With Faith in Mind
With Faith In Mind is intended for academically-minded, ecumenical Christians. Our goal is to engage listeners with a thoughtful and faith-informed perspective on important issues and big questions that our society faces. We do this by having real conversations with people who have great stories and expertise. In our first series, titled “Christian Education at the Crossroads," we’re interviewing top leaders and scholars in the Christian education space.
With Faith in Mind
The CCCU: The Value of Pooling Resources in Education
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Speaking with host Dan Hummel is guest Shirley Hoogstra, President of the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities, a higher education association of more than 185 Christian institutions world-wide. Rooted in the historic Christian faith, most member institutions focus on teaching the arts and sciences, and aim to grow students in integration of biblical faith and learning.
Learn about Shirley Hoogstra & CCCU
Read Shirley's Contributions to Uncommon Ground: Living Faithfully in a World of Difference
With Faith in Mind is produced at Upper House in Madison, Wisconsin and hosted by Director of University Engagement Dan Hummel and Executive Director John Terrill. Jesse Koopman is the Executive Producer. Upper House is an initiative of the Stephen & Laurel Brown Foundation.
Hello and welcome to With Faith in Mind and our series on Christian Education at the Crossroads. I'm Dan Hummel, the Director of University Engagement at Upper House, and your host. Today we're exploring the landscape of Christian higher education with one of its key institutional leaders, Shirley Hoogstra. Shirley is the president of the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities, a body that's existed for nearly 50 years and right now counts 140 Christian colleges and universities in the U.S. as members. Just a few more facts about Shirley before jumping in. She trained as a lawyer and spent more than a decade practicing law as a litigator before joining the ranks of Christian higher education. She served as Calvin University's vice president for student life from 1999 to 2014. And since 2014, she's been the seventh president of the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities. We'll call that the CCCU in this conversation. And she's been serving in that world now for uh almost a decade, I guess. Um Great. Well, Shirley, before jumping into talking about the CCCU, I did want to ask just a more personal question or a question about your story. And that is, how do you, when people ask, I'm sure they ask often, how you became the president of CCCU, was this something you wanted uh for much of your career, or is this something uh that sort of landed in your lap, so to speak? How do you tell the story of moving from law into higher ed and then into this uh position you have now?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, well, I would say uh God is a god of surprises. So when you're on a vocational journey, it is almost a hundred percent unlikely that what you start off with at some point in your life is where you end up with, especially today. That was very true for me. Um, I graduated with an elementary ed degree and a special education concentration. Uh, and that was because I wanted to get a job. And uh back when I graduated, they were hiring teachers, and I thought, good, I'll have a paycheck. Uh, subsequently uh got married, moved to New Jersey, taught school there for three years, and then my uh spouse, my husband, uh moved uh and we moved because he got a residency at Yale Mayhaven Hospital up in New Haven, Connecticut. Now, uh, who knew? But there was a teaching uh glut uh at that time in my uh life history. And so there were no jobs to get hired in at New Haven, Connecticut. And so I knocked on doors and I said, hey, look, I'm an organized, semi-organized person. I could be a paralegal, what did I know? Um, and someone hired me. In fact, Wigan and Dana, the largest firm in New Haven, Connecticut, hired me to be a paralegal to work for Yale University. Now, if you don't think when you hear my whole story, that that's not just a little God moment. So I get to work for one year with Dorothy Robinson, one of the best general counsels in the United States. And uh I get to serve as she said, would you take a month-to-month job? I'm like, yeah, because that's better than no job.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_01So I take a month-to-month job. And not only that, what do we know about jobs? If you hire them, it's unlikely they're gonna fire you because they can find something else. And not only that, lawsuits take a long time. I thought for sure I had a job for a year. Well, the lawsuit settled. Uh, and so here I am, almost unemployed again. Except Dorothy says, hey, no, you know what? You're this frugal kind of um honest worker, and uh, we got another job for you. We want you to investigate secret societies at Yale University. So I got to spend the next uh, you know, four or five months uh because there was a lawsuit against the secret societies. So I got to uh do the research on that. Well, lo and behold, I go to law school. Uh I I end up uh working at a wonderful firm called Jacob Scrober Belt and Dow as a litigator. I I grew up, as I say, in New Haven, Connecticut. I love the law, I love the rule of law, and I loved helping people. Uh then uh God says, uh, you don't even know this, Shirley, but uh about 20 years from now, there's gonna be an opening at the CCCU, and they're gonna need a lawyer who's been a campus leader. So you guess what? I'm gonna pick you up, I'm gonna change your profession. You're not gonna be a lawyer anymore, you're gonna go be a higher ed administrator in student life. Now, the most