You might be surprised to learn that we consider ourselves a blue-collar family (dh did not go to college and works as a driver, though I have a degree), and we had never heard of most of the schools to which my kids applied until probably 2010! The catalyst that precipitated me/us learning all about selective schools was my eldest son, and the fact that he was so advanced.
Up until he was a high school sophomore, I had assumed he would attend a Christian college (I loved Grove City because one of the professors there taught a class at Westminster Theological Seminary, and my eldest and I attended and loved the class). When my son visited both Taylor University and U Chicago in his sophomore year, (he loved Taylor and didn’t like U Chicago), we began to see that he would have to shift his sites to secular colleges. The prof he met with at UC encouraged him to apply there a year early. At Taylor, he sat in on a junior level class that he was already taking as a sophomore. A professor at Grove City flat out told my son he needed to go to a secular school.
So we began to educate ourselves. It helped that our former pastor and his wife both graduated from Princeton, so in my son’s junior year, we made a trip to visit both Penn and Princeton (he actually loved Penn more than Princeton, but we both really enjoyed meeting people at PEF, Princeton Evangelical Fellowship). MIT didn’t even get on his list until senior year after he’d been flown in for the WISE program. He didn’t think he wanted a STEM school, but in the end, that was exactly the right fit, and he ended up there truly, I believe, by God’s grace.
Sorry to go on like that, but I do think that it was necessity that brought us to learn about the plethora of interesting colleges, and led me down the path to becoming a college consultant. I would love to be someone that helps families like the ones you describe get to know more about colleges around the country that might be good fits for their students. Most often, that’s likely to be the local college for a variety of reasons (typically financial fit); sometimes, it might be a particular Christian college; but sometimes, it might mean doing research to find a particular set of schools that would be the best fit, including many secular schools.
My parents did not attend college nor did their siblings, and generally in their social circles the most educated person was their pastor, who had, of course, attended a Bible college of some sort. So when it looked like I might be college bound that was where their minds turned.
@zoosermom, I know they’re different. That is why I said fundamental and not evangelical (broadening the discussion, not addressing the issue solely about evangelicals). There is a large subset of evangelicals who are fundamentalist, so this would effect the numbers of evangelicals at liberal schools. And I chose to say fundamentalist to encompass all fundamentalist groups, not just Christian evangelical fundamentalists. Not being snarky, just clarifying what I meant.
Anyone else read Jeff Sharlet’s book on The Family (The Fellowship, C Street) and the evangelical movement? The Ivy League colleges and Campus Crusade for Christ are featured prominently. It is an interesting look at the long play into federal government and military by the conservative evangelical churches.
That’s all, no judgement, we are Catholics but S1 played baseball for FCA and many teammates went to Biola/Whitworth/Azusa Pacific and a few other Christian colleges.
British students (Europeans and Canadians too) generally complain that the Ivy League colleges are too conservative. All a matter of perspective I guess.
I think that’s the best attitude a parent can have. Not necessarily the “In God We Trust” part, but trusting that you’ve done your job as a parent regarding instilling your kids with your values, and that now as young adults it’s up to those kids to stick with those values or develop their own interpretation. If your values are strong, they will stay strong in the face of outside or contrary influences.
This is something most parents worry about, Evangelical or not.
@Magnetron , Jeff Sharlet was my S’s professsor in college. S thinks highly of him. I saw a youtube video of him being interviewed about the book, and I’ve been meaning to read it.
Consumers of higher education, particularly the Ivy kind, do not, in general, think the Ivy brand is too liberal. If that were the case, Ivy schools wouldn’t be so universally desireable. Threatening to boycott them anonymously in a news article, or posting anonymously here on CC, will not get the attention of decision-makers in the Ivy league, let alone change their liberal ways. The only way to do that is to get an overwhelming number of evangelicals to be admitted and to matriculate to Ivy league or other elite secular schools. Only then will evangelicals become a economic force to be reckoned with. The alternative is impossible: making faith-based schools more attractive or “elite” (whatever that means) in order to compete and de-throne the Ivy league.
It seems to me that if evangelicals want the most elite-level academics combined with evangelical religious views in a university it should simply be a matter of endowing a school and hiring academics to suit. The difficulty may be in finding academic stars who are willing to sign a statement of faith if that were deemed necessary.
But certainly evangelicals in the US combined have sufficient funds to create such a school. I think that if they wanted one, they would already have done so. That would lead me to suspect that they don’t.
