Earlier this summer I argued on Substack that you can’t really call yourself a liberal arts college if you’re not offering liberal arts majors. As my Bethel colleague Jim Beilby correctly intuited in his response, I didn’t mean that it’s necessary to offer an entire array of every field in the arts, humanities, and sciences. … More How Common Is the History Major among Christian Colleges?
Last month I dedicated an issue of my new Substack newsletter to criticizing the decision by Saint Mary’s University of Minnesota to eliminate its majors in art, English, history, music, Spanish, theater, and theology. “Let’s not kid ourselves,” I wrote, “if you can’t sustain meaningful programs of study in history, languages, and fine arts, you’re … More What Is a Liberal Arts College? (Jim Beilby)
Earlier this month the Christian Reformed Church concluded a six-year debate on human sexuality by voting not only to uphold its traditional view that sex is reserved to man-woman marriage, but to confirm that belief’s “confessional status” — as pertaining to the Heidelberg Catechism’s statement against “unchastity.” I’m no expert on Reformed polity or theology, but … More Why, More Than Ever, Christian Colleges Need to Inhabit the “Messy Middle”
We’re planning to record one more special episode this summer to conclude our first season of the College for Christians podcast, but this week we paused to answer a couple of questions from listeners — plus one that we had ourselves but had never fully addressed. Stream or download that episode from Podbean, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, … More College for Christians: Some Listener Q&A
We’re headed down to the basement for the first tornado warning of the season up here in Minnesota, so briefly: This week’s episode of College for Christians is our most in-depth yet, as special guest Alex Hintz answered all the questions Sam and I could think of regarding financial aid. A former student of mine, … More Inside Financial Aid
Early in the history of American education, it wasn’t unusual for there to be close links between secondary and postsecondary institutions of learning. The oldest secondary school in what’s now the U.S., after all, was a Latin grammar school in Boston meant to prepare young boys to enter Harvard. But over the course of the … More What’s “Early College”?
On this week’s episode of College for Christians, Sam and I tackled two of the most pressing questions in higher education: why does college cost so much, and is it worth it? Especially in response to the first question, we were again trying to demystify higher education, where confusion adds to stress. We talked through … More The Cost and Value of Higher Education
Earlier this week I was invited to talk about Bethel’s history at a dinner celebrating the university’s 150th anniversary. For once I spoke without notes, but here’s the best I can do to reconstruct what I said: my attempt to make our history more personal for more people, rather than focusing on the stories of … More What Is Bethel? The Moments That Make Up Our History
This week’s episode of College for Christians is probably my favorite that Sam Mulberry and I have recorded so far — mostly because it feels less like me giving a lecture on educational history and more like two people who work in higher ed trying to make sense of a word that is both ubiquitous and … More How Do You Know If a College Is a Good “Fit”?
Last week on College for Christians, we focused on the first word in our title and surveyed the wide array of thousands of American postsecondary institutions enrolling millions of students. This week, we put the pieces of our title together and look at the variety of ways that American Christians have approached higher education. That … More The Variety of Christian Colleges
The Pietist Schoolman 