thing I had done in student life would have been I was at like a super RA, but that was a while ago. But I did love student life and I had an incredible staff. I had some transferable skills, uh, and I was there for 15 years. And the place that educated me on everything I needed to know about higher education was the CCCU. And I volunteered at the CCCU. I went to their conferences, they became my friends, they taught me what I needed to know as long with the incredible staff at Calvin University. And then in 2014, I'm at a conference of the CCCU and they needed a president. And people came up to me and said, you should apply for that job. And I'm like, well, not really. I think I'm gonna finish my career at Calvin University. And not only that, they all they always hire presidents to take that job. And I'm not a president, I'm a vice president. And lo and behold, um, it you have to be in Washington, D.C. to take that job. And I was living somewhere else. Well, God had other plans. I interviewed, I got the job, I love the job. In fact, I am doing six cylinders on a six-cylinder engine in this job. And again, God put it all together. And that's why I tell uh folks, I do graduation speeches quite a bit, and I say to graduates, do not worry. Say yes to the things God puts in your pathway. Believe that he will equip you, trust in him when you feel afraid, and he will give you the ride of your life.
SPEAKER_00I'm so glad I asked uh for this for that story. Um, and I think uh I think that wisdom you ended with um really resonates for many of the students that we see at Upper House, too, who are um uh, and maybe that's even different. I'm a little older, but uh I was uh in college about 15 years ago. And even then I didn't have a huge plan. Um and and things definitely didn't work out like if I did have a plan, how they would have. Um but students today often come into UW at least with a very strong sense of what they need to do for the until they're 40 or something.
SPEAKER_01Right.
SPEAKER_00Um and that can uh close off some really interesting opportunities. I think your story is one of those um opportunities.
SPEAKER_01So well, it's a rear-view mirror uh philosophy, right? So if you say, I am open to what God has for me, and I will believe, even in hard circumstances, that he must have a purpose for these experiences, then you will you will more likely than not, most days than not, feel that you are doing something purposeful for the work of God in the world.
SPEAKER_00Very good. Well, uh, I do want to get to the CCCU. That uh that was a good uh entree uh to that. Um for I imagine there are listeners here who um know about you know certain Christian colleges, maybe famous ones like Wheaton or uh or others, but they may not have heard of the CCCU. Um how do you describe it? What's its mission? What is it, what are the functions, what's what's the value to members? Um what's your sort of elevator pitch?
SPEAKER_01We are a member service organization and we do things together that they could not do on their own. So for instance, uh we do a lot of advocacy work, which is telling the story of Christian higher education to people who make rules about us. So in Congress, they make rules about housing, food, um Title IX. There's a lot of rules. Uh in the executive branch, the Department of Ed, Department of Justice, uh HUD, they make a lot of rules about Christian colleges, all colleges. And so uh we tell the story there. And then uh in the courts, there's a lot of cases that come down where there might be a question about religious mission or whether you can hire and fire, whether uh you're exempt from some of the rules uh that Congress promulgates. Um we are in there with the meekest briefs, and we try to do again things that individual campuses cannot do. So we are efficient for people. Um, we try to make their jobs lighter. And then in a so that's the advocacy part. Then let me we do professional development. Who's gonna be the next vice president? Who's gonna be the next president? Um, how do we come become better at our job? We do a lot of integration of faith and learning work. So we do key leader conferences, and then lastly, I don't know about you, but sometimes the press doesn't fully understand about the entities they write about. And so we try to make sure that we're really good communicators with the media, uh, print, social, uh, even a podcast like this, uh, in order to just clarify what it is that Christian colleges and universities do.
SPEAKER_00And I this might this is sort of implicit in what you just said, but you're located in Washington, D.C. Uh right now. What what's your normal um, I don't know, month or year like? Are you mostly in DC? Are you traveling around to member uh colleges? What does it look like to be the president?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, thank you. Um I wish I knew. No, uh, I'll tell you what, tell you what uh what it kind of looks like because what I love about the job is it's just so buried. But um in the three pillar areas, which I just described advocacy, professional development, and telling the story of Christian education, I spend every day probably touching all three of those areas. It could be in the office. So it could be uh recently I was in the uh Senate gallery watching a vote on some legislation that we had been part of. Uh, it could be uh talking to member campuses about questions they have or actually visiting member campuses. That's uh sort of professional development. Um we are going to have a conference for presidents in the beginning of January. We have a conference for key leaders in Dustin, Florida, uh in February. And then I uh do a lot of networking with both partners, friends, allies, uh, to say how can we serve you and how can a relationship with you serve our members?
