_09_10_08_1371_PetitionerAmCuGLIL.pdf

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i believe, a fortiori, that colleges, especially private ones, should be able to exclude students who do not adhere to the core principles that make up and preserve the institution. op, you say that diversity is important. what kind of diversity would exist if people of diverse backgrounds and committed faiths and beliefs cannot freely associate and express their viewpoint? i believe society as a whole benefits from minority viewpoints, whether it is from the LGBTQ community or the evangelical orthodox community.

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I would take much of what @gadad wrote with a grain of salt as many (not all) who have been in academic administration for that long tend to be removed from the “real world.”

In the business world, you will ultimately be judged by the value you bring to the company (NOT the name on a diploma, your perceived religious views, or perceived views on various social/political issues.).

Throughout the years, I’ve had colleagues who attended “Christian” colleges/universities, and they performed just as well as those who attended secular ones. Many of the best students during my graduate program days attended religious universities.

So while I agree that a religious or Christian college may not be the “best” option for perhaps most students, for the right student it can be a great option and set you up well for your goals.

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Amazing post! Thanks for the info!

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I went to a Christian college, have one child there now, and have been involved in K8 Christian schools, including founding one myself. I also work in the HiED industry, though not on the admissions side (I work for a consulting group that supports HiED).

I disagree with the assessment above. The schools I’ve been involved with are very much focused on utilizing the scientific method for discovering God’s creation, as one example. There are certainly closed-minded people at Christian schools, AS ARE there many, many, many at non-Christian schools - holding their hands over their ears and rushing to stone those who don’t toe the new orthodoxy. Today’s on-campus cancel culture looks a lot more like the Salem Witch Trials than does what’s going on at Christian Colleges today. I also know many Christians experience rich, rewarding spiritual lives at non-Christian colleges as well (especially at larger state schools).

I am sad, having just joined this forum, to read such a hatchet/attack post in a sub-forum supposedly here to help people who are thinking about a Christian college.

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Appreciate this @BT2100 and agree

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I went to Pepperdine twice for grad school and my D21 is going this fall. Neither of us would have attended had we believed our perspective would be limited vs. expanded.

Pepperdine has a great, friendly, fun culture open to discussion. Because the culture is intentionally established in this way, exploration of diversity is encouraged.

Here is an article explaining how Pepperdine, in particular, accomplishes this. Written by a Pepperdine law professor who is an Orthodox Jew.

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Would also like to add another link to Pepperdine & their stance on science & religion (which includes the often-asked questions regarding evolution).

https://www.pepperdine.edu/magazine/2009/07/scientific-knowledge-and-belief-god/

Pepperdine: "that truth, having nothing to fear from investigation, should be pursued relentlessly in every discipline.”

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I cannot speak on behalf of other Christian universities (so much) however and agree with the OP to do your own inquiry.

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I’ve been thinking about OP’s post for weeks and started to draft a reply several times, but always got distracted by life. I have a number of thoughts. I’ve had one kid go to a top private LAC (Pomona) and one go to one of the Colleges That Change Lives, Hope College, a private Christian LAC. My Pomona kid got a great education and the diversity of the student body and faculty was definitely a strength. Hope College, by contrast, like a lot of midwestern LAC’s, draws mostly from a much more limited geographic area and it’s true that most of the student body is white kids from MI, IL, IN and OH. It’s not that these schools don’t want or welcome diversity. I think that for many it’s a result of the demographic forces that a lot of these small religious colleges contend with, especially a shrinking pool of high school graduates in the Midwest, lots of competition to recruit those students, and limited financial resources when it comes to being able to offer aid. Still, the result is much less diversity so that’s a fair point.

The OP also makes a valid point that you can find vibrant Christian fellowship groups and worship communities at public universities (and of course also at private non-religious colleges). What stood out to me, however, as a major difference between my two kids’ college experiences is that at Hope College they don’t hesitate to openly discuss how faith intersects with whatever is the topic of the course. I’m not talking about science denialism or anything like that. It’s a question of what are you called to do as a Christian.

For example, like many schools Hope has students take an interdisciplinary seminar in the first semester of freshman year. The class my kid was assigned to was entitled “Should I Give a Dollar To A Homeless Person?” The professor was on staff with World Hope International, a Christian relief and development organization emphasizing clean water and energy, global health and human rights. https://www.worldhope.org/
The seminar description stated: “Poverty is a complex issue. It affects you when you encounter the homeless person asking for spare change. How should you respond to this person, to the person in our community struggling to feed their family, or to the person living in extreme poverty in Haiti? Having a heart for the poor is not enough. How, as followers of Christ can we live a loving and generous life? Our class will look at some of the basic lessons about poverty. You will not become an expert in the topic of helping the poor. But, through readings, special speakers, videos, and conversations, you will learn to think critically about poverty. You’ll learn to discuss it knowledgeably and ask good questions. You will begin to recognize what actions might actually be hurting the poor. We want you to develop an understanding about constructively helping the poor as we explore practical ways to approach this issue.”

If you had this seminar at Pomona, I’m sure it would be very well done and engaging, but I’m also sure that it would not be likely to involve any discussion of what our faith beliefs call us to do. There would probably be more emphasis on societal and political forces that lead to and exacerbate global poverty, but less emphasis on what the individual is called to do about it because the whole idea of having a “calling” is absent. The OP suggests that you will become a better informed global citizen by choosing a secular college, but I don’t accept this to be always true.

The career center at Hope College is called the Center for Calling and Career. It’s just a slightly different emphasis than at a secular college, encouraging students to include their faith perspective as part of the process of discerning career paths.

My ultimate point is that one significant difference that comes with going to a Christian college versus being involved in a faith community elsewhere is that (hopefully) at the Christian college you are more broadly and openly encouraged to engage your faith in an active positive way. It’s certainly not for everyone, but I think a fair comparison of alternatives should take this into account.

At my Pomona kid’s graduation, I went to the baccalaureate ceremony where they had representatives from all the major faiths participate. But the ceremony was poorly attended and just felt anemic to me. I came away thinking that the speakers were all sincere and thoughtful and it was too bad nobody seemed to care that much about what they had to say. At Hope, I think that the fact that so many students care about their faith makes them actually more respectful and interested in hearing from other faith traditions than might be the case at a secular college.

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