Catholic Higher Education

"After many years of scholarship, administrative experience and leadership in Catholic higher education, James Heft has written a book that draws upon many academic disciplines to paint a picture of the past, the current situation (challenges, strengths and weaknesses) of Catholic universities, and after identifying its foundational pillars, points the way to a future that is open to modern culture without capitulating to it, embraces Catholic intellectual traditions without fossilizing them, and presents a vision of its relationship to the hierarchy that is respectful, independent, faithful and dynamic"--

“Brings to the new field of university ethics the case of the Catholic Colleges and Universities. . . . [A] compelling plea to make mission drive the model.” —James F. Keenan, S.J., author of University Ethics: How Colleges Can Build and Benefit from a Culture of Ethics Gerald J. Beyer’s Just Universities discusses ways that U.S. Catholic institutions of higher education have embodied or failed to embody Catholic social teaching in their campus policies and practices. Beyer argues that the corporatization of the university has infected U.S. higher education with hyper-individualistic models and practices that hinder the ability of Catholic institutions to create an environment imbued with bedrock values and principles of Catholic Social Teaching such as respect for human rights, solidarity, and justice. Beyer problematizes corporatized higher education and shows how it has adversely affected efforts at Catholic schools to promote worker justice on campus; equitable admissions; financial aid; retention policies; diversity and inclusion policies that treat people of color, women, and LGBTQ persons as full community members; just investment; and stewardship of resources and the environment. “[C]ompelling...inspirational in its call to action.---Adrianna Kezar, Wilbur Kieffer Endowed Professor and Dean's Professor of Leadership, University of Southern California, Director of the Pullias Center (pullias.usc.edu), and Director of the Delphi Project “A remarkable analysis. . . . Higher education should be most grateful for Beyer’s contribution.” —James A. Donahue, President of St. Mary’s College of California [A] pioneering, much-needed book. . . . essential reading for anyone interested in university ethics and religious higher education.” ―Anglican Theological Review “Sure to become a seminal text for future research and discussions on this topic. . . . Highly Recommended.” —Choice

Renewal of Catholic Higher Education: Essays on Catholic Studies in Honor of Don J. Briel celebrates twenty years of the Catholic Studies Program at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota, and the leadership of Don J. Briel, PhD, in founding and guiding the development of the program. It arose from a conference to mark the anniversary at the University of Mary in Bismarck, North Dakota, gathering Catholic Studies professors, alumni and other scholars to note the achievements of Catholic Studies and to reflect on the ways in which it can continue to impact Catholic higher education more broadly. The book opens with a foreword by George Weigel. The first section situates Catholic Studies within current challenges facing the university, and includes chapters from scholars such as Fr. Paul Murray, O.P., Michael Naughton, Jonathan Reyes and Russell Hittinger. The second section expounds the distinct pedagogy employed by Catholic Studies, as described by alumni and those who teach in Catholic Studies programs. It concludes with an afterward by Fr. Wilson Miscamble of the University of Notre Dame. In celebrating the first 20 years of Catholic Studies and the leadership of Don J. Briel, the book provides an excellent opportunity to reflect on the future challenges and opportunities for Catholic higher education. Catholic Studies emerged at a pivotal moment when Catholic universities began drifting from their religious identity and mission, and accepted the overspecialized and compartmentalized approaches of secular universities. Catholic Studies programs have made a significant step toward reuniting the various strands of university life, which began to unravel at this time. If Catholic Studies can fulfill three integrative tasks--reuniting faith and reason, faith and culture, and faith and life--it is poised to make a significant contribution toward the renewal of Catholic higher education. Renewal of Catholic Higher Education provides educators with an important opportunity to reflect on the nature of Catholic education and the steps needed to work towards its renewal.