@sylvan8798 , perhaps they do. But if they are concerned with academics at the Ivy (and similar) level I find it hard to believe that they think that Liberty is academically elite. Their mission is not top flight academics, as is very clear if one takes a look through faculty bios in the English department, for example.
I think if anything it buttresses my point, if Liberty is the model of the university the community wants.
Also, that list is seriously weird. Macalester and St. Olaf? No way are they “Evangelical Christian schools.” Wheaton, sure.
That’s largely because by European/Canadian standards, the US political spectrum on average is much more conservative than their own…especially in the last 15-20 years.
This has long been well known and studied phenomenon among political scientists for a while now.
A mainstream Democratic party member who identifies him/herself as “liberal” would be considered very right wing over there.
I don’t believe this to be true at all. I think that many people believe that the “Ivy brand” is liberal, but recognize that it is really a pretty thin market. In this sense, I think it is similar to the national media prior to the inception of Fox and the explosion of the internet. People knew that Dan Rather et al were more or less openly liberal, but that was the only news widely available, so people watched it. Rush Limbaugh, and then more seriously Roger Ailes, cashed in on this and provided outlets that were less doctrinaire.
I think a similar argument can be made that at the very tip of the spear Stanford and UChicago, two schools which have not seen their administrations embarass themselves quite like what we have seen at some of the Ivys, have benefitted from the idea that the “Ivy brand” is really just a cabal of north east liberals talking to themselves. I also think that to many consumers of higher education outside the metro areas in coastal California and the North East Notre Dame, and depending on geography schools like Vandy, Rice & Northwestern have at least the same cache of prestigiosity as most of the Ivys.
An actual “liberal” Democrat would seem to be in the centrist mainstream in Canada. However, most Democrats are not “liberal” on all issues, since many are either somewhat more right-leaning on fiscal / economic issues (left-leaning libertarians), or somewhat more conservative on social issues (including white people who are right-leaning on racial/ethnicity and/or religion-based issues but left-leaning on fiscal / economics issues, and non-white people who are right-leaning on religion-based issues but find the noisy racial/ethnicity conservatives among the Republicans to be loathsome).
Also, Europeans are not uniformly “liberal”. Some political parties with substantial support are explicitly opposed to ethnic and religious minorities, and dislike of Roma (Gypsies) is widespread and mainstream in Europe.
I’m a grad of an evangelical school (Calvin), but now consider myself mainline, progressive Christian. My husband is a grad of an evangelical school as well, but received his PhD from a Big 10 U.
Regarding evangelicals in the Ivies, it’s my observation through the years that evangelicals in some of the sci-tech fields are more likely to become faculty in “elite” schools rather than those in the contextual (humanities, social sciences) fields. As mentioned above for example, evangelicals have found a home at MIT. In fields where a hypothesis is proven or not, data is recorded–those areas of study can, but certainly do not always, lend themselves to binary or black/white thinking. In that framework, it is easier to hang on to more conservative, evangelical modes of thinking where there are precepts or beliefs that are never examined, never questioned.
Speaking from our own experience in grad education in the humanities where things are always black or white and grey is recognized as a valid option, when you start to examine one’s own preconceptions in order to gain a wider perspective, previously-held absolutes can shift as you get outside the evangelical bubble. For myself, I didn’t leave faith behind, just hopefully had a bit clearer idea of what actually was a matter of faith and what was more a matter of culture.
I wouldn’t say that there is an “agenda”–other than to teach students to think for themselves and be open to new information that maybe just won’t fit their preconceptions.
@Ohiodad51 I don’t think consuming news (free of charge if you’re referring to Fox news or Rush Limbaugh radio) is the same as buying higher education (not free of charge if you want Ivy brand). For that reason alone, the market dynamics is not an apples-to-apples comparison, though I understand why someone would reach for it.
It costs you nothing to switch channels or change the dial. It costs more than a quarter million to go to Harvard.
The fact that tens of thousands higher ed consumers apply to schools like Harvard, despite its high cost, is saying something.
The fact that Liberty University is cheaper than Harvard, but cannot command the same number of applicants, is also saying something.
If Liberty University were able to command a quarter million dollars and get so many applicants it could get by with an admit rate of 5%, could critics of liberal Harvard be satisfied?
Why should we be alarmed about the influence of liberal professors at secular schools if there are a plethora of cheaper faith-based options?
Harvard is also less expensive than Liberty on a net price basis for middle and lower income students, based on the net price sections of the pages linked above. But Liberty enrolls more middle and lower income students based on the percentage with Pell grants.