A revival of religious colleges?

I’ve had a week to reflect on the Council of Independent Colleges ' Chief Academic Officers conference.? I’m struck by three things I saw there.? I’ll touch on two briefly, and the third at greater length.

Short take 1: This was the best CIC conference I’ve attended, and I’ve been to a bunch of them in the past decade. It was well-organized.? The decision to have fewer, larger breakout sessions was a wise one in terms of quality and learning.? And the people in attendance were focused.? Lots of networking and hallway conversations, to be sure.? But those things were dedicated to the challenges at hand.

Short take 2: The people in the room were ready to face the challenges ahead because they had chosen those challenges.? The proportion of new academic leaders was high–lots of people who had come into their roles post-COVID. And those who had served longer had chosen to keep serving in the current environment.? Wanting the job you have, and picking the problems you work on, are essential components of good leadership.? The people I talked to wanted to be CAOs and they wanted to solve the problems that confront them.

Longer take: I was struck by how many of the CAOs of religious colleges were working to deepen the religious commitment of their schools, even if the associated denomination was in decline.? From a market-alignment perspective, this makes little sense.? If there are fewer religious teenagers, why be more dedicated to your school’s religious position?

The answer lies in the point I make throughout my forthcoming book, How to be a small college–that small schools have tried to be all things to all people for a long time.? That move worked when enrollments were growing.? Now that they are shrinking, a school has to stand for something if it is to flourish. Many schools with religious roots are choosing to revive those roots and stand for those things.

That sort of focus has practical implications.? It allows marketers the ability to demonstrate that their school isn’t just like the public university down the road.? It provides student affairs professionals themes around which to organize programming.? It encourages administrators to make decisions about things to fund and not to fund on both ROI and mission. It provides faculty an intellectual frame to build in and to push against.? Most importantly of all, it gives students a stronger sense of the purpose of their education, offering them greater clarity about what they are choosing if they choose a particular school, and equipping them with wisdom and perspective on the world outside college.

This is not to say that all religious schools are becoming more dogmatic, or that there is a generic “religious college.” Nor is it to say that a school should fabricate some sort of religious commitment if it, in fact, has none.? It is to say that many schools are focusing on the specifics of their religious commitments and putting those specifics closer to the core of what they do. By so doing they are clarifying their missions, organizing themselves strategically, and finding more authentic ways to flourish in a tough, complicated environment.