Crisis in Christian Education

Education in America, which began with Christian colleges and schools, is in trouble. Private education in particular is facing the greatest crisis in the nearly three and a half centuries of its history. Many independent and private institutions are confronting difficulties that threaten their survival. The shift from black to red has become the common rather than exceptional outcome of annual operations—a trend that, if not checked, will certainly decimate the independent colleges and schools of the nation.

“But for years education has been crying poor,” someone says. “Are things really so critical?” The answer is yes. The New Depression in Higher Education (McGraw-Hill, 1971) by Earl F. Cheit reports an intensive study made for the Carnegie Commission on Higher Education. Judging from a cross section of American colleges and universities, Dr. Cheit, former vice-chancellor of the University of California at Berkeley, concludes that two-thirds of public and private higher institutions are either having financial troubles right now or are moving toward them. In The Red and the Black, William F. Jellema, research director of the Association of American Colleges, presents the preliminary report of the association’s study of the current and projected financial state of private colleges. A comprehensive questionnaire, sent to most of the independent, accredited four-year colleges in the nation, elicited replies from three-quarters of them. According to the report, the “average” institution among the 554 respondents concluded its annual operations with a net current fund surplus of $39,000 for the year 1967–68; this has now changed to a projected current deficit for 1970–71 of $115,000. No wonder Dr. Jellema says: “Private colleges and universities are apprehensive and they have reason to be. Most colleges are staying in the red and they are getting redder, while colleges in the black are generally growing grayer.”

Averages, however, reflect individual cases. At Columbia the 1970–71 deficit is estimated at $15.3 million. At Princeton, the deficit grew from $1 million last year to about $2.5 million this year. Johns Hopkins estimates a $4.3 million deficit this year. And President Nathan A. Pusey of Harvard, which has a billion-dollar endowment, states in his eighteenth annual report: “Fiscally it [1969–70] was the first year during the Pusey administration when the University did not operate safely in the black.” Deficits are jeopardizing the future of hundreds of other private institutions and of many independent secondary schools, especially those with resident enrollments.

The reason for the deficits is plain. Tuition and other student fees do not fully meet costs of accredited education. Other income—from gifts, endowment, foundations, and federal and state aid—is progressively lagging behind soaring operating costs.

Tuition has been raised so high that it deters enrollment and threatens scholarship funds. (Yale, where annual charges have risen to $4,400, now has a plan under which students may defer up to 18 per cent of the tuition and make repayments at an adjusted percentage of their gross income over a period of thirty-five years after graduation.)

Dipping into unrestricted endowment has in numerous instances led to borrowing to meet current obligations, and this has added heavy interest charges to budgets. Moreover, disruption and violence on campuses have made headline news even though only a minority of schools are implicated, and this has fostered a suspicion of higher education that damages its support.

This, then, is the general scene. And the Christian colleges and schools stand right in the middle of it all. In some areas, such as campus disorders, their problems are far less than those of secular institutions; in others, particularly finances, their problems are if anything more severe. They too are struggling with the inflation spiral and insufficient income, and their administrators are voicing deep concern. When asked, “What do you predict for American higher education ten years from now?” Dr. Hudson T. Armerding of Wheaton College summed matters up like this: “There is a possibility that private higher education as we now know it may not be in existence ten years from now. It will prevail only if the American public believes that the distinctiveness is worth preserving” (Ladies Home Journal, Sept. 1970).

In a statement discussing the dilemma of Christian higher education, Dr. John W. Snyder, who has moved from the presidency of Westmont College to become vice-chancellor of the University of California at Santa Barbara, says, “But you, the reader, must make a decision too. Without your support in very real terms, Christian higher education can well become a thing of the past.” A recent letter to the constituency of Houghton College from President Stephen W. Paine refers to that Christian campus as “unthreatened by the shadow of fear that creeps ahead of student unrest” but goes on to remark, “A shadow does threaten Houghton, however, a chronic lack of funds.…” At Seattle Pacific College, President David L. McKenna, after discussing financial problems in his 1970 report, makes this discerning comment: “The immediate threat … is that there will be an educational deficit created by low salaries, limited instructional equipment, inadequate library resources, and deferred maintenance on a beautiful campus. The will to live is strong, but the will to live effectively is stronger.”

