Should I Consider a Public University?
College for Christians - Chapter 6
Welcome back to my college guide for Christian high school students and their parents and other advisers! We’re in the middle of part two of College for Christians, dedicated to helping students make a good choice of college. After dealing with cost, value, and rankings, we now turn to a pair of chapters comparing two categories of schools: public universities this week, and Christian colleges next.
About ten years ago, I had the chance to tour one of the world’s leading collections of Sherlock Holmes memorabilia. Not in London, England, the home of my favorite fictional detective, but in downtown Minneapolis, on the campus of the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities.
As my friend Tim took me around his workplace, I realized that the Elmer L. Andersen Library did far more than preserve Sherlockiana. There were collections for everything from architecture to the YMCA. We stopped by research centers dedicated to immigration and social welfare, and we watched technicians digitize books from smaller libraries around the state.
That’s just a small sample of what happens on that vast campus. Walking onto the quad after my library tour, I found myself near the buildings where colleagues and students of mine had earned graduate degrees in law, history, and public policy. Just across the river was the medical school that trained my dad and hosted the world’s first open-heart surgery, plus the laboratory where my uncle helped design the Hubble telescope. Not to mention an art museum, an iconic basketball arena, and an auditorium that has hosted musicians from Ella Fitzgerald to Bob Dylan (long after his brief stint as a student there).
I love teaching at a small Christian university, but that day on the U of M campus reminded me that the public research university is one of America’s great institutions: a hub of learning, discovery, and innovation that gathers students and scholars from near and far to serve local needs and advance global understanding. The University of Minnesota contributes billions of dollars to the state economy, and its commitment to research regularly places it in the top tier of the world’s universities.
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But it’s not for everyone. As I passed U of M students on the way to class, I recalled women and men their age who had transferred to Bethel after their experiences at state schools soured them on party culture or top-tier college sports. Others had found that a large university couldn’t offer the personal attention and customized support a smaller institution can provide. Most of all, I thought of parents who send their children to Bethel because they don’t trust public universities to be safe places for young Christians to nurture their faith.
So should Christian families consider public colleges and universities? Yes, absolutely! But only if they first understand the mission of such schools, what they can and can’t do in a religiously diverse country that separates church and state, and what form Christian ministry and community takes on such campuses.
The Landscape and Purpose of Public Higher Education
Like everything else in American higher education, the vast landscape of public colleges and universities is complicated, contested, and has changed over time.
The idea of the federal government granting land to states for the purpose of establishing colleges that would serve the public good goes back to the time of the Civil War, but the size and scope of the land-grant university has changed significantly since the 19th century. Some continue to focus on agriculture, engineering, and other “practical” subjects emphasized in the original legislation. Most, like Minnesota’s, have evolved into modern research universities that teach and investigate the full range of applied and theoretical fields. Almost all of them also compete at the top level of college sports and receive extensive publicity through television contracts for football and basketball.
And the land-grant university is just one type of public institution. For example, the University of Minnesota has four other branches, including a liberal arts college in the tiny town of Morris and a health sciences campus near the Mayo Clinic.1 Then there’s the Minnesota State university system, whose seven 4-year institutions now offer a much wider range of degrees than back when they were teacher training schools but are still smaller and less selective than the U of M-Twin Cities. The Minnesota State system also includes a long list of 2-year schools: community, technical, and tribal colleges that offer associate degrees, certificates, and other credentials.
What makes such diverse institutions “public” colleges and universities? First, as we’ve already seen, they receive direct funding from state legislatures, taxpayer-funded subsidies meant to keep college tuition within reach of all families. Second, public universities are typically governed by boards whose members are selected or approved by the governor; in some states, trustees are elected directly by voters. So while their professors and students should be free to ask controversial questions and take unpopular positions, these universities are ultimately accountable to the people or their elected representatives. Third, and most fundamentally, these schools’ primary purpose is to meet the educational needs of the religiously diverse people living in their state, county, city, or tribal nation (including non-religious citizens), rather than to fulfill the spiritual mission of a particular religion or denomination.
