My time at Bethel didn’t prepare me to do any specific job, but it prepared me to be the person that I am. Fun as it is for a college professor like me to explore metaphors for the Christian liberal arts — spiritual retreat, cathedral construction, and a Lord of the Rings-like quest — it’s … More The Value of the Christian Liberal Arts: A Bethel Alum Speaks
Well, my vow not to parse any more college rankings lasted about five weeks. Right up until… wait for it… Now. Last week the New York Times highlighted a website called PayScale.com, which released its annual ranking of just over a thousand American colleges and universities. Here’s the hook: PayScale doesn’t look at reputation (U.S. News) … More Well-Paid (or Meaningful) Work as a Measure of Higher Education
To what degree do Protestant denominations continue to support the colleges and universities they founded? Even setting aside schools whose historic Christian identities are now nominal, what of institutions in a consortium like the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities (CCCU)? While some of its best-known members are nondenominational (e.g., Wheaton, Westmont, Gordon, Taylor), most … More Declining Denominational Support for Evangelical Colleges?
There are lots of factors contributing to the financial crises afflicting higher education in general and my employer in particular. However, since Bethel is a Christian college that has retained more than a nominal relationship with its founding denomination, I’ve sometimes wondered just how changes in Converge Worldwide (Baptist General Conference) have affected our situation. … More Bethel, the BGC, and the Decline of Denominational Financial Support for Christian Higher Education
We’re teaching our kids to say “I don’t care for” rather than “I hate” foods that they find distasteful. But I can’t summon the energy to be polite about the sham going by the title of U.S. News Best Colleges. And just because I’ve resolved here not to parse college ranking systems doesn’t mean I … More Reasons to Hate the U.S. News College Rankings
I should note that the past week brought this blog its 100,000th view. Thanks to everyone for reading! But more importantly: Here… • I joined several others in getting the word out that Books & Culture is facing its last issue if it doesn’t make its 2014 fundraising goal by the 9th. They’d made progress … More That Was The Week That Was
On Friday I led our department’s welcome sessions for new majors. For a while now I’ve made sure to dedicate part of that time to preemptively addressing the concern, “What do I do with a History major?” We’ve got better at making what sound to us like effective arguments — ruthlessly pragmatic explanations of the … More Christian Liberal Arts as Cathedral-Building
I don’t see a lot of stories from north of Minnesota’s border catch fire in my social media circles, but this one showed up on my Facebook page and Bethel’s faculty listserv last Friday: Laptops have replaced pen and paper for many post-secondary students but a Canadian study suggests using computers during lectures could be … More Do Laptop Computers Inhibit Learning?
Here… • A tour of memorial sites got me thinking about how to teach a new course on World War II, and prompted two new series: one on the commemoration of WWII started by asking why “living memorials” were so popular among architects, artists, and others in the 1940s; then a second looked chapters in … More That Was The Week That Was
Earlier this summer I looked at how the members of the evangelical Council for Christian Colleges and Universities (CCCU) fared in The Financially Sustainable University, a brief by Bain & Co. and Sterling Partners that has garnered significant attention (not all favorable). 32% of CCCU schools listed in that report were classified as “Financially Unsustainable” … More Eighteen Evangelical Colleges Earn a “D” for Finances
The Pietist Schoolman 