Here Dr. McKenna identifies the critical point beyond which no college or school, least of all a Christian one, dares go. A chronic operating deficit inevitably pushes an institution into an educational deficit. And Christian education cannot slip into a decline in quality without imperiling its very reason for being. In the balances are nothing less than the hard-won gains of the last three decades, during which many Christian colleges and schools have built up their campuses, developed and deepened their programs, and gained full accreditation. If the principle that Christian education stands obligated to excellence for the glory of God is valid, then for our colleges and schools to be driven into the morass of quality deficits would be tragic and ultimately suicidal.

So much for the crisis. What can be done about it? No understanding observer would question that Christian institutions are making sincere and prayerful efforts to continue and to do so on more than a mere survival basis. But not all well-meant policies are wise. One of the hazards of crisis is the temptation to adopt palliative measures that may only aggravate problems. There are no panaceas for present difficulties. Every educational administrator knows that his institution must rescrutinize its operations and learn to practice every economy compatible with maintaining quality, which can never be negotiable. Instead of proceeding on a day-by-day expediency, a college should have, as Dr. Joseph A. Kershaw, professor of economics at Williams College, has said, a clear and comprehensive plan of how it expects to live through the present stress, which may last for years. Faculty, because their welfare is linked with that of the institution, must know the difficulties the school faces and what it is doing about them. Change in both the structure and the practice of education must be considered.

Because Christian education is committed to the living Lord in whom all things hold together and who makes all things new, it need never fear change, even sweeping change. The biblical world view is spacious enough to comprehend all truth and all necessary change. Therefore, Christian education must explore new paths, though this may mean breaking with traditional ways of doing things. Not only shifts like restructuring the curriculum or reordering the academic calendar, but such things as the consortium plan, in which colleges share their resources (ten Christian colleges—Gordon, Eastern Mennonite, Messiah, Taylor, Bethel, Wheaton, Greenville, Seattle Pacific, Malone, and Westmont—are already involved in such a plan, see April 9 issue, page 44), and other new patterns of student life and extramural learning, require consideration. Historically, independent education has made some of the great forward steps in teaching and learning. Christian institutions must realize that responsiveness to new situations and varying needs can be entirely compatible with unchanging doctrine and abiding spiritual values.

Dr. Earl F. Cheit, whose New Depression in Education has already been mentioned, names in this book three things colleges and universities must do to surmount their economic problems: First, they must show they are “reasonably governable”; second, they “must demonstrate that they are reasonably efficient in their internal operations”; third, they must have “a unifying set of purposes … that the supporting public can understand and defer to.”

Measured by such requirements, the confessing Christian colleges richly deserve support. They have not had violence on their campuses. To be sure, their students are by no means free from the impatience and rebellion of youth today, nor do all their students escape the pitfalls of present-day society. Yet there are Christian colleges and secondary schools that are showing they can relate to the restless student mind and can do so in a context of prayer, trust, and love. As for the reasonably efficient internal operation of which Dr. Cheit speaks, few institutions have had more experience in dollar-stretching than the Christian colleges and schools. And when it comes to unified purpose, if there is one distinctive that puts Christian education in a class by itself, it is the definiteness of its purpose. Christian education knows its identity. It is committed to the unity of all truth in God and to the integration of all fields of learning with the biblical world view. It knows what it is for and where it is going. Judged by these criteria, then, it deserves adequate support.

But is it getting it? Honesty compels a blunt no, and some plain speaking is in order. A crisis cannot last indefinitely; it has to be resolved either favorably or unfavorably. So with private Christian institutions today. These schools must have greatly renewed and enlarged support or else suffer mortal damage. Mere maintenance of their present level of support would be tantamount to a vote for their shutdown.

Where is this help to come from? There are only two avenues—government or private sources.

A proposal linking indirect federal aid with private giving comes from Congressman John B. Anderson (R.-Ill.). He has introduced a bill in the House enabling persons who contribute up to $100 to a college or university of their choice to subtract that amount from their federal tax, providing it does not exceed 20 per cent of their tax liability. Corporations would also receive a tax credit on gifts up to $5,000, providing it does not exceed 10 per cent of their tax liability. If enacted into law, this plan might well lead to increased giving.