SPEAKER_00Very interesting. Uh I want to ask a bit about the history of the CCCU. I I'm a historian myself, so I all, you know, often that's one of the first or couple questions I ask about anything is sort of where did this come from and why did it sort of emerge? Um, I know very basic details about the CCU's history. It was founded in 1976. It was much smaller then than it is now. Um how how do you understand the history? What's the sort of um reason the CCCU came about? And uh maybe we can start there. Um and and maybe in its early years, sort of it was it doing all the things it was doing now, or or has that changed over time?
SPEAKER_01College presidents were finding that even in 1976 that their jobs were getting more difficult. And they uh looked around and said, Hey, if we're going to go to Congress and say, look, you should increase the POL grant, uh, if we're going to go to Congress and say, uh, the Charitable Giving Act, uh, which is really interfering with the small donor, is not a good idea, you could have everybody in an unorganized fashion go one off to do that sort of thing. Or you could say, what if we paid uh a little bit of dues? We hired a couple of people in Washington, and they then represented all of us on our common issues. And so back in 1976, 30 campuses got together, they pooled their money, uh, they rented a little place here in Washington, D.C. They hired great people, just a small staff. And then that small staff at the time said, Hey, you know, we could get a grant, uh, and that would help our uh through the Eyes of Faith publication that we're doing. Um, and they did that. Hey, you know what? Um, 50 years ago, campuses were having a hard time doing semester study abroad. So they started the Oxford program. They started a program in Costa Rica and in Jordan and in Washington, D.C. And then students from all the campuses could come and have a semester away from campus. We call it, you know, we now call it just uh study away, study abroad. And that was really meaningful to our campuses. And they also started a magazine. Uh, it was kind of a pamphlet. Remember that word pamphlet? Uh, they had a pamphlet that would just keep people informed. Well, it there was a low bar of entry uh in terms of cost. And there were a couple of things, though, that made everybody have similar interests. The first one is that you had to have a Christian mission, the second thing that you had to hire all Christian faculty, the third that you had to be in a regionally accredited, of course, now that's nationally accredited, but regionally accredited. You had to pull for the other schools. You you couldn't talk badly about other Christian schools, sort of like, hey, we're really Christian. Um and uh um, and then you had to um want to have Christian formation as an integral part of your educational endeavor. So those are the sort of the principles involved, what make members similar. And that those principles uh remain today. And our advocacy work has multiplied, you know, by four. Um, our media relations has multiplied, our key leader development that's pretty much stayed the same. And we still have excellent programs in Oxford and in Jordan and in Washington, D.C. And Christian study students could come uh to those semester programs if they wanted to have a really incredible experience with an integration of faith and learning lens.
SPEAKER_00And you mentioned that there were 30 uh original members of the CCCU, and now it's you know well over 100.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, 140 in the 140 in the US and 185 around the world.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. So where where is that growth come from? Is it just more um yeah, I I don't even know why I don't even want to guess. Is it just uh who's who's joined in the last you know 50 years, uh the CCCU?
SPEAKER_01Well, the most of the campuses existed. They just didn't know that there would be so many benefits from banding together. So the growth was pretty was has always been up. So, you know, then another uh 10, 12, and a person in my role would have gone out and uh talked to different campuses, talked to boards to say, hey, I think there are a lot of uh uh benefits here. And then the benefits of the association just keep kept growing. Like we have an insurance consortium. Uh Acadium is our course sharing online consortium. Uh, we have a tuition exchange so that people can go for free to different campuses. So if you're at uh Taylor and you wanted to go to Wheaton, you could make an exchange there. It's not unlimited, but it's really important. So all of those, all of those member services started to accumulate. And then people actually come to us and say, we would like to be a member. Um, and uh the growth from 30, I would say to 90 happened over the first 20 years, and the growth from 90 to 140, you know, was that next set of years because we got the majority of folks at first, and then um, you know, like the uh Concordia institutions, Cordia Lutheran institutions, they're newer newer members because they had such a strong Concordia identify identification, Concordia Lutheran schools, but now they they see the benefit of uh being part of the CCCU.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, makes a lot of sense. Um, one of our interests in the series is to think about all aspects of Christian education, higher education being a very prominent one, but not the only one. And I just wondered how do you see the role of Christian colleges and universities in relation to other types of Christian education? And you know, the the big ones here might be um education people would receive in their church, um, in their uh primary schooling for those who go to you know Christian K through 12, um, and then other things like campus ministries and Christian study centers and other do you do you have conversations about sort of the broader ecosystem of Christian education and and how Christian colleges and universities fit into it?
