Is There a Future for Mission-Defined Higher Education?

Janel Curry and Jennifer Jukanovich

Higher education was already in a disruptive moment pre-COVID-19.  Now it is in even greater turmoil with potential losses of income from declines in residential and international students and from others who are going to move to online programs for the foreseeable future. This financial uncertainty is compounded with uncertainty over how to manage risk in the midst of trying to navigate this next year. This pandemic can either squeeze us into the technocratic temptation to make quick fixes the consultants tell us to make, which worked in this last century, or the shifting sands can provide greater impetus for the original institutional mission and theological tradition to lead the necessary changes.

Institutions in the United States have evolved within a variety of cultural and mission-defined traditions. Land-grant institutions were established to serve the public good through agricultural and community extension services and outreach.  HBCUs have provided an environment for growth and leadership development for an historically underserved group.  Franciscan colleges have often developed programs and approaches that serve the most vulnerable of our society while community colleges and metropolitan universities provide a route for first generation college students.  In times of economic or social stress, such traditions can either be drawn upon to aid in change or can become the final impediment to an institution’s ability to survive and thrive.

Faith-based institutions are just one of these communities of institutions.  Examples of these faith-based institutions range from those that arise out of various Catholic traditions, to a community of Lutheran institutions of higher education.  Some of these historically faith-based colleges have developed into largely secular institutions with a particular missional flavor that arises out of their past, while others have maintained a close, legal, and institutional tie to their religious founding.  All institutions, if they are to remain vibrant and viable, must be flexible enough to continue to adjust to changing circumstances, if they are to be able to continue to achieve their missions. 

Demographics change.  Technology changes. The operationalization of mission must change.  How are the traditions still animating these institutions currently aiding needed and healthy change, and how are they impeding change?  As former senior administrators and alumna of Evangelical colleges, we know these cultural challenges first-hand, both internally and externally. We believe that mission-defined institutions must honestly wrestle with the ways in which their cultures impede growth and embrace the ways in which their cultures contribute to thriving. It is even more imperative in this current crisis that faith-based institutions ask how they live out their mission in the larger landscape.

Transparency versus Shame

            Leaders of most institutions desire to cultivate a culture of transparency, and yet struggle with a fear of failure, leading to shame-based behavior.  Brene Brown and Curt Thompson have given voice to the central nature of shame as a shaper of behavior.  For those particularly within the evangelical community and its institutions of higher education,  the emphasis on holiness can intensify the sense of shame over and against transparency due to the possible assumed connection between faith in God and success. This tendency leads toward unconsciously creating institutions in which the fear of judgment drives those imperfections to hidden places.  Can the leadership, as well as the staff and faculty at all levels of the institution face the reality of demographic shifts, or does the failure to reach recruitment goals for what is perceived as the institution’s “ideal student” lead to blame across the different university offices when students’ needs and backgrounds have changed.   

The antidote for this slide into shame-based behavior—and a tendency to blame others within the institution-- is for institutional leaders to challenge one another to describe reality accurately and refuse to use language that conceals reality. Consistently portraying budget realities and demographic realities are some of the most crucial at the present time.  Among faith-based institutions, this may mean the discipline of not using religious language to cover up tough decisions, such as deferring to the sovereignty of God when facing declining enrollments and eliminating programs, and resisting the tendency to cover up leadership or institutional failures at anticipating change. Rather alternative elements of the tradition should be drawn upon, elements that reinforce our ability to be totally honest about reality because of a universal religious hope that is not tied to one particular model of higher education.  The present circumstances provide an opportunity for faith-based institutions to model honest self-disclosure. 

Integrity versus Niceness

In many institutions, especially private liberal arts colleges, there is a family/clan organizational culture that prioritizes community and relationships. Within faith-defined institutions this can be intensified further due to common faith commitments and religious teachings.  However, a tendency develops to make things more personal than professional. “Being nice” is elevated and the behavior of one’s “brother or sister” is excused or thought to be fixed through the family, rather than having integrity and holding people accountable to clear policies and procedures. In fact, the professionalization of an institution can be viewed as something that is the antithesis of this culture of “nice.” Within our community of institutions, the view that the integrity of policy is somehow uncaring needs to be countered with another religious value—hospitality.  Clear policy and processes create a culture that exhibits hospitality, especially for under-represented groups, and intentionally builds institutions that reflect the larger faith community from whom the institutions draw faculty and students. In addition, hospitality reflects the faith-based value of justice, which need to be balanced against the value of niceness.  Emphasizing the integrity of policies creates the solid foundation upon which to build a culture of resilience that is needed in difficult times. 

