Re-Imagining Christian Higher Education

Laurie Schreiner

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN:
  9780367892944
• eBook ISBN:
  9781351206211
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Re-Imagining Christian Higher Education takes a fresh and critical look at the challenges facing Christian colleges and universities and provides concrete recommendations for university leaders, faculty, and staff to implement in their daily work. Chapters in this book address leadership and diversity challenges, issues of affordability and sustainability, and ways of maintaining the distinguishing features of a Christ-centered liberal arts education. A vivid and compelling picture of the Christian university of the future is painted by these authors as they highlight the importance of embracing our Christian identity while being willing to engage a pluralistic and fragmented world. Firmly rooted in a missional identity of faithful learning that is committed to the intellectual, personal, and spiritual development of our students, Christian colleges and universities are encouraged to reclaim and revitalize the breadth and depth of the Christian tradition in order to move forward.

The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Christian Higher Education.

Steering the Ship through Uncertain Waters: Empirical Analysis and the Future of Evangelical Higher Education

P. Jesse Rine and David S. Guthrie

ABSTRACT

Leaders of evangelical Christian colleges must navigate a challenging environment shaped by public concern about college costs and educational quality, federal inclinations toward increased regulation, and lingering fallout from the Great Recession. Proceeding from the premise that empirical analysis empowers institutional actors to lead well in uncertain times, this article examines four key areas—access, affordability, student outcomes, and financial sustainability—using publicly available data from the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS). Results for the evangelical segment and the wider private nondoctoral sector of American higher education are compared, and areas of relative strength and weakness are considered. To facilitate benchmarking by institutional research professionals, the article’s appendix presents national longitudinal norms for both the evangelical segment and the private nondoctoral sector.

Not long ago, conventional wisdom asserted that a college education was an unmitigated good, a wise investment that paid both personal and societal dividends. Today, however, one need not look far to discover that many question the value of a college education, and some have concluded that it simply isn’t worth the time and expense. This recent shift in public perception has resulted largely from heightened sensitivity to college costs and increased doubts about educational quality.

Although the Great Recession officially ended in 2009, high unemployment has persisted, and some experts have cautioned that a full recovery in the employment of college graduates may not come until 2017 (Carnevale & Cheah, 2015). Over the past few years, the number of students who graduate with student loan debt—but no job—has increased, as has public scrutiny of annual increases in college tuition and fees. In addition, recent high-profile studies of student learning—or the alleged lack thereof (Arum & Roksa, 2011)—have eroded public confidence in the educational quality of American colleges and universities and their ability to effectively prepare students to enter the workforce.

Against this backdrop, policy makers have renewed efforts to protect the substantial public investment in student financial aid through formal quality assurance mechanisms. President Obama’s recent call for a federal ratings system intended to hold colleges and universities accountable in the areas of access, affordability, and student outcomes underscores the extent to which governmental actors now believe that they can both define educational quality and develop meaningful metrics, and then leverage eligibility for federal funding to incentivize institutional behavior.

These developments pose significant challenges to postsecondary leaders, especially those at the helm of a smaller private college. Although tuition and fees at four-year private nonprofit institutions have increased at a slower rate over the past 30 years than at public institutions (College Board, 2014a), the private sector’s higher average sticker price has attracted widespread criticism from those concerned by the rise in student debt totals. This criticism has contributed to the growing public perception that a private college education is not affordable for many Americans—a particularly ominous development for a tuition-dependent sector. Also of concern is the undeniable trend toward increased federal regulation and the additional institutional requirements it portends. Not only is the enlarged federal role in higher education lamentable, but its concomitant regulatory burdens are likely to be borne disproportionately by smaller private colleges; because these institutions do not enjoy an economy of scale, they are often unable to comply with new government mandates in a cost-effective manner.