SPEAKER_01Yeah. That's a great question. Uh thanks, Dan. Well, first of all, God uses every single one of those entities to further his purpose. And what he wants is for people to um have a heart that's closest to his heart. And that's a journey kind of question. And let's just take the journey metaphor. Um, who you journey with is really important for your your growth as a believer. Um the time you get to spend thinking about the heart of God and what interests him is a factor in how much you want to dedicate uh your experiences to that endeavor. Uh the mentors you have, right? So if you're in a campus ministry, a campus uh ministry or a Christian study center, you're going to get great mentors, you're going to have good peers, you're going to have excellent conversations. So that's very similar. In a Christian college, you just have more of it. And so uh I love the synergies between the uh the study centers, uh, the Christian ministries, like university and crew. And I love the fact that some individuals are drawn to be have a completely immersive experience. Um, so you have all Christian faculty and you have uh peers that uh have some similar commitments in a Christian college. Uh the practices of faith can be developed in some ways with just a larger group. Uh I think the quality of individuals in a in a Christian ministry or in a Christian study center probably match uh one-to-one than and in a Christian college, think about it just on steroids.
SPEAKER_00And there's a there's a um I guess maybe to fill that out, there's like an institutional part dimension to that that um that that sort of permeates um the the student experience for sure, but even the faculty and administrative experience.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, what about can we can we talk about that a little bit? Because um one of the things there are such excellent Christian faculty in uh secular institutions, and students have good role models through them. One of the things that I think Christian scholars and Christian colleges and universities are able to do is have no cap, no obstacle for that scholarship that they want to do for the time it takes for the conversations they have with peers, right? Um, but I think that Christian college scholars have something to export to the other larger sort of Christian scholarship world wherever scholars find themselves. And then you gotta overlay this with the Holy Spirit. So people are led. If you, if you're if you're a Christian and you say, hey, look, I want to go to the University of Wisconsin, they've got a great Christian study center there, they've also got university, and you feel like, yeah, that's a good place for me. I say to people, don't doubt the Holy Spirit's leading. Because maybe the conversations you're gonna have, the people you meet are unique to your God story. And then there are folks that say, boy, I would, I've been in a I've been in a secular high school all my life. I would just love to have no obstacles, freedom of conversation. You know, I'd like to go to a Christian college to do that. Or uh God just has a plan for them to to uh grow up their faith, to deepen their outlook and worldview, to meet the people they're supposed to meet. So this is all Holy Spirit driven. And I would say if you're a Christian in any of those places, be intentional. Whether it's a Christian college, you can kind of surf through that, right? You can surf through the University of Wisconsin and just dabble, or you could just really dig in to the ministry that's at your doorstep and make the best of your life.
SPEAKER_00Thanks for that. Yeah, and I I think of the the you talked about there's no cap at a Christian in a sort of Christian college context. And I think about our work here at Upper House and how we um we work with so many faculty who um really enjoy UW. Not not many of them are looking to leave, actually. And there's so many advantages to um, particularly in in certain fields, to the the resources that a place like UW has, particularly in the art sciences, um to being able to, you know, um teach uh massive massive classrooms. I don't know if anyone actually likes doing that, but that's something you can do here. Um to definitely um have very diverse students who come from which which CCCU schools also have people coming from all around the world from all different faith perspectives and everything, but it is a very diverse um uh context here at Madison. But there's always this question of um, particularly in the realm of scholarship and even in service and how they relate to their departmental colleagues and how they relate to the institution. Um, there are you know uh boundaries there that uh in part that's because we're a public institution, and so there are certain standards around that, but it's also because it's a uh it's a not an institution that. commits to the same things that a CCCU school does in terms of um its mission. And so um, you know, there there are there are all these trade-offs, I guess, is is what I want to say. And um and I think places like uh Upper House are, you know, sort of find themselves and on campus of a major public university because we're trying to fill that gap that at a Christian college um maybe isn't there because the because as we've talked about that's sort of built into what the institution is all about.