Mission versus Individualism

The culture of evangelical faith-based institutions is an American-grown faith-tradition which particularly reflects the strength of American individualism and sees social change through changing and caring for individuals. Granted, institutions have been built to do this caring—the movement has birthed thousands of schools, hospitals and movements to rescue the oppressed. However, organizationally, it has remained individual-focused at times to the detriment of institutional mission. All institutions are facing this challenge of balancing the care of individuals with the maintenance of the institution, but add on to this the weight of the family/clan/faith culture and it becomes challenging to make decisions for the sake of the mission of the institution when they affect the livelihoods of individuals. We have recently both been part of two recent prioritization processes that required laying off individuals and are facing prioritizations in our current work. The present crisis will lead to another round of lay-offs in institutions.  This is the worst decision to make as a leader, and care must be given to those being let go, but there are times when in order for the institution to thrive, the hard decisions must be made.

People are willing to sacrifice and to even lay down their lives when they trust the vision and see the mission lived out with integrity throughout the organization. To the person losing his or her job, this does not make it easy, but if they trust that there is a vision toward which the institution is heading and their job isn’t being cut just for the institution to survive without reason, then there can be understanding.

Vision versus Fear

Faith-based institutions are embedded within their own culture and society, as well as in the context of higher education in general.  Society at present is polarized and all institutions of higher education are struggling to find a way to live out their missions in the midst of this polarization, without fearing the repercussions of each decision. This polarization in addition to the present economic uncertainty creates a fear among faith-based colleges because the stakes are so potentially high.  Fear of losing federal funding comes from being too conservative and fear of losing private donations comes from being too liberal. The culture of niceness adds a layer of seeking to avoid conflict and please every individual.  The result can be the loss of clear mission-focus.

This is a time when institutions must be courageous in clarifying their institutional mission, in order to focus their energies and define their market.  This requires that they confront their fears, while doing the work of creating coherent and consistent internal and external messaging, often through intentional and difficult internal dialogue that may leave some feeling excluded.  They must clearly define the basis of their particular mission, whether being an elite national liberal arts institution, an online university focused on first-generation working students, an Hispanic-serving institution, a faith-based residential college, or a vocational tech school.

Institutions need to know their story and be very clear and consistent with it all the time, everywhere and with everyone—be authentic and be consistent with that authenticity. We cannot disrupt or be innovative to the industry if we do not even know why we exist. Institutions must unashamedly own their mission and their vision. 

Collaboration versus Competition

Clay Christensen has predicted that the bottom twenty-five percent of every tier of higher education institutions will disappear or merge in the next ten to fifteen years. This prediction will be even higher in the pandemic’s aftermath. This reality can lead to an intense need to change and adapt quickly in order to compete for a diminishing pool of students. This felt need for change is long overdue in higher education.  And this competition for the need to adapt must also be balanced with the creativity of collaboration.  Within evangelical Christian institutions there can be a fear of collaborating with those outside one’s faith-tradition, yet regional collaborations across sectors and among higher education institutions may be necessary. The book Bubbles to Bridges talks about the fear within Evangelical culture to compromise one’s beliefs through working with others of different faiths and perspectives. Christian higher education must use its assets of a religious belief in service and a commitment to serving the common good to step outside bubbles and build bridges, to quote Marian Larson and Sarah Shady. Higher education institutions must cross sector and institutional boundaries to explore ways of using complementary resources to serve students that make us all more than the sum of our individual parts.

Ultimately faith-based institutions must know who they are serving and why. An institution’s culture is its greatest asset and its greatest threat.  In this time of great transition all institutions need to reflect on the nature of the cultural elements on which they can build while being honest about the threats.  Don’t allow your culture to impede growth. Be brutally honest about the state of the industry and the state of the individual institution.   Use your best where the need is greatest. Mission-defined higher education will be at risk, unless it can harness its virtues for the greater good. And the on-line experience of the present, in spite of its ability to fill the gap in our need to connect, has shown its limits.

Our culture is crying out for transparency, integrity, character, clarity of vision and collaboration. Faith-based institutions have a future if they embrace these for the good and not give in to the vices that prevent our flourishing. Such institutions know that learning is relational; that character-formation is relational; and that our faith is built on a relationship with Christ lived out amongst a community of faith.  Can we live up to our calling?