Meanwhile, four-year colleges are now facing a definite decrease in federal assistance. Urban renewal, transportation, and ecological needs are competing with education for tax dollars. Aid to junior colleges and community colleges is outrunning that available to private four-year colleges and universities. The pinch comes particularly in relation to capital funds. One Christian liberal-arts college had top priority in its state for capital funds needed to begin a new science building, but the state had no federal money to dispense.

To accept or reject federal aid is a matter of conscience that different Christian institutions will determine differently. But those that decide to accept it stand on shaky ground if they put their hope for survival in government funds.

The other source of help is private giving. Recent federal legislation limiting the lifespan of foundations and requiring them to distribute principal as well as income will doubtless be reflected in more foundation support for independent education. And in support from its entire constituency—alumni, parents, friends, churches, indeed the Christian public as a whole—lies the chief hope for resolution of the crisis. But this hope will not be realized without radical changes in present patterns of stewardship.

Christian education is the poor relation of many evangelical givers. Maturity in stewardship entails the capacity to see beyond immediate results and to support enterprises having long-range goals. Certain forms of witness and outreach bring quick and often dramatic responses. This is neither to decry their importance nor to begrudge the help they receive. Compared with these more spectacular enterprises, Christian education, like a time bomb, has delayed results. Also like a time bomb, it does not always go off—a fact it shares with all forms of witness. So it takes maturity in stewardship to support Christian education.

Another mark of maturity is resistance to superficial judgments. As has already been said, the shocking breakdown of control on some campuses has bred a mood of disillusionment with higher education. Such an attitude, which spreads by a kind of osmosis, ought not to hamper giving to Christian institutions, which have been free from violence and disruption. Likewise, maturity carries with it an understanding tolerance that does not confuse nonessentials with vital issues. For a college or school to lose support, as some most regrettably have, because of students’ dress or hair styles, points to inability to understand that these outward changes should not be equated with departure from the faith.

But more must be said. Despite recession and inflation, this remains an affluent society. Important exceptions there are, and the existence of so many poor and disadvantaged among us stands out as a sore spot in our national life. But evangelicals by and large belong to the majority sometimes called middle America. On the one hand, the cost of living has gone up; on the other hand, as a feature article in the New York Times (December 9, 1970) shows, opulence is becoming a way of life for the middle class. Even reckoned in inflation-adjusted dollars, the earnings of the average family rose from $6,900 to $9,400 during the last decade. Many a Christian family is in the $12,000-plus bracket and has color TV sets, two or more cars, and other luxuries. Advertisements for expensive foreign travel dot the pages of Christian periodicals. One speaks of these things not judgmentally but factually; they are signs of material prosperity. And as one contemplates them, some of the things the New Testament says about stewardship come to mind.

To what extent is our Christian giving sacrificial? What was our Lord really saying to us when he commended the widow who gave her two mites? Have we ever given up anything—the purchase of the latest model car, an additional TV, a better hi-fi set, a luxury vacation—for the sake of giving more to Christian enterprises? These are not comfortable questions. Yet they may show us that a more mature pattern of giving, one that includes even modest sacrifices of what some euphemistically call “the good things of life” and persuade themselves they simply must have, could greatly help Christian education continue its important work.

If our colleges and schools are being winnowed in this time of troubles, the faithfulness of their constituencies is no less being sifted. The kind of stewardship with which Christians respond now and in the next few years will make the difference between life and death for not a few worthy Christian institutions. Colleges or schools die in different ways—some by merger and consequent loss of identity, others by closing through bankruptcy, others by slow bleeding through diminishing enrollment resulting from a decline into mediocrity. Every good institution lost will mean a larger deficit in Christian leadership while secularism and materialism continue to offer stones to people who are starving for lack of the bread of life. It will mean the curtailing of the kind of education that can fill the empty place in young lives—and this at a time when youth so greatly need the unambiguous presentation of Christ and his claims upon them.

But if the Christian public, realizing the extent to which future leadership in all forms of Christian life and service is at stake, would prayerfully revise their giving so that at least a third of it would go to education committed to the biblical world view and the maintenance of quality to the glory of God, then the crisis could be surmounted.

Frank E. Gaebelein is headmaster emeritus of the Stony Brook School and former co-editor ofChristianity Today.Two of his books, “Christian Education in a Democracy” and “The Pattern of God’s Truth,” are widely recognized contributions to the field of Christian education.

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