SPEAKER_01Well Dan, uh never doubt your calling. Right? So the calling of a of a a a state school faculty member who is a man or woman of faith, you you have a opportunity to be Jesus in a way that's different than the Christian college faculty member who also wants to do that. And I love the the plus of that description. And then the same way with the with the Christian study center you're at the cross section of a really important purpose and the ecosystem of Christian higher education is just that it is a large uh it's not siloed um it is something that works together to just create some of the best oxygen you could hope for.
SPEAKER_00Just to circle around on the last part of this question also um talk about the churches. So how do you see Christian colleges um and this might be I don't know if anyone's asked you this uh sort of how do uh churches and particularly um I think of my church that has sort of adult education uh for in in various ways none of it sort of credentialed or anything but is there a do you see a pipeline or or sort of an ecosystem uh connection between what churches are doing in their uh setting and what Christian colleges are trying to do?
SPEAKER_01I love that question because uh it's uh it's like hand and glove. And for the denominational uh higher education institutions that I represent so Nazarenes, Wesleyan's Reformed, Assemblies of God, uh for just to name a few, um those uh denominations, let's say 150 years ago, most of my institutions are 150 years, some a little older, some a little younger, but 150 years ago, that was a long time ago and people needed to be educated. And they and they really thought that the churches could be the um the seed bearing institutions that got that started. And they really relied on the church for resources for seminary faculty for other learned individuals. It okay so now 150 years I would say that it's fair to say based on the research that churches are in a place of stress. And so the colleges they didn't know back 150 years ago that the colleges could be this resource to the church in terms of scholarship, teaching um good church members, uh thoughtfully and theologically trained, right? So there's it's this ebb and flow that has happened between the colleges and their birthing denominations.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Okay, I want to uh sort of moving to you you just talked about some of the you know point of crisis in the in the churches. Um acknowledge you know we're in a moment of tension we're talking this series is called Christian education at the crossroads and we use that crossroads metaphor to mean a bunch of different things but one of them is that there are a number of challenges facing higher education in general and Christian higher education in particular. And so I just wanted to run through a couple of the the hot topics and uh just uh let you um talk about them let us discuss them. Um the first uh and this is in no particular order this is just how they they came to mind the first would be sort of the financial structure of higher education and that can mean a lot of different things the cost for students the cost for running a university um the desire to expand the uh student body into uh groups that are less advantaged economically and what that means for uh higher education as as the president of the CCCU how do you think about and there's so many other uh dimensions to finances how do you think about um Christian higher education and sort of its its current state as uh financially yeah so uh we just got McKinsey report uh to say that 50% of Christian college uh governing members in the CCCU have grown uh and 50% have gotten smaller now that's it could be gotten smaller by one student or uh 500 students and it can grow from 10 students to thousands of students.
SPEAKER_01So it's right down the middle 5050 now financially the good thing about Christian education is that they uh the tuition is 50 per 25% less than the IP related also nonprofit so that makes it more affordable and uh Christian colleges and universities have really excellent scholarship um funding uh that's not grant related or Pell related but is what we call institutional funding so uh that's that's uh a really important factor that being said the model of of formation that's what happens in a college right the at the best it's formation that's a high touch uh endeavor that's faculty to student ratio and and people are uh cost centers right so we've got pensions and insurance and uh some office space and etc so there's a lot of conversation about how again we we can go from doing everything one off to shared expenses so that's a new conversation like back of the house shared expenses are there shared expenses in IT perhaps marketing perhaps the business office um food service you know those kinds of things and we do not have uh schools closing within our 140 US institutions uh COVID was both a plus and a minus so the the COVID relief funds that were given by Congress were so critical to the well-being of the campuses but also the giant pivot to the way in which courses are delivered and and can be hybrid, they could be fully online, they could be fully in person. Uh there's some silver linings to those sorts of things.
SPEAKER_00How do you think about that core mission of formation and online teaching or or this this new way of delivery? Like is that something that is it are there conversations about that where um I guess in the most basic sense can you form people well if it's all online um but I know there's there's gradations to that. But um yeah is that is that part of the conversation I I imagine that might be a little different in the Christian higher ed space than in the higher ed space more generally though there's a version of that conversation in general higher ed as well.
