Christian schools lead charge in higher ed reform supported by Trump admin

 
A “long overdue” higher education “course correction” is underway during the first 100 days of the Trump administration, and Christian schools are the center of it.

 
That’s according to Heritage Foundation Education Director Lindsey Burke, who made her comments Tuesday during a Heritage Foundation event in Washington, D.C., titled “Reclaiming the Culture of American Higher Education.”

 
The forum highlighted four institutions that are “bright spots” in the higher education landscape – College of the Ozarks, Grand Canyon University, Christendom College and Wyoming Catholic College – whose presidents spoke about how they are charting “a renewed American vision for the academy.” 

 
“If you think back 200 years ago with the beginnings of higher education, everything was taught from a biblical worldview perspective – the creation, fall, redemption, restoration story in the Bible was the foundation of what young people learned regardless of whether they were going into the natural sciences, into engineering, into business,” Grand Canyon University President Brian Mueller said, noting that over the years education has “completely flipped.” 

 
The Phoenix-based school lives out its Christian values by doing work in the surrounding inner city areas to alleviate poverty, which he said “neutralizes this political divide” that has taken over a lot of the country. 

 
“Interestingly enough, we obviously get a lot of support from the right, but in Arizona, we also get support from the left,” he said. “Because there are people who don’t believe what we believe about the Bible, and about Jesus, and about salvation and all that, but they care about people that are hurting.” 

 
At Wyoming Catholic College, a small liberal arts school nestled in the Rocky Mountains, all students are required to take a mandatory three-week backpacking trip in the wilderness.  

 
“There are more people with PhDs in the United States than people who have spent three consecutive weeks in the outdoors,” Wyoming Catholic College President Kyle Washut joked. Students then spend another seven weeks experiencing “outdoor formation” and a semester of horsemanship, he said. “We do that because we’re taking Plato very seriously, the need to cultivate the body, the need to cultivate grit in terms of forming leaders.” 

 
The college also asks students to “fast from their smartphone the entire time they’re students at Wyoming Catholic College,” he said, and there is no internet in the dorms. 

 
“That allows for a focus on intense reading, intense reflection, into community formation, where they’re doing the kind of education and the liberal arts that we think is necessary for leading,” he said. 

 
Students are fully aware of what they’re signing up for and they’re actively seeking out a challenge to become great leaders, he said. Even with promising growth at Christian colleges across the country, “the number of institutions that are actually committed to preserving the republic, preserving our way of life are a drop in the bucket in the midst of the giant state institutions and the legacy ed institutions that are out there,” he said. 

 
At College of the Ozarks, in Missouri, new students undergo a weeklong “character camp” to learn about American values, the faith, and how to “work hard and show up on time,” the college President Brad Johnson said. Known as “Hard Work U,” students are required to work 560 hours each year – 15 hours per week during the school year and two 40-hour weeks during their breaks. In exchange, he said, students get to attend school tuition-free and graduate debt-free.  

 
One theme of the event was how to attract students to rigorous liberal arts programs at a time when many high schoolers are pushed toward science and computer programming. 

 
“Fundamentally we all want our children to be free, we want to be free ourselves, and at the very root of liberal education is that commitment to freedom,” said George Harne, president of Christendom College in Virginia. “It’s not just for the elite. That’s one of the beautiful things about the United States, is that we have made liberal education something that’s available to anyone” who is “willing to put in the time.”  

The U.S. Department of Education’s Jonathan Pidluzny, who serves as deputy chief of staff for policy and programs, kicked off the event by outlining what his department can do – and is already doing – to “reclaim” higher education. It begins with a “complete reorientation of civil rights enforcement” that is already “well underway” by the Trump administration, he said.  

 
“Instead of asking universities to do more DEI in response to reports of antisemitism, for example, we should be laser-focused on protecting students from discrimination, from harassment,” Pidluzny said. “This includes Jewish students at lead institutions, this includes female athletes who should not be subject to the indignity of being forced to change in the presence of naked men, and it includes looking at university practices that rely on illegal race preferences and race stereotypes.” 

 
Federal investments should also be reoriented “away from ideology back to the advancement of learning and teaching excellence,” he said.