Taking the Check or Checking the Take

This essay studies the endowments of modern American colleges and universities. It examines the norms that govern the activities that affect the size of the endowment, specifically spending, acceptance of donations, and investment of endowment funds. The norms regulating the latter two are found to be insufficient, as is evidenced by their inconsistent application. However, American catholic colleges and universities apply the norms regulating investments more consistently than other schools. Catholic colleges' and universities' Socially Responsible Investment (SRI) practices are found to be rooted in the catholic church's official teaching on catholic universities as found in ex corde ecclesiae and the catechism of the catholic church. These documents suggest the need to develop, codify and apply even more rigorous norms governing the acceptance of donations and investment of endowment funds at every American catholic college and university.

Leadership model and planning strategies in private Catholic colleges during the COVID-19 pandemic

This paper aims to examine the leadership model and planning strategy of private Catholic colleges during the COVID-19 pandemic in Samarinda City, East Kalimantan, Indonesia. This study adopted a qualitative approach using interviews, observations, and documentation to collect data from 10 lecturers and seven staff as. The collected data were then analyzed descriptively. The results of this study indicate that the leadership model that often appears as a hallmark of private Catholic college leadership during the COVID-19 pandemic is a situational and distributed leadership model, with an emphasis on principles of leadership servant in dealing with changing organizational needs. The planning strategy carried out shows a visionary leadership model, college leaders can rearrange strategies that are adapted to the situation in developing educational programs and improving the quality of the college.

Secularization and Catholic Higher Education

Until the 1970s, most sociologists thought that it was only a matter of time before the process of secularization would marginalize religion to the personal and private sphere. That has not happened. Thinkers such as José Casanova, Charles Taylor, and others clarify the many meanings of secularity and open space for theology. A comparison of Protestant and Catholic colleges shows how the latter has a chance to remain religiously rooted intellectually, depending on the formation of its faculty and the contributions of a global reality of Catholicism.

Theology in the Catholic University

Major secular universities do not teach theology; they teach religious studies, if they teach anything about religion at all. It is impossible to imagine a Catholic university without theology. Four characteristics of Catholic theology show the unique contribution the discipline makes to Catholic higher education. False dichotomies are identified: critical or catechetical and faith or reason. This chapter describes the dramatic changes over the past sixty years in who teaches theology and what is taught to lay students at Catholic universities. Theologians need to address effectively the problem of widespread religious illiteracy among most college students. The Vatican document on Catholic higher education, Ex corde ecclesiae, offers a broad and demanding vision of the type of theological and moral education necessary for Catholic colleges and universities. The expectations of Catholic theologians in the academy and beyond it are daunting.

Humility and Courage

Examples of the ways in which Catholic philosopher Charles Taylor interacts with his peers and critics show both humility and courage. Taking the time to understand what other scholars have written, listening carefully to criticism, and responding respectfully and candidly to them are all indications of a humble maturity that too many faculty lack. Given that the academy today is typically more secular in its culture than that of the surrounding local colleges leads many faculty who are religious to censor themselves in ways that indicate a lack of courage—fearing that if a religious tradition influences one’s research, then that research is no longer academically respectable. Given that most Catholic colleges and universities established policies of academic freedom and tenure only in the 1960s, faculty today are quick to defend these policies and practices in ways that make it more difficult to see the value of the Catholic intellectual tradition and a positive and appropriately independent relationship with the global Catholic Church.

Conclusion

This chapter rehearses the arguments of the book, reaffirms the importance of the open circle model, and sees gains for Catholic higher education through academic freedom (as explained in chapter 8), engaging religious pluralism while teaching and researching Catholicism as an intellectual tradition. The chapter explains why the phrase “Catholic intellectual tradition” is used. It returns to the critical importance of the three north stars: Jesus (existential component of love and justice), Mary his mother (education, formation, and wisdom), and John Henry Newman (the continuing relevance of his Idea of a Catholic University). For Catholic colleges and universities to avoid going secular, as have most of the major mainline Protestant universities in the United States, the chapter underscores the critical importance of leadership, faculty recruitment and formation, and the Catholic intellectual tradition.

A University That Evangelizes?

After nearly a decade of consultation and discussion, the Vatican issued in 1990 its major statement on the identity and mission of Catholic colleges and universities, Ex corde ecclesiae. One of its claims was that a Catholic university should evangelize. This chapter explores various meanings of evangelization and asks how a Catholic university with academic freedom might evangelize.

Campus Ministry and Academics

Until the mid-twentieth century, 90% of Catholic colleges and universities were run by religious orders that integrated the study of religion with the religious life of the students, the vast majority of them being Catholic. Now, the student bodies include many non-Catholics, are mostly a-intellectual when it comes to religion, and would likely not take theology classes unless they were required. Faculty think moral formation is the obligation of a separate division of the university: student development offices and campus ministers. Most faculty are concerned only with intellectual development. As a professionalized group (master’s degree in pastoral ministry), campus ministers are often uninterested in the intellectual formation of students in the Catholic tradition. While retaining their primary responsibilities, faculty and campus ministers need to learn how to work with each other. Working together is much more possible at campuses that have a high percentage of undergraduate students in residence. Working with graduate students is more difficult, even at residential campuses.

Introduction

The introduction describes the author’s purpose, aims, and methodology of the book and why it should matter to all who care about Catholic higher education. The author discusses his own indebtedness to Catholic higher education and acknowledges that Catholic colleges and universities in the United States serve students and society in laudable ways. However, the introduction presents the thesis of the book: many Catholic institutions of higher education have failed to embody the values of the Gospel and the principles of Catholic social teaching (CST) in some important institutional policies and practices. Just Universities argues that the corporatization of the university undermines the fidelity of Catholic higher education to its mission by hindering efforts to promote worker justice on campus, equitable admissions, financial aid, and retention policies, just diversity and inclusion policies, and socially responsible investment and stewardship of resources. The author acknowledges the argument of the book represents one perspective and is intended to generate more sustained conversation about ways that Catholic social teaching should shape the life of Catholic institutions of higher learning.