SPEAKER_01Yeah you know I think uh that Rahid Zakaria um had a quote that said um higher education is to help students think well write well um move through life create a noble life so think about that speaking writing character formation and then um uh bringing that all together into a noble life that is a three-dimensional process you know you're so if you have online classes that have a three-dimensional nature to them either great conversations great participation experiential opportunities I think you can do it if you have a sort of a one-dimensional online course you're not going to get that outcome of the noble life the fruit of the spirit influence life so I I I would certainly say that you can get quality education through a multitude of delivery systems you I would also go on record to say that unless you have the mentorship and the role models of faculty staff and peers it's not going to be as good.
SPEAKER_00Yeah that aligns well with how we think about things here as a as a uh sort of a landed Christian study center we really value right uh the in-person as well yeah um another challenge for higher ed and maybe particularly for Christian higher ed is uh sort of the demographic future of college-age students and we know about that here in Wisconsin in part because uh UW Madison is part of a larger UW system which has uh more than I I don't even want to hazard a guess at least a dozen schools in it yeah and there's been a lot of conversation in the legislature just in higher ed circles about the future of that system um based on the sort of demographic projections of of Wisconsin kids who are going to be college age and want to go to college. I know that's probably a conversation that uh Christian colleges are having as well. And then there's sort of on top of that the demographic shifts in religious affiliation and the decline you know decline in in young particularly younger people identifying as Christians. So um yeah what what do you make of that uh sort of demographic uh challenge you just mentioned that half of those CCCU schools are growing so it sounds like it's not um entirely a negative story but it has to be something you talk about uh a lot well if we don't say here on this pile on this podcast the phrase demographic cliff uh we would not you know be in the running um right okay so yeah uh we do have a shifting population as you've described and I think you've talked about a couple of both it's shifting in terms of number of people and it's shifting in terms of beliefs that people hold.
SPEAKER_01Right so what has happened is that the schools that are clearest about their distinctives are growing and Christian higher education has a real distinctive and the uh when uh I've heard uh David Brooks columnist writer uh PBS commentator we all know him uh he uh teaches a class at an elite institution and he says at that elite institution the big spiritual questions are always on the students' minds so he could be teaching about happiness uh he could be teaching about character but when he has office hours and they people know that he's a person of faith and this happened with Russell Moore uh this also happened with uh Arthur Brooks so three they both taught at three elite uh secular institutions and to a person they said students wanted to come in and talk about the existential questions right and that's because we're human and that's because I believe that all of us are looking for meaning and purpose uh and the big questions are the things that you hope to be able to discuss in your college years whether they're undergrad or graduate. That's why the study center is so important. That's why university and crew are so important. The benefit at a Christian college is that it's a question that can come up anytime. You don't have to wait for that faculty member to ask that question. But all of us can can access people to talk to about those questions. I think that doesn't really matter if beliefs are decreasing. I think those are human questions um so whether you're attending a church or whether you have a label doesn't really vanquish the existential questions that you have. And I think that Christian colleges will always be a place that is appealing if they can be clear about the fact that there is no question that can't be asked. So that's one of the beauties of that in fact the NESI uh the national uh survey for student engagement just in 2022 uh indicates that at Christian college classrooms there's more diverse conversations than at any other both private and public institutions and and that's a really interesting fact there's a maybe some people think that oh there's a limit on what you can really ask because there's so some sort of religious uh I'm just gonna use the word again um obstacle yeah like you can only ask the right questions but that's not true um and there's probably less political correctness on a Christian college campus. So you could say well I've got this question about the afterlife or whatever.
SPEAKER_00So that's let me just uh um stop there and and uh see what your thoughts are about that yeah and that that makes a lot of sense and I think that answers a lot of or you know it's a potential answer to how um Christian colleges can weather the declining identification with Christianity among younger students that you don't have to be a Christian to be there. This could be a very open intellectual space for for anybody. How have you seen Christian colleges and universities address the uh maybe just the numbers game or or how how how do um Christian colleges and universities sort of try to uh attract new students um students that uh uh maybe first generation students or um uh or otherwise uh uh students that you know sort of haven't considered Christian colleges uh before I'm just thinking at in in the um in the con in the conversation around Wisconsin it's really I mean part of it is less about um uh even you know how can we convince more students to come it's that there are just going to be fewer students.
