The news that Cornerstone University in Michigan is ending all humanities and arts programs (with booting of professors following) has shaken many in the Christian collegiate community. It’s also something that comes close to home: this fall, Lord willing, I’ll start teaching engineering at Lee University, which has been a liberal arts college for a long time but is itself starting an engineering program, having done the same with a nursing program earlier. Having been taken to task more than once regarding my opinions on engineering programs (that’s an ablative absolute for those of you who missed it,) I feel that it’s time for a reality check on this whole subject, because Cornerstone (and Lee for that matter) are not the only Christian colleges adding what their detractors refer to as “vocational training.”
As part of this I need to make a disclosure: I know Cornerstone’s president, Gerson Moreno-Riaño, from my association with Regent University, where he was Vice-President before coming to Cornerstone. About ten years ago my PhD program experienced a funding crisis which led some of us (especially the foreign students) to wonder if we would end up “on the street.” Lacking guidance from either our own institution or from searching on the internet, I turned to my contacts at Regent (as I mentioned in my dissertation) of which Moreno-Riaño was one. Their response was simple: if our PhD program was ended without getting the students to graduation, transfer out or abandonment of their degree pursuit, our institution would experience the “Wrath of SACS” (its and Regent’s chief accreditation agency.) It wasn’t easy but we got through, and Moreno-Riaño’s (and others’) advice was very helpful.
With that out of the way, I’d like to lay out in as simple terms as possible why I think liberal arts education–Christian and otherwise–is in trouble:
- Higher education is expensive. There is a serious aversion in the liberal arts community about evaluating one’s education in terms of the revenue the subsequent career will generate, but barring a general amnesty from Joe Biden those loans have to be paid back somehow. (And, thanks to some stupid changes in our law, you can’t discharge them in bankruptcy.) Most of that is due to administrative bloat, some of which comes from compliance with the maze of Federal and state regulations, but some is just the way things are done these days, and it’s not good.
- The idea that one needs to go to college to obtain any benefit from such an education is simply not right. Exposure to the arts and history (to say nothing of foreign languages, living or dead) is something that must be started much sooner; college is too late. But colleges have been expected to compensate for the manifest deficiencies of our primary and (especially) secondary educational system, which has diluted the content of the undergraduate degree. Our schools (and not just the public ones) have contented themselves with developing conformity to the “system” in the students and not the critical thinking skills they really need.
- Liberal arts education has been politicised to the point that it’s hard to characterise it as “liberal” in any sense of the word. That in many ways is the consequence of our obsession with instilling conformity with a system; it’s encouraged the development of a power dynamic in our academics. It’s also the consequence of Americans’ investing too much in the ability of our institutions of higher learning to mould character, when that too needs to start earlier.
- Liberal arts advocates downplay the ability for scientific and technical pursuits to develop thinking skills. Nowhere does that prejudice find refutation in reality than with mathematics. One of the last courses I took for my PhD was Advanced Linear Algebra. (It was from that course that this post was inspired.) Our professor taught it from a strict “theorem and proof” standpoint, not one congenial to his engineering students. It was his idea that mathematics should be used to teach logical thinking, and he certainly carried through with it. Another math professor noted that computer programming was a form of mathematical proof; you need to know how to thing logically to be a good programmer, although the road to that, for me, had a few “bumps.”
And there are practical realities to consider. American universities are bracing for a demographic cliff which started with the economic crash of 2008 and from which we have never recovered. Moreover students at more than Christian institutions are shifting towards career choices (and the education to go with them) that generate enough revenue to provide for oneself and a family. But it’s more than hard necessity: why must Christian students and institutions shut themselves off from scientific and technological pursuits in a world where both are an integral part of life? Many of the stupid decisions we see in our society stem from an elite with little scientific or technical training.
As far as Moreno-Riaño’s program for Cornerstone is concerned, the execution strikes me as too drastic. The article notes that other institutions will doubtless take a more gradual approach, but as just noted there are real forces behind such transitions. As also noted Moreno-Riaño’s plan requires being able to find adjuncts to “stand in the gap,” which isn’t as straightforward in a place like Grand Rapids as one might think. And building a faculty in engineering is certainly going to induce “sticker shock” in Christian institutions; it may be a necessary transition, but it won’t be an easy one.
When Jack K. Williams became President of Texas A&M University in 1970, he made the following statement:
I believe that during the years ahead we will be witness to a geometric rise in the development and adoption of innovative techniques and programs. In matters large and small, the atmosphere of education is heavy with the smell of change. For some of us this is a heady perfume; for others it is the pungent odour of brimstone. Either we sail the strange sea, benefited by whatever navigational experience we have and can command, or we will become passengers on educational vessels whose rudders are managed by others…*
More than a half century later quite a few in Christian education are smelling brimstone. It’s time to stop and embrace the expansion of Christian institutions into new territory unless, of course, you don’t mind if they end up with no territory at all.
Positive Infinity 
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