In addition to strong public perception and regulatory cross-currents, leaders of smaller private colleges also must navigate formidable financial headwinds. As independent and primarily undergraduate teaching colleges, these institutions enjoy neither the diverse revenue streams of the research university nor the financial support of annual state appropriations. Instead, smaller private colleges must rely upon two primary sources of institutional revenue, net tuition and endowment return, both of which have experienced strain of late. In order to attract enough students to fill their entering classes, private nonprofit colleges and universities have nearly doubled their tuition discount rates over the past two decades—from 23.8% in the mid-1990s (Baum & Lapovsky, 2006) to 46.4% today (National Association of College and University Business Officers, 2014)—effectively offering the average student a one-half tuition scholarship to attend college. As tuition discount rates have continued to rise, the smaller private college sector has also endured the effects of the Great Recession, which resulted in a median return on net assets of −9.3% in 2008–2009 (Council of Independent Colleges, 2015). The recent financial turbulence has led to the closure of a handful of long-established and well-respected smaller private colleges, as well as an unmistakable reduction in the operational margin of error within the sector as a whole.

As one distinctive segment of the private nonprofit sector of American postsecondary education, evangelical colleges and universities also must deal with these public perception, regulatory, and financial challenges, as well as issues unique to Christian higher education, such as denominational divestment from higher education (Glanzer, Rine, & Davignon, 2013) and perennial threats to religious institutions’ legal right to set employment standards for belief and behavior. Although leaders situated at various levels within Christian higher education will naturally differ in their approaches to addressing these pressing issues, access to reliable and consistent data will prove fundamental to their ultimate success. For example, descriptive statistics are regularly used by institutional research officers to track organizational performance over time and against other colleges, by higher education scholars to frame parameters for inferential analysis, and by marketing professionals to craft a public profile for their respective colleges and universities.

Our past research (Guthrie, 1992; Rine, 2012) used descriptive statistics to trace the contours of the evangelical segment of private nonprofit higher education in the United States. In this article, we seek to extend that work by presenting empirical, comparative, and longitudinal data related to many of the current challenges faced by Christian colleges and universities. Our hope is that the various indicators examined in this article will elucidate the recent trajectory and present state of American evangelical higher education, which will in turn empower Christian college officials to lead their institutions from an empirically informed perspective.

Approach and Methodology

We examine four key areas—access, affordability, student outcomes, and financial sustainability—using data from the U.S. Department of Education’s Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS). A basket of indicators intended to measure the comparative performance of the private nondoctoral sector and the evangelical segment has been selected for each area.¹ For example, five indicators are used to measure the key area of affordability: annual tuition and fees, average institutional grant per student, percent of students receiving institutional grants, total price, and average net price for students receiving financial aid. A complete list of all indicators, organized by key area and including all related IPEDS measures, is presented in Table 1.

Table 1. Key areas with related indicators and IPEDS measures.

