Here… • I shared answers to the first two of many good questions that I was asked via Skype by an 8th grade history class in Kalispell, Montana: Did my history teachers make me want to be a historian?; and Who’s my favorite historical figure? • Paying tribute to Dallas Willard, who died of cancer … More That Was The Week That Was
There are several reasons that my employer is currently going through something of a budget crisis; one that’s hard to complain about is that our president and board adopted a new faculty compensation plan that would raise salaries, particularly at the level of full professor. (Some years ago the problem was that we weren’t competitive … More How Well Paid Are Christian College Faculty?
In last week’s historical sketch of the closures of American colleges, universities, and other institutions of higher learning, I closed by noting an oddly symmetrical pair of statistics: Of schools that closed between 1950 and 1979, 36% opened before 1945 Of schools that have closed since 1980, 37% opened before 1910 Much of the attrition of the … More When Colleges Close: Recent History
Back in January, Pres. Obama used part of his State of the Union address to generate enormous traffic for a page at the Department of Education (DOE) website: a “College Scorecard” that provided easy-to-understand data on the net cost, graduation rate, debt burden, and loan default rate for institutions of higher learning in this country, … More The Affordability of Evangelical Colleges and Universities
Here… • Historians shouldn’t ask half-baked, existential questions about theology if they don’t want actual theologians to answer them, as I learned in pondering the role of doctrine in Pietism. (Do check the comments on that post: two come from colleagues who are collaborating on a new book about Pietism.) • Part three of my … More That Was The Week That Was
Here… • I’m normally a big proponent of empathy as a historical virtue. But I can’t say that I grieved all that much to mark the sixtieth anniversary of Josef Stalin suffering the stroke that killed him. I did, however, enjoy teaching my students a song about said demise… • What is the poor Downton … More That Was The Week That Was
As part of a larger controversy boiling over at Cedarville University, its board of trustees last month voted to cut the school’s philosophy major, approving a recommendation made by the Academic Council earlier in January. Reporters and commentators tended to associate the elimination of philosophy (along with the resignation of the school’s president and vice … More Philosophy at Evangelical Colleges
As part of the seminar on Pietism that I’m leading this weekend at Bethlehem Covenant Church in Minneapolis, I’ll devote an hour or so to my chief area of interest: Pietist models of education. In doing some reading for that talk, I revisited an interesting document from my own denomination‘s history: a working paper from … More Don Frisk on Pietism and Christian Education
Having been out of the country and out of my routine for almost all of January, I find myself with more flagged, starred, bookmarked, and otherwise highlighted links than I could possibly list in one Saturday links post. So instead I’ll be putting out three best-of-January posts, each clustered around one of the three stated … More That Was The Month That Was: Education
Reading this morning that American colleges and universities have accumulated over $200 billion in outstanding debt thanks to a “decade-long spending binge to build academic buildings, dormitories and recreational facilities — some of them inordinately lavish to attract students” reminded me of this post from last November… I’ve mentioned once or twice before that my … More Best of The Pietist Schoolman: College Architecture and Christian Simplicity
The Pietist Schoolman 