SPEAKER_01Yeah um that they're just just demographically and so how how do Christian colleges uh think about that I'll just try this this is just uh higher ed 101 yeah you have to broaden who your customer is and I'm I'm using words that of course um don't go with a noble life we're talking about a customer now uh but the customer concept is there are 70 million Americans who have not completed their college degree so they've started but not completed there are many many businesses and we are you know the competition is becoming Google and Microsoft et cetera there are many many businesses that would like to have a workforce that has a certain set of new skills and so that 70 million non-graduated uh American adults or adults that have not started a college degree but their employer says hey uh campus XY and Z is going to partner with us and we're gonna pay for your certificate we're gonna pay for your uh job um skill change uh uh set of courses uh so the first thing is you got to think more broadly about who your potential student is and people that have done that and started that 10 years ago are weathering the demographic clip. Yeah yeah um and then the the uh again to the definition what do you have to offer the family because often undergrad is a family decision the family that's looking for values character flexibility and price uh I heard like in California there was a time when you might start one of the California state schools but because of the press for classes it would take you six years to graduate because you just couldn't get all your classes in well uh that is never at and you can graduate in four years from one of the CCCU institutions uh because there's uh it's it's just a smaller uh pool that you're dealing with.
SPEAKER_00Okay. So that that makes a lot of sense. I actually my um I I haven't shared this before uh with you Shirley but um my family is very linked into biola um California. My dad just retired from there after working in the administration for many years and I have two siblings who went there. So um I actually I actually know the comparing the uh class uh sort of load at biola with I had a sister who tried to do a a uh non-biola public schooling and had a hugely difficult time finding classes to that she could actually fit into which uh I was just not familiar with until she went through that. Um I want to raise one more challenge uh to that is facing uh Christian higher ed and that is uh sort of legal challenges um to Christian higher ed often this is what makes the headlines there's um you know news out of DC that uh Congress is thinking of some new law or the Department of Education is thinking of some new um policy that's going to negatively affect Christian colleges and universities. Um how do you uh when when you uh have to sort of talk on this uh what are you mostly talking about like what what are the issues that are most commonly coming up um and how do you see uh how do you see sort of the work of the CCCU in that conversation yep that's uh that is something that I'm um really involved in a lot and as a lawyer uh God has equipped me you know in this re-review mirror kind of way to to think about the legal challenges I think of legal challenges as opportunities to always be reviewing how we're doing as a as faith-based institutions are we worthy of the protections that the Constitution gives us under the First Amendment are we worthy of the exemptions that we get out of Title IX Title VII you know the right to hire um and are we worthy of the protections that courts will give religious mission and so that's just a when you're challenged you have to say to yourself hey look um can we can we make the case that government should not be making our policies and interfering with our practices because we're doing them honorably um we're applying things fairly so I that's how I think about legal challenges.
SPEAKER_01The second thing is uh we live in a pluralist uh society in a diverse society as as believers in Jesus Christ we have to want to have protections for all faith right this is not just Christian faith this is about sincerely held religious beliefs and so the CCCU um has a coalition of religious liberty partners it includes the Orthodox Jewish Union the Seventh-day Adventists the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints um uh Catholics Protestants because we again we want to be worthy of the protections the Constitution said were necessary for a really vibrant America and we look at you know we look in our international schools they don't necessarily enjoy the same freedoms of and protections that we receive the the key the one of the key things uh Dan is the ability to hire so if you have a Christian mission and you we legally discriminate um in order to have people believe the same beliefs. Now if you're the Audubon Society for instance you want to hire people that believe in the goodness and worth of birds right and so if you you're not gonna uh maybe hire uh the person that says well boy they they just seem so expendable those birds uh what in the world uh and the same thing happens when you hire for a uh we we are advertising that you will have a faith integrated uh educational experience and the people who deliver that are going to be people who believe uh not just uh can teach but actually believe that in the the the beauty of the gospel the authority of scripture and that Christ has claims on our lives so those are the kinds of things that we're always watching is there any encroachment on our ability to hire and uh how about the ability to continue to have funding because of religious beliefs? So um we want to be worthy and we want to be vigilant.
SPEAKER_00Very helpful um would you say the the question of hiring just if you could uh have a pie chart of representing 100% of your time as you're talking to legislators and others is that sort of the one that dominates the pie chart or or what else fills out the pie chart uh beyond hiring uh well uh it's so the hiring question is is almost settled uh in terms of we we've had some really Hosanna Tabor is a recent case that really settled that um Christian mission uh government should not interfere with the hiring or the termination of individuals.