American Catholic universities and colleges are wrestling today with how to develop in ways that faithfully serve their mission in Catholic higher education without either secularizing or becoming sectarian. Major challenges are faced when trying to simultaneously build and sustain excellence in undergraduate teaching, strengthen faculty research and publishing, and deepen the authentically Catholic character of education. This book uses the particular case of the University of Notre Dame to raise larger issues, to make substantive proposals, and thus to contribute to a national conversation affecting all Catholic universities and colleges in the United States (and perhaps beyond) today. Its arguments focus particularly on challenging questions around the recruitment, hiring, and formation of faculty in Catholic universities and colleges.

A detailed history of Catholic higher education in the USA, which emphasizes the intellectual and institutional dimensions of the subject.

Winner of the 2005 New Scholar Book Award given by Division F: History and Historiography of the American Educational Research Association In 1893 Harvard University president Charles W. Eliot, the father of the modern university, helped implement a policy that, in effect, barred graduates of Jesuit colleges from regular admission to Harvard Law School. The resulting controversy—bitterly contentious and widely publicized—was a defining moment in the history of American Catholic education, illuminating on whose terms and on what basis Catholics and Catholic colleges would participate in higher education in the twentieth century. In Catholic Higher Education in Protestant America, Kathleen Mahoney considers the challenges faced by Catholics as the age of the university opened. She describes how liberal Protestant educators such as Eliot linked the modern university with the cause of a Protestant America and how Catholic students and educators variously resisted, accommodated, or embraced Protestant-inspired educational reforms. Drawing on social theories of cultural hegemony and insider-outsider roles, Mahoney traces the rise of the Law School controversy to the interplay of three powerful forces: the emergence of the liberal, nonsectarian research university; the development of a Catholic middle class whose aspirations included attendance at such institutions; and the Catholic church's increasingly strident campaign against modernism and, by extension, the intellectual foundations of modern academic life.

Catholic colleges and universities play a crucial role in handing on a rich faith tradition to young adults today. As these institutions have become more professional and pluralistic, many are asking how effective they are at carrying out the religious mission which is central to their identity: Are Catholic colleges and universities significantly different from less expensive state institutions or from other private colleges and universities? Are they still committed to the search for truth, which is really the search for God? Thomas Rausch, an eminent educator, is a Catholic priest long interested in Catholic theology as a work of the church, not just of the academy. He insists we must also ask of Catholic higher education today: Does it truly form students in the faith that does justice, or does it simply speed their passage into successful corporate lifestyles? Does it help students come to a personal encounter with the divine mystery revealed in Jesus? Keeping these questions before them, Rausch and five other contributors to this volume provide wisdom, insight, and concrete examples of how Catholic higher education can indeed foster faith that leads to a more just world. Thomas P. Rausch, SJ, is the T. Marie Chilton Professor of Catholic Theology at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. He is author of numerous books, including I Believe in God: A Reflection on the Apostles' Creed, Being Catholic in a Culture of Choice, and Towards a Truly Catholic Church (Liturgical Press).

The specific concern in What We Hold in Trust comes to this: the Catholic university that sees its principal purpose in terms of the active life, of career, and of changing the world, undermines the contemplative and more deep-rooted purpose of the university. If a university adopts the language of technical and social change as its main and exclusive purpose, it will weaken the deeper roots of the university’s liberal arts and Catholic mission. The language of the activist, of changing the world through social justice, equality and inclusion, or of the technician through market-oriented incentives, plays an important role in university life. We need to change the world for the better and universities play an important role, but both the activist and technician will be co-opted by our age of hyper-activity and technocratic organizations if there is not first a contemplative outlook on the world that receives reality rather than constructs it. To address this need for roots What We Hold in Trust unfolds in four chapters that will demonstrate how essential it is for the faculty, administrators, and trustees of Catholic universities to think philosophically and theologically (Chapter One), historically (Chapter Two) and institutionally (Chapters Three and Four). What we desperately need today are leaders in Catholic universities who understand the roots of the institutions they serve, who can wisely order the goods of the university, who know what is primary and what is secondary, and who can distinguish fads and slogans from authentic reform. We need leaders who are in touch with their history and have a love for tradition, and in particular for the Catholic tradition. Without this vision, our universities may grow in size, but shrink in purpose. They may be richer but not wiser.