Understanding Secular Higher Education
At one time in U.S. history, Christian worship and belief were commonplace in the life and teaching of public universities. For example, my undergraduate alma mater, the College of William and Mary, is a state school originally founded to provide colonial Virginia’s Anglican churches with “a seminary of ministers of the gospel,” among other explicitly religious goals. Christianity was still privileged there after the American Revolution, which is why William and Mary alum Thomas Jefferson founded the University of Virginia as a secular institution in 1819. Nevertheless, Christian worship services were still mandatory at many state universities into the early 20th century. On the eve of the Second World War, over a quarter of the country’s public universities still held chapel services.2
But that’s no longer true. If Christianity is far from absent in such spaces, it’s rarely privileged. (The same is true for many private universities that have shed their original religious identities. I’ll say more about that educational option in the next chapter.) For that matter, some Christians allege that their faith is under attack by those on public campuses who are hostile to organized religion.
So why should readers of this book consider such universities? Doesn’t secular education risk undermining the faith of young Christians? Why would a professor who works for a Christian university encourage Christian families to investigate a secular option instead of focusing on explicitly religious institutions like Bethel?
In part, it’s because of what I wrote in chs. 3-4: the choice of college is an act of Christian stewardship, and choosing a public option is a way to minimize cost and debt. But it’s also because public higher education isn’t simply an engine of secularization. Much as I value Christian higher education, I’m happy that there are millions of Christians learning and teaching at public and other secular universities.
For most of those students, the choice comes down to the same factors that attract non-Christians to such institutions: the lower cost; the size and location; the access to specialized programs and facilities that let them engage in research and prepare for careers. Many of those faculty are devoted to the mission of schools serving diverse publics, or value the resources available for research at larger state universities. But some followers of Jesus also choose not to live and study in something like Bethel’s Christian “bubble” because learning with non-Christians deepens their own faith — or gives them opportunities to share it with others.
To illustrate, let me share the stories of two Christians who chose to study at public universities — and are now back on that kind of campus working in Christian ministry.
Finding the “Best of Both Worlds” in Christian Study Centers
“When I came to Michigan as an undergraduate many years ago,” Rick Ostrander recalled, “I was warned by some to be on my guard because the university would ridicule or attempt to undermine my Christian faith.” Rick had started his college journey at Moody Bible Institute, an evangelical school in Chicago. When he moved on to the University of Michigan to study history, he “experienced some pockets of anti-Christian sentiment.” But overall, “the experience was not only welcoming but academically invigorating… I’ve never had a sense of hostility toward my alma mater but rather admiration and support—and, like many alums, an obsessive devotion to Michigan football.”
Studying at a public research university prepared Rick to continue his studies as a graduate student at Notre Dame, a leading Catholic university in Indiana. In turn, that education equipped him to return to the world of evangelical higher education, where he served as a professor and administrator at smaller universities in Arkansas and Michigan, then as vice president at the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities. Not so long ago, Rick decided to go back to where he’d started, working kitty-corner to the University of Michigan as executive director of the Michigan Christian Study Center. Its mission is to “help Michigan students to connect faith, learning, and living, foster community among Christian faculty and staff, and contribute a Christian voice to the marketplace of ideas at the university.”
Why do Christian students attend that university? Most often, Rick has found that Christian students on campuses like Michigan’s are attracted by the same things that first drew him: affordability, but more so “the range of academic programs, institutional reputation, or just the ‘big campus’ feel.” Maybe even Wolverines football!
But when Rick was a student in Ann Arbor, “such Christians didn’t always have a community, or a home base, if you will, to engage in the sorts of vigorous faith integration discussions and activities that often characterize the best Christian colleges.”3 That was certainly my experience, as an undergraduate at the College of William and Mary. I was getting an amazing public education that set me on my professional path, but I never knew how to put my learning together with my faith. Though I attended a local Baptist church every Sunday, it was never clear what my identity and purpose as a follower of Jesus had to do with my studies as a history major.
