Several years ago, I spoke to a group of Christian students at the University of Minnesota’s Carlson School of Management. “Why is it that, in our big public university, the only questions we explore are the tiny and medium-sized?” I asked. “The Big Questions—What does it mean to be human? What is the purpose of life? How do I fit in the grand scope of reality?—are off the table.” Continue Reading »
As I stood before more than seven hundred college graduates and their families during our annual ritual called commencement, I wondered if our graduates’ children will be allowed the privilege of the kind of education they received in a Christian liberal arts university. The future is not certain. . . . . Continue Reading »
With the publication of Excellent Sheep: The Miseducation of the American Elite and the Way to A Meaningful Life, William Deresiewicz's sober assessment of contemporary higher education was both praised and lampooned by commentators across the spectrum. He recently spoke with First Things about . . . . Continue Reading »
In the 1880s, when the bishops of the United States founded The Catholic University of America and obtained a papal charter for it, they intended it to help fulfill their responsibility to teach and promote Catholic faith. The University was governed by a Board of Trustees consisting mainly of bishops and was managed by clerics chosen by that Board. Continue Reading »
Faculty often quarrel over curricula. That’s as it should be. A curriculum, especially its core courses required of all students, is an educational institution’s constitution. To tell a young person he must take this or that course announces a university’s highest priorities. This makes a . . . . Continue Reading »
It is sad to learn that universities are not places which model civil engagement between those who hold differing opinions. Continue Reading »
Much has already been written on the University of Notre Dame’s current core curriculum review—and on its toying with the idea of dropping the two undergraduate theology requirements. The question has been addressed from a number of angles: Margaret Blume, a doctoral student in theology at ND, . . . . Continue Reading »
The poor often suffer from a moral and spiritual poverty far more primitive than a lack of upward . . . . Continue Reading »
Books are solid. This is at once a physical description and a metaphysical one, and it is on this metaphysical solidity that we ought to ground our loyalty to the book over and against the allure of the ever-changing screen. A book is solid in the warm way a friend is solid: direct, dependable, . . . . Continue Reading »
Universities exist to provide students with the knowledge, skills, and culture that will prepare them for life, while enhancing the intellectual capital upon which we all depend. Evidently the two purposes are distinct. One concerns the growth of the individual, the other our shared need for . . . . Continue Reading »
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