By Michael J. Garanzini, S.J.
In 1968, Rev. Paul Reinert, S.J., then president of Saint Louis University and the Jesuit Education Association, proposed to the presidents of the 28 Jesuit colleges and universities in the United States—all Jesuits—that it was time to embark on a new plan for governance. Until then, the Society of Jesus held full responsibility for these institutions. Their corporate boards consisted of only Jesuits, usually 6-8 members—chosen from the local community and appointed by the local Jesuit Provincial.
Fr. Reinert proposed that it was time to change the ownership and governance model to incorporate in a significant way lay men and women who would constitute the majority of board members going forward. By expanding their boards, Jesuit colleges and universities would be squarely in the hands of the laity and outside the direct control of the Society of Jesus. It would be a clear partnership and one that mimicked, at least in part, what other private U.S. institutions had done by expanding the boards of trustees to include non-clerics from their founding religious groups in order to gain the wisdom and experience of civic and other community leaders and educators.
The board at Saint Louis, along with the board at the non-Jesuit University of Notre Dame, became the first to enact this change. Fr. Reinert and then-Notre Dame president, Rev. Theodore Hesburgh, CSC, together had persuaded Church leaders in Rome to allow this experiment in the spirit of Vatican II’s call to de-clericalize the Church and give to laity their proper role in the Church and its institutions, and to better situate Catholic colleges and universities in the constellation of American higher education.
By 1972, all 28 of the U.S. Jesuit institutions had revised their bylaws and created lay-led boards (This included Wheeling Jesuit University, which is now Wheeling University.) There was a concerted effort at all of our institutions to diversify their faculty and student bodies in order to better represent the social fabric of a rapidly changing America. A bold move built on a consensus of the individual institutions, in response to drastically changing circumstances. Their calculated risk that these institutions would not go the way of those institutions that were founded by Protestant Churches –like Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Chicago, etc.—paid off. And I add, “thus far.”
In his recent book, The Future of Catholic Higher Education, James Heft, S.M., poses what he believes is the chief question before Catholic higher education today: Will Catholic universities take the path of secularization that major Protestant universities took at the turn of the last century? His conclusion after reviewing the challenges and the changing landscape is expressed this way:
“If Catholic universities and colleges have solid leadership, recruit boards of trustees that understand Catholic education at a university level, and strengthen the Catholic intellectual tradition through careful faculty hiring and formation, I believe that they will not lose their Catholic identity and will thrive and offer to the world a truly distinctive education.”
Solid leadership at the presidential level, well-formed and knowledgeable boards, faculty dedicated to the Catholic intellectual tradition are his three answers. However, if the book has a serious omission, it is a failure to grapple with the economic and demographic realities and pressures of our time. No one would argue that, over the past 50 years, higher education has grown more complicated, more expensive, and more secular. The pressures to move away from our signature model of liberal education is intense.
Recruiting faculty with an explicit interest in the Catholic intellectual heritage is more difficult. Diversity, equity and inclusion—DEI—is also a necessary preoccupation, perhaps, even at times, competing with our need to hire Catholic faculty and staff.
Today, the value proposition for a college degree seems to be reduced in the public’s mind to the starting salary upon graduation. Our legislators see a college degree as a personal commodity and no longer as an investment in the country’s economic and cultural future. This shifting of the cost of an education onto the consumer has forced students to pay the lion’s share of their education through borrowing and has pushed us to compete with tuition discounts and tuition hikes that are simply unsustainable. As many have noted, the middle class—our bread and butter—are now forced to rethink the importance and affordability of a college diploma.
Another feature of our changing landscape are the students themselves. They come to us with more demands and more needs. Their ability to adjust to college life and the classroom has been impacted not only by isolation caused by the pandemic, but also by the climate of division and contention that surrounds them. UCLA’s annual survey of 150,000 first-year students across the nation recently found them to be more depressed and anxious than any time in the last 50 years. Their physical and emotional health has declined significantly since 1985, when they began reporting the results of their survey of new and graduating student attitudes. Covid has clearly taken its toll.
Since the physical and emotional health of first-year undergraduates has declined significantly in recent years, wellness programs such as the Certificate in Infant and Early Childhood Mental Health from Georgetown University’s School of Continuing Studies have become critically important. Photo courtesy of Georgetown University.
In the classroom, faculty report a reluctance on the part of students to share ideas and opinions in political and social matters, a fear of being judged or labeled, resulting in a heightened self- consciousness. We hear each day how challenging the teaching environment has become.
This is not, by any means, the whole picture. Fortunately, we see young people who are committed and energetic, eager to make an impact on the world, and quite conscious of the world’s need for their contributions. But we notice a change, and teaching has become more difficult as our political and social divisions enter the classroom and shape our work in the co-curricular area.
Jesuit colleges and universities have what we believe students need: an academic community that supports them, an education that gives them agency, and a moral compass that helps them navigate the options they will need to discern as they move through life.
The Society of Jesus has identified four “apostolic preferences” that are designed to inspire us, to give us a roadmap for our time. These preferences call us to walk with youth toward a hope-filled future: to give them not only a well- rounded education, but also the tools of discernment and the spiritual guidance and support they will need to make carefully informed decisions. These “preferences” challenge us to make the plight of those who are marginalized and excluded a core feature of their educational experiences with us—the implication being that the future they wish to construct cannot be exclusive to themselves and their social class—and to support in them a critical and passionate care for the planet they will inherit. Our educational priorities should be in line, then, with their deepest desires and concerns.
What I have hoped to explain here is that Jesuit higher education has been capable of making radical adjustments, that after a careful reading of the times, our forebearers took risks that have proven to be consequential and wise. Without their bold moves, we would not see today the solid state of our institutions, the respect they have in the academic world, their value to the Church, and their value to families across the ethnic, racial and socio-economic spectrum, nor the diversity of our faculty, staff and students. And, I have tried to say we have an opportunity to face the challenges of this new post-Covid era because we have a pedagogical formula—a way of educating that addresses all aspects of our humanity—that is especially needed in this moment.
Michael J. Garanzini, S.J., is president of the Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities. This article is adapted from a talk delivered at Saint Louis University in March 2022.
The featured cover photo (above) is courtesy of Elliot Engelmann via Unsplash.