I think you hit the nail on the head here, John. I really appreciate the ways you are able to identify both the similarities and the differences among “Christian colleges.” Look forward to reading the whole book. I’m continually encouraged by the interest in and engagement with your posts. It suggests that there really are others out there who both want to take Christian higher education seriously and want to do it differently than it has been / is being done.
The only thing wrong with the university system that built this nation intellectually was the racism, sexism, and homophobia that maintained it as a white boys' club. That's all that needed to be fixed. For a century there wasn't administrative bloat, departmental territorialism, or the transactional ethic that corrupts everything to which it's applied. College was affordable because the state and federal governments set a budget for the public system, and private colleges used the full-freight money of the elite to give poor kids a chance at rising out of their lower stratum. This worked because Americans had, for the most part, a bedrock respect for education. Professors were considered experts, even by those who saw their fields as frivolous (there's always been the "how are you going to get a job with a philosophy degree" parental question). Knowledge was only a threat to beliefs that didn't coincide with that knowledge. Even the separate breed of the Christian college operated by understood codes of conduct that defined students as students and professors as experts whose job it was to train more experts. For the most part, Boards minded their own business and stuck to the university/college mission (and didn't expect $20k to attend a meeting).
Now, all the bad metaphors you rightly list are the operant metaphors, not just at Christian colleges. They are part of the new interpretation of the American dream, which has gone from the freedom to make a life to the freedom to wreck anyone else's life in order to get rich. That poison has seeped into the university system. The business people need to stay in their lane, work in the offices that support the necessary evil of the money that keeps the college afloat, and stop pretending to be, for instance, epidemiologists.
It would be nice (I know is not) that a fourth metaphor be a "discovery expedition" where innovation and perseverance were valued. The expedition is financed by the board, planned by the administration and executed by faculty with students as part of the expedition that join at different points and leave later in the trek. I am looking forward to reading your new book.
I think you hit the nail on the head here, John. I really appreciate the ways you are able to identify both the similarities and the differences among “Christian colleges.” Look forward to reading the whole book. I’m continually encouraged by the interest in and engagement with your posts. It suggests that there really are others out there who both want to take Christian higher education seriously and want to do it differently than it has been / is being done.
The only thing wrong with the university system that built this nation intellectually was the racism, sexism, and homophobia that maintained it as a white boys' club. That's all that needed to be fixed. For a century there wasn't administrative bloat, departmental territorialism, or the transactional ethic that corrupts everything to which it's applied. College was affordable because the state and federal governments set a budget for the public system, and private colleges used the full-freight money of the elite to give poor kids a chance at rising out of their lower stratum. This worked because Americans had, for the most part, a bedrock respect for education. Professors were considered experts, even by those who saw their fields as frivolous (there's always been the "how are you going to get a job with a philosophy degree" parental question). Knowledge was only a threat to beliefs that didn't coincide with that knowledge. Even the separate breed of the Christian college operated by understood codes of conduct that defined students as students and professors as experts whose job it was to train more experts. For the most part, Boards minded their own business and stuck to the university/college mission (and didn't expect $20k to attend a meeting).
Now, all the bad metaphors you rightly list are the operant metaphors, not just at Christian colleges. They are part of the new interpretation of the American dream, which has gone from the freedom to make a life to the freedom to wreck anyone else's life in order to get rich. That poison has seeped into the university system. The business people need to stay in their lane, work in the offices that support the necessary evil of the money that keeps the college afloat, and stop pretending to be, for instance, epidemiologists.
It would be nice (I know is not) that a fourth metaphor be a "discovery expedition" where innovation and perseverance were valued. The expedition is financed by the board, planned by the administration and executed by faculty with students as part of the expedition that join at different points and leave later in the trek. I am looking forward to reading your new book.