Contemporary American higher education is noisy these days. And the noise comes from every direction. Some are shouting that colleges are centres of wokeness and liberal agendas. Some that a college degree no longer holds value. Or that the arrival of NIL (the right of college athletes to profit from their “name, image, and likeness”) money is the death of college sports. That AI is destroying academic integrity and student learning. That colleges should comply with White House directives. Or that they should not.  

The list goes on. 

This noise signals a crisis that academic administrators must face. Yet avoidance is a primary response. Academic leaders scramble to avoid campus protests, avoid the shuttering of their last remaining humanities program, avoid any potential lawsuits, and especially avoid their greatest fear: closure. Higher education is at an inflection point. Decisions made in the next decade will shape the future health or even the existence of institutions that so many claim as their alma mater. 

The End(s) of Education

A long-standing and broadly accepted notion today is that our bachelor’s degree–granting institutions of higher education, whether universities or more traditional liberal arts colleges, are primarily places for career preparation. If you doubt whether this is true, I encourage you to spend an evening at a local college fair. The key message that you will hear and see is one of ROI (return on investment). Job-placement rates, degree outcomes, tuition prices, internships, and experiential learning opportunities are featured front and centre to convince the average sixteen-year-old—and, perhaps more importantly, their parents—that this is the place to be set up for a lifetime of success. 

I work in the world of enrollment management. I’ve attended hundreds of college fairs and visited schools across the globe. I’ve participated in and presented at numerous conferences and workshops and served alongside some of the brightest minds in higher education on boards, committees, and panels. My day job puts me squarely in the middle of this moment in higher education.  

In Pennsylvania, where I live and work, there are approximately 500,000 undergraduate students and 300 colleges. The 30 largest colleges enroll more than 80 percent of those students. The remaining 270 colleges fight for the roughly 100,000 remaining students—about 370 students on average. My institution, Geneva College, enrolls about 1,200 students, and we brought in a class of just over 400 undergraduate students in the fall of 2024—just above the average. Most four-year higher education institutions in North America receive more than 50 percent of revenue from tuition and fees. In the last five years, we have seen a drop of approximately 8 percent in the number of enrolled undergraduate students (that’s 40,000 fewer students in Pennsylvania alone), and during this same five-year period, more than 100 four-year higher education institutions have had to close their doors. This is the landscape in which colleges are trying to function. While demographic trends differ across the United States and Canada, the number of college-aged students is decreasing, the percentage of those eligible to go to college who choose to do so has dropped, and competition continues to increase.  

The competition for enrolling students is fierce—the free market is fully at work. Many colleges are desperate, fighting just to stay open. If you have a teenager in your house, you will have received hundreds of mailers, postcards, viewbooks, and letters in your home. Your son or daughter is likely to have received several hundred emails, texts, and calls. This happens because enrollment teams across North America are tasked with building their institutions, to keep them financially viable, to bring in the next generation of [INSERT COLLEGE NAME HERE] alumni. 

In the mayhem of the college-recruitment landscape, here’s what may get lost: actual conversations about the fundamental goals or purposes of an undergraduate education. In his 1995 book The End of Education, Neil Postman argued that higher education was losing its distinct purpose and direction. Yes, the economic purpose of job preparation is a key element of getting a college degree, but this is not, Postman and others have argued, the whole picture.  

Wendell Berry put it eloquently when he said, “The thing being made in a university is humanity. What universities are mandated to make or to help to make is human beings in the fullest sense of those words—not just trained workers or knowledgeable citizens but responsible heirs and members of human culture.” One can argue whether Berry is right. His call to pursue human culture sounds odd to us in a postmodern, capitalist, and hyper-individual society; we would much rather hear about guaranteed job placements and career advancement. However, Berry’s charge for colleges and universities certainly exceeds today’s minimal standard of “job readiness” in purpose, vision, and long-term intent. Berry invites us to an educational aspiration greater than—but not less than—the completion of credits, certificates, and degrees. 

Higher education scholar and my former professor and mentor Dave Guthrie, who served at Calvin University, Geneva College, Penn State University, and the Council for Independent Colleges, made the case that the ultimate purpose of college is wisdom development. We need engineers to design bridges that withstand the particular climates in which they are built. We need