Little did I know that only a few hours away from my college, its historic rival in Charlottesville had been hosting the Center for Christian Study since the year I was born. There are now Christian study centers (CSCs) on three dozen public and nonsectarian private campuses,4 offering Christian students and employees at universities like Michigan and Virginia what Rick calls “the best of both worlds: the vibrant Christian academic community of Christian institutions, combined with the resources and influence of a world-class university.”5
Finding Connection and Discipleship through Campus Ministry
The second Christian study center opened in 1977 at the University of California, Berkeley, where an English major named Joe Thackwell started his studies in 1998. “I really majored in pursuing my now wife,” Joe jokes, “and minored in Ultimate Frisbee.” While he hadn’t grown up going to church, Joe started to read the Bible in college. Eventually, he worked at Berkeley’s Christian study center, volunteered with a local church, and felt a call to ministry. After seminary, he served as a youth pastor in Colorado, then returned to the Golden State to start a ministry for graduate students and faculty at the University of Southern California, a nonsectarian private university. That began Joe’s career with InterVarsity, a Christian fellowship that works with students and faculty on over 700 campuses in North America.
IV is one of many organizations doing Christian ministry at secular colleges and universities around the country, from community colleges to research universities. Some are linked to a specific denomination or tradition, like Reformed University Fellowship or the Catholic centers associated with Newman Ministry (named for the great English cardinal and scholar John Henry Newman). Others, like InterVarsity and Cru (short for Campus Crusade for Christ), are non-denominational. Each has its own distinctive approach to campus ministry. InterVarsity is particularly known for its multiethnic community (persons of color now make up more than half its student population) and inductive approach to Bible study. All campus ministries offer opportunities for discipleship, evangelism, and fellowship.
That last activity may be most important early on. Joe told me that two-thirds of high school students who take part in youth ministry don’t find Christian community when they go to college, whether at a local church or through a campus ministry. So he now serves as InterVarsity’s first national director of high school transition. In partnership with others working in youth ministry, he hopes “to equip students with everything they need in order to approach college with a sense of call, purpose, and connectedness.”
On “almost every secular campus your child might consider,” Joe told me, there’s a network in place to provide Christian students with formation and mentoring, including campus ministries and Christian study centers, plus local churches and special programs like the Veritas Forum’s events discussing theology, philosophy, and science. And while universities like Cal-Berkeley can have a reputation for being antagonistic to Christian faith, Joe says not to “believe what you hear. There are dozens of faithful, Christian professors at every secular campus. And the cool thing is that they are waiting for students to ask about faith. Once that door is opened Christian professors can open up their hearts, share their faith, and become the kind of mentors we yearn for our kiddos to be shaped by.”
In fact, Joe hopes that Christian students will be “courageous and excited” about being called to college, in part because they have a unique chance “to invite others into the kingdom and experience new life in Christ.” Some Christians choose a public or other secular option precisely because they want to share the Gospel with people who haven’t heard it before.
While evangelism is often part of campus ministry, Joe encourages students to start with friendship, which often means moving out of your comfort zone. “Go out of your way to attend the things and participate in the activities that are meaningful to your friends,” he recommends. “Jesus was never afraid that he would be tainted by a foreign environment. Jesus was curious, inquisitive, and winsomely confident. So should we learn to be.”6
Next chapter: “What Makes a Christian College ‘Christian’?”
The University of Minnesota-Morris is one of thirty public liberal arts colleges in North America.
George Marsden, The Soul of the American University Revisited: From Protestant to Postsecular, 2nd ed. (Oxford University Press, 2021), pp. 256, 270.
Author’s email interview with Rick Ostrander, August 23, 2023; quoted by permission.
Including my undergraduate alma mater, where Cambridge House was founded in 2021-2022.
CSCs mostly serve public university communities (the one at the University of Minnesota is named for the medieval philosopher Anselm), but you can find them at a few private colleges as well, including Duke, Georgetown, and three of the Ivies.
Author’s email interview with Joe Thackwell, October 11, 2023; quoted by permission.