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Catholic higher education challenges

Kurt Jensen | Catholic News Service

WASHINGTON — An emphasis on online learning, increasingly stressed endowments and questions over how to best connect with students’ wants and needs are among challenges facing Catholic higher education.

 

These were some of the lessons of the recent meeting of the Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities in Washington. The theme of the meeting was “Rethinking Catholic Higher Education in a Transformed Landscape.”

Other takeaways were that the number of Catholic institutions in America is likely to decline and that an effective way to maintain a Catholic identity on campus is to have chapels in dormitories and priests in residence halls.

On top of the financial and faith challenges, all higher education institutions must struggle with a growing public perception questioning the value of college.

A recent New America Foundation poll on higher education showed that 51 percent of adults “agree that there are lots of well-paying jobs that do not require college attendance,” although 75 percent thought it “is easier to be successful with a degree than without.”

A degree is “worth $1.3 million over just having a high school diploma, but that perception is not out there,” said Lucie Lapovsky, a consultant who addressed a plenary session.

“Right now, two-thirds of all new jobs that are being created require a post-secondary education,” said John J. DeGioia, president of Georgetown University in Washington. “There are 3 million unfilled jobs that require this currently. … Since 1983, higher education has underperformed the economy. Jobs that required post-secondary education go unfilled. But you wouldn’t know that in the public narrative we’re living with today.”

DeGioia said that the belief in the significance of knowledge is threatened by a national erosion of trust.

As for endowments and their investments, Lapovsky warned that with an average annual return of 4.6 percent, an average spending rate of 4.4 percent does not allow endowments to keep up with inflation.

Of more than 200 Catholic institutions of higher education that currently exist, “I actually think there will be fewer institutions in 20 years,” she said. The smaller colleges need to ask themselves, “Is our self-preservation really for the students or for the institution?”

Another challenge without easy solutions is the difficulty in connecting with a generation immersed in social media, where “their Instagram feed is a measure of their self-worth,” said Shannon Tabaldo, director of digital development at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles.

Jesuit Father Joseph McShane, president of Fordham University in New York, spoke of the need for educators to become “fluent in their language,” but Tabaldo insisted that it’s mostly no longer a spoken language, with students no longer comprehending being “talked at” in classrooms, since they “instead take in all their information digitally.”

Regarding a strong Catholic identity, “I think we have to have a better language around values,” said Jon McGee, vice present for planning and strategy at the College of St. Benedict and St. John’s University in Minnesota.

 

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