Challenges

On this page, you will find what I consider to be some of the challenges facing Higher Education in general and then you will find challenges that I believe exist in Christian Higher Education, specifically within the Seventh-day Adventist context.

Top Challenges in Higher Education

As the futurist Timothy Daggett pointed out Higher Education has become the line of demarcation for status. It is not that college graduates always earn more (although you are more likely to earn more). Neither is it that they are the most employable, especially in this down economy do college graduates find themselves over-qualified. He makes the point that our higher education is not practical and our students are less valuable to employers in certain fields than high school graduates from other nations (like Germany or Japan). While our higher education focuses on producing creative students for whom the sky is the limit, it leaves us with graduates who are almost useless from a practical perspective.

Education is not held in the same esteem. While the effects of this loss of esteem is most notable at the lower levels of education, it has repercussions in higher education as well. Those with graduate degrees either at the Master's level of the Doctoral level find that there is more money to be made in corporate America than there is at the University level. Therefore we are not always getting the brightest minds in higher education.

The last challenge affecting higher education in general is the difficulty which institutions are facing in moving to a more learning centered mode of operation. Both in the classroom as well as in administration of our institutions of higher education we are struggling to make the adaptation that knowledge is no longer the commodity being dispensed. We are still hiring and evaluating teachers based on their knowledge of their content area. But with the information superhighway, knowledge is no longer the commodity, but learning and the ability to acquire knowledge is now the need of today's graduates.

Challenges in Christian Higher Education

 All that has been said previously about challenges to higher education also are the challenges to Christian Higher Education as well. We are challenged by the status-oriented focus of higher learning which puts a premium on a liberal arts education forcing all students to take classes in literature, the arts, etc regardless of major, as well as loss of esteem for teaching and difficulties in moving towards a learning centered approach to education.

But additionally, we are not sure of our mission and purpose . . . i.e. what is our reason for existence. What makes us different from public/secular education? What role does Christianity play in higher education?  How Christian does Christian education need to be?

We are also being challenged by lack of educational prowess in Higher Education. It seems that with the exception of the school of education, the higher you go, the less educational ability of teachers/professors to actually educate. Teachers/professors are chosen for their academic qualifications but not based on their ability to educate.Of course this goes back to the shift that needs to be made in terms of adopting a learning centered approach to education. But this problem may be exacerbated in our context, because of the next challenge which is funding.

This last challenge to higher Christian education is lack of proper funding both for the institution as well as the educators. We are yet to commit the funding necessary to make our schools thrive. It seems that there is a resistance for our church administrators who are by and large pastors in their training and experience to remunerate teachers/professors at a rate that is higher than their own. This lack of funding represents a fundamental lack of respect and support for Christian Higher Education.

Some Solutions to Proposed Challenges

We need a collaborative study between theologians and educators to rediscover our mission and purpose for Christian Higher Education. And when we find that “it,” that “thing,” we must challenge our institutions of higher learning to demonstrate their commitment to and compliance with that purpose and mission. Then we must plan weekend retreats and give our professors and administrators time to incorporate that purpose and mission into what they do in the classroom. These weekend sessions can be done by schools or areas of instruction so that there is a comprehensive and cohesive game plan for instituting change in that department. And then we must refuse to fund any school or institution that will not come into line with our stated mission and purpose for Christian Higher Education.

We must require that teachers/professors not only take courses in education, like test and measurements, curriculum development and design, etc. And then demonstrate in their classrooms that these methods are being implemented.We must be willing to withhold tenure and other performance based incentives for those who do not demonstrate proficiency in educating. We must somehow insure that learning as opposed to telling is happening in the classrooms of our institutions of higher education (Christian and otherwise).

We must make the commitment to properly funding our schools (with our economy still quite shaky, this has become an issue for both Christian and other schools as well). We must determine what is the appropriate percentage of the budget the institutions must be able to sustain in order to be considered financially viable. We must be able to attract the best amongst our constituency to work in our institutions, recognizing that we may not be able to pay the equivalent of other private and public institutions but we should at least be able to get on the playing field.

I do not propose that these are the final solutions to our problems but rather the departure point for a conversation about these challenges that face us and the wider society at large.