Serious conversations about things that matter
One of the nagging dilemmas I face as a university president is faculty attendance in chapel.
We require the students to attend 24 chapels per semester. They often ask me why many professors do not attend.
And their logic is pretty good. “If we are a Christian community, and we believe that worship is formative, and we believe that the need for worship does not end when you get a degree, why don’t professors attend chapel?”
I remind them that many do.
Ok; some do.
I think I just saw the finest example of classroom instruction that I have ever seen.
The room had no chairs but about 25 standing students. No desk, but a piano. No heavy technology, but a simple white marker board.
Mark Hosny, affectionately known as “The Hoz,” was teaching a group of music students. They were working on the practice of conducting a choir or musical rehearsal.
From the opening second, they were moving, exercising, breathing like musicians do, singing, responding to targeted questions, remembering what they had worked on before, stepping into the limelight and demonstrating a practice with the choir. They were performing at a remarkable level.
As we go into the fall season, I am grateful for the strength of the university that I serve. We are seeing triple digit growth and are breaking all-time records for freshman enrollment, undergraduate enrollment, and total enrollment. The high-water marks of last year will soon trail the new numbers for this year.
Why? If you read articles about colleges, you’ll recognize that this pattern is not the norm. The pundits predict the demise of private Christian colleges. Tennessee has made community college free. Yes, we are competing with free. Everyone says tuition is skyrocketing and is out of control.
Church support for the Christian mission of a university is down. States are trimming funding for college. Many are declaring that a college degree is not worth what it costs, especially in terms of the number of years it takes to pay back a college loan. Liberal arts degrees are under attack as “too general” and “too vague” to offer a skill set that is marketable.
I read this stuff all the time. Most of it has been challenged statistically (and correctly) in studies done by the Council for Independent Colleges (CIC).
Peter Drucker became my best friend the day he declared that one of the three toughest jobs was being the president of a small college. I selfishly agree. Leading a university challenges every natural instinct I have; for instance, the instinct to defend myself and fighting back. Thankfully, it has never come to fisticuffs. Most of the confrontations have been quite civil.
In the small university, everyone assumes that the president is the final authority on everything – grades, financial aid, hiring, firing, student discipline, and interpretation of any policy. Rather than calling those who specialize in these things, they call me directly. They have heard something they did not want to hear and they want me to overturn the decision. It has taken me 10 years to learn a few basic lessons about fighting back.
I suppose universities can make New Year’s resolutions. So here’s mine for Trevecca Nazarene University in 2015.
I resolve to find a way to reduce the debt of graduating students at Trevecca while simultaneously reducing the growing cost of unfunded aid to students.
Our students graduate with an average debt of about $21,000. This means some have more, some have less, and some have none. I could write about how this $21,000 is similar to the cost of a good used car, which will decrease in value the minute they drive it off the lot—while their investment in a college degree will repay itself about 47.6 times across the next 40 years. I’d invest in a proven return like this every day. But my resolve is to drive this average debt number into the teens and find a way to keep it there or lower.
Are you going back this year? Will you attend homecoming and/or your high school or college reunion? Is the class of 1964, ‘74, ‘84, ’94, or 2004 beckoning you to come back and see all your long-lost pals?
Sometimes we want to go back. Sometimes we don’t. My conclusion is that yesterday looks better and better in the rearview mirror. The things that once embarrassed us when we were cool young college students are not so embarrassing now that we have kids of our own. The failures that marked us early in life have melted away as we learned to accept who we are. We have less to prove. We’re all aging. Raising kids has humbled, if not humiliated, us.
Is college worth it?
This seems to be the big question these days. You know my prejudices before reading the rest of this post. And if I wrote only from the perspective of worldly wisdom, my answer would go like this:
The pay gap between college graduates and everyone else has reached a record high. “According to the new data, which is based on an analysis of Labor Department statistics by the Economic Policy Institute in Washington, Americans with four-year college degrees made 98 percent more an hour on average in 2013 than people without a degree…. The decision not to attend college for fear that it’s a bad deal is among the most economically irrational decisions anybody could make in 2014.” (David Leonhardt, The Upshot, May 27, 2014) The value of a college education has never been higher. Trevecca students graduate with an average debt less than the price of a mid-sized used car and will go on to earn half-a-million to a million more during their lifetime than their non-degreed peers.
But this answer, while true, bows to the wrong God. Money has been elevated to a position once held by God, the ultimate justifier. President Obama and the US Department of Education are rolling out new requirements that the incomes of college graduates must be tracked for proof that they make money. The one common religion that encompasses the entire world is the pursuit of wealth. Now the only sanctioned reason for going to college is to make more money.
While I am committed to an education that enables a graduate to do great work, I believe the reason for a Christian university is much more radical. We are training cultural and economic missionaries who invade every field of human work with an alternate view of reality. Our graduates believe that the kingdom of God comes as we do the will of the Father on earth as it is done in heaven.
What if there was a college that graduated people marked by the character of God, whose work ethic was driven by their moral values, and whose concern for the neighbor made the world more just and gracious?
What if there was a college that taught its graduates how to make a life?
I went to one. I work at one. It’s called Trevecca. And it’s worth every penny.
Looking for a house is an exhausting endeavor. Having moved a few times, I’ve logged enough hours to reflect. First impression is powerful – a painted front door, open spaces, fragrant aroma. I knew by how a house smelled whether my wife would like it or not. She could sniff a house and know if it would do. I was never able to talk her into a fixer-upper. It didn’t matter what my “vision of what this could become” was; it just didn’t smell right.
A friend of ours was also looking for a house. As he surveyed the available real estate, he was careful to look beyond the surface features of the house – the paint, the wallpaper, the carpet, the drapes, the smell. He was interested in the foundation and the load bearing walls. I was amused by his insistence that the house have “good bones.” All the rest could be altered, but you live with the structure of the bones.
What will you give your teenager for Christmas this year?
As parents of three daughters, Denise and I faced that question many times. And when each daughter reached her senior year, we found ourselves looking at funding the next chapter of her story – college. It would be the largest single expense item that we had encountered to date. Our Christmas savings plan would not cover this gift. What do we do? Do we look for the cheapest option, the live-at-home path, the online alternative? Or do we take a deep breath and consider the kind of formation we are purchasing for our child?
