Even before we started in on this run of posts about controversies in the Council for Christian Colleges & Universities (CCCU), I had been thinking about why it is that I have come to identify so closely with that model of higher education.
I didn’t attend a Christian college — or even apply to them. My parents didn’t attend one (though some aunts and an uncle did). My first time on the job market I didn’t seek any jobs in the CCCU, not that I knew what it was. Yet here I am: about to start my thirteenth year at Bethel University, editor of a recent book on Christian higher education, and blogging regularly about that topic. At this point, I can’t really imagine working at another kind of institution.
And I suspect many of you — however you feel about the Goshen/Eastern Mennonite/Union controversy — have a similarly deep attachment to a Christian college in particular or to the larger world of Christian higher education. (There’s got to be some reason that this blog has had as many hits in the past seven days as it normally gets in an entire month!)
So let me temporarily suspend further commentary about the particular controversy facing the CCCU and encourage anyone reading this to respond to this question:
What do you love about Christian colleges?
Why is this educational model, whatever its faults and limitations, so important to you? What would be lost if it somehow went away? In the midst of our anxiety and disagreement, what should we be celebrating about what happens in the CCCU and at other Christian campuses?
Please feel free to leave comments here at the blog, on our Facebook page, or responding to me on Twitter. Thanks!
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