SPEAKER_01Uh now you have to use that wisely right so you don't want to fire unfairly um because It's a pretty big uh blanket uh exception to that. So uh another uh area that uh religious mission has exemptions from the law is Title IX. And uh Title IX is uh the Office of Civil Rights, it's uh has to do with women's sports, it has to do with uh uh soji regulations, etc. And so that exemption, uh, we just had a win in that case just uh recently in the Hunter versus Department of Education case, the judge dismissed the plaintiff's case who said that that religious exemption in Title IX violated the First Amendment. And the judge said, no, it doesn't. The Constitution said that America is best when religious organizations get to practice their faith fully.
SPEAKER_00Very interesting. Well, thanks for sharing about uh the the sort of round uh the full circle of that work. I want to just end with a question asking you to just um think about the future. And uh you can either answer this as what you think will happen or what you hope will happen. I depending on your personality, I think. You know, but what do you think will happen or hope will happen um to CCCU schools as a collective in the next uh couple decades, say 20 years? Um yeah, what what what are you anticipating? What are you hoping for?
SPEAKER_01Uh well, um I would like to get a grant uh uh to do the kind of work that maybe you're familiar with Veritas.
SPEAKER_00Yes.
SPEAKER_01Um so I think they are just a great organization, and Veritas is working with Christian scholars on secular campuses to make them as fruitful and as supported as possible. And I would like to see Christian scholars on Christian college campuses have that same sort of support and nurturing because there's such a pull on faculty lives, right? They have to teach more, they have to advise more, they have to write more. Um and there we have to, uh as an association, I want to be very intentional about seeing where I can and our organization can find outside support to make sure that that Christian scholar has as big an amplified voice as possible. So that that would be something I'd hope for. Another thing that I would hope for is that uh the the business model of higher education as a whole, you know, we have a really cohesive group, our 147. And uh, well, 100, yeah, 140, but uh that is a very cohesive group. And I think that we should be able to offer some creativity to the larger higher education sector because we don't have to worry so much about so many differences. We can we can actually sort of speed train uh this conversation on what are good models, economic models for higher education. And then thirdly, uh, we recently received a grant from the MJ Murdoch Trust to work with adjunct communities. So we know that part of the financial model is in fact the adjunct community that provides um more and more of the teaching function. And yet uh they are nascent in that uh breadth and scope, and it used to be sort of one-off. But our grant is to work with institutions and adjunct faculty to say, how could we make your teaching uh more life-giving? How could we make the experience for you and the organization better? How can you be less of a peripheral member and more of a valued member? You know, they're never gonna be full-time, not that like they could very well be full-time tenure faculty at somewhere, but when they're adjuncting, they're not.
SPEAKER_03Right.
SPEAKER_01And so instead of being uh uh not thought of as intentionally, our grant is gonna give us a pilot program to see if we can learn something about how to build up this adjunct community.
SPEAKER_00Well, that last one's very interesting. And I you you mentioned wanting the CCCU to be sort of a uh test case for the broader higher education world. I think if if you can figure out um a way to raise the profile of adjunct faculty, that's something that obviously is mass a massive issue in higher education more broadly, and probably is even more acute at much larger institutions where the scales are just um even higher in terms of the number of classes being taught by adjuncts. So that sounds very interesting. Uh very sort of cutting-edge work uh there.
SPEAKER_01So well, that's that's why the the trust, I think, um, entrusted us with uh the funds to do it because they said it's it really is groundbreaking.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Um and again, because of our cohesiveness, but with similar uh kinds of experiences uh as the broader world of higher education. What how can we be a blessing to our sector?
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Well, thank you, Shirley. Thank you for your time, thank you for um uh your leadership, I guess. Uh it's been a pleasure to talk to you, and uh thanks for coming on the podcast.
SPEAKER_01Well, you were so kind to invite me, and I I it is my hope that you will find your calling that you do so well to be a blessing to you.
SPEAKER_00Great, thank you.
SPEAKER_01You're welcome.
SPEAKER_00Thanks for joining us. If you've enjoyed today's podcast, be sure to subscribe and give us a rating on your favorite podcast app. Also, be sure to check out our upcoming events on upperhouse.org and our other podcast, Upwards, where we dig deeper into the topics our in-house guests are passionate about. With Faith in Mind is supported by the Stephen and Laurel Brown Foundation. It is produced at Upper House in Madison, Wisconsin, hosted by Dan Hummel and John Terrell. Our executive producer and editor is Jesse Koopman. Please follow us on social media with the handle at Upper House UW.