Indicators	IPEDS measures
ACCESS
Percent of African American students	Formula: Full-Time Students, Undergraduate Total, Black or African American Total/Full-Time Students, Undergraduate Total, Grand Total
Percent of Asian students	Formula: Full-Time Students, Undergraduate Total, Asian Total / Full-Time Students, Undergraduate Total, Grand Total
Percent of Hispanic students	Formula: Full-Time Students, Undergraduate Total, Hispanic Total/Full-Time Students, Undergraduate Total, Grand Total
Percent of White students	Formula: Full-Time Students, Undergraduate Total, White Total / Full-Time Students, Undergraduate Total, Grand Total
Percent change in total student enrollment	Formula: (Full-Time Students, Undergraduate Total, Grand Total: Fall 2013—Full-Time Students, Undergraduate Total, Grand Total: Fall 2010)/Full-Time Students, Undergraduate Total, Grand Total: Fall 2010
Percent change in African American student enrollment	Formula: (Full-Time Students, Undergraduate Total, Black or African American Total: Fall 2013—Full-Time Students, Undergraduate Total, Black or African American Total: Fall 2010) / Full-Time Students, Undergraduate Total, Black or African American Total: Fall 2010
Percent change in Asian student enrollment	Formula: (Full-Time Students, Undergraduate Total, Asian Total: Fall 2013—Full-Time Students, Undergraduate Total, Asian Total: Fall 2010)/Full-Time Students, Undergraduate Total, Asian Total: Fall 2010
Percent change in Hispanic student enrollment	Formula: (Full-Time Students, Undergraduate Total, Hispanic Total: Fall 2013—Full-Time Students, Undergraduate Total, Hispanic Total: Fall 2010)/Full-Time Students, Undergraduate Total, Hispanic Total: Fall 2010
Percent change in White student enrollment	Formula: (Full-Time Students, Undergraduate Total, White Total: Fall 2013—Full-Time Students, Undergraduate Total, White Total: Fall 2010)/Full-Time Students, Undergraduate Total, White Total: Fall 2010
Percent of Pell Grant recipients	Variable: Percent of Full-Time First-Time Undergraduates Receiving Pell Grants
AFFORDABILITY
Annual tuition and fees	Variable: Published In-State Tuition and Fees
Average institutional grant per student	Formula: (Institutional Grants [Funded] + Institutional Grants [Unfunded])/12-Month FTE
Percent of students receiving institutional grants	Variable: Percent of Full-Time First-Time Undergraduates Receiving Institutional Grant Aid
Total price	Variable: Total Price for In-State Students Living on Campus
Average net price for students receiving financial aid	Variable: Average Net Price—Students Receiving Grant or Scholarship Aid
STUDENT OUTCOMES
Retention rate	Variable: Full-Time Retention Rate
4-year graduation rate	Variable: Graduation Rate—Bachelor Degree within 4 Years, Total
6-year graduation rate	Variable: Graduation Rate—Bachelor Degree within 6 Years, Total
Average amount of annual student loan debt	Variable: Average Amount of Student Loan Aid Received by Full-Time First-Time Undergraduates
FINANCIAL SUSTAINABILITY
Acceptance rate	Variable: Percent Admitted—Total
Yield rate	Variable: Admissions Yield—Total
Net tuition per student FTE enrollment	Formula: (Tuition and Fees—Total + Allowances Applied to Tuition and Fees) – (Institutional Grants (Funded) + Institutional Grants [Unfunded])/12-Month FTE
Discount rate	Formula: (Institutional Grants (Funded) + Institutional Grants (Unfunded))/(Tuition and Fees—Total + Allowances Applied to Tuition and Fees)
Tuition dependency	Formula: (Tuition and Fees—Total + Allowances Applied to Tuition and Fees) – (Institutional Grants (Funded) + Institutional Grants (Unfunded))/Total Expenses—Total Amount
Endowment to operating budget ratio	Formula: Value of Endowment Assets at the End of the Fiscal Year/Total Expenses—Total Amount

Data for both the evangelical segment and the private nonprofit nondoctoral sector are provided in two forms. First, descriptive statistics are presented for the most recent year of publicly availab...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Citation Information
• Notes on Contributors
• Introduction: Re-Imagining Christian Higher Education: Hope for the Future
• 1 Steering the Ship through Uncertain Waters: Empirical Analysis and the Future of Evangelical Higher Education
• 2 Women in Leadership: The Future of Christian Higher Education
• 3 Pathways to Success for Students of Color in Christian Colleges: The Role of Institutional Integrity and Sense of Community
• 4 Faith and LGBTQ Inclusion: Navigating the Complexities of the Campus Spiritual Climate in Christian Higher Education
• 5 The Future of Residence Life and Student Affairs in Christian Higher Education
• 6 A Distinctive Vision for the Liberal Arts: General Education and the Flourishing of Christian Higher Education
• 7 Reimagining Christian Higher Education
• 8 Envisioning the Future of Christian Higher Education: Leadership for Embracing, Engaging, and Executing in a Changing Landscape
• 9 Toward a Future for Christian Higher Education: Learning from the Past, Looking to the Future
• Index