The Importance of Christian Higher Education

Commencement 2019 | Courtesy of The King’s College

The opinions reflected in this OpEd are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of staff, faculty and students of The King's College.

[Response to Scibbe Op-Ed from Paul Jimenez, PPE ‘18]

There is another context in which I view these things. King's is a "strategic institution," however overused that phrasing became. It is a point of gathering and departure for many ambitious, capable Christians willing to subject themselves to a formative education. 

I just attended an alum’s wedding and stayed with four other close King's friends. I am very impressed with each of them. They are all successful and remain serious about their faith (and are also not walking cliches with pipes and wool pants - not that there's anything wrong with that). These are high-caliber people. They were attracted to King's for a reason. Other high-caliber schools are out there, but none in the vein of King's in NYC. 

Running a private Christian liberal arts school in NYC is obviously a tall order. But when I was there we had 500+ students, and it seemed only to be getting bigger. Profs would complain about how many sections they had to teach and how many students they had to juggle.

What went wrong? I don't know for sure because I was there years ago and only heard scattered second-hand news. There seemed to be a succession of downward pivoting in recent years. I don’t know how everything played out, but it's evident that fundraising declined, and Covid-19 was dreadful for morale/enrollment. 

My point here isn't to rehash what everyone already knows. You know all this much better than I do. My point is that I do lament King's downfall and am personally bothered by the sentiment that we must cheerfully accept our fates without a fuss. A bomb falling out of the sky is not something you can control. I agree that we must carry on without a cowardly fear of death.

However, I think we have a duty and responsibility to maintain our good health as long as possible because we have duties and responsibilities in this life. Higher ed, as presently constituted, is a freakish nightmare, and there are really only a small handful of good and serious (Christian) schools. King's, for all of its obvious and grating faults, is one of them. I could be wrong, but I don't think all of this had to happen. People make choices, and we live with the consequences. 

Losing a place like King's is bad. It didn't have to be this way, and it makes me angry. I may seem too serious to some on this point, but I have been beating the drum of supporting new/vanguard higher-ed institutions for a long time. 

I think we genuinely need these places. The explosion in classical K-12 education is an instructive case study of how serious education is desirable, works and can scale. They have all gotten their acts together. College is a different beast, but we can and should maintain these institutions at enrollments between 200 and 500 nationwide and feed those students into the proper grad programs/think tanks/institutions/ministries/etc.

I have my own vision for how this can and should work in the future. I hope to continue to work towards my personal vision of a more tightly networked community of K-12, college, grad-school and employer relationships around a shared vision and common goals. 

I know that's not what we are talking about here, but I bring this personal vision up to indicate that schools like King's, I think, will – or could have – play(ed) an important role in what the shape of the country will take in the next 25 years or so. I don't predict a King's inspired coup, but I do think there will be a faction of the country powerful enough to act as a sort of expanded patron/client network that will require serious colleges in its network. 

All that to say, places like King's matter and the liberal arts, as taught there, produce superior graduates who do generative work. That will be missed, and its alternative – the status quo of higher ed – is abysmal and will continue harming people. 

Paul Jimenez is an Alumnus of The King’s College. He currently serves as Director for the Witherspoon Scholars Program at Providence Christian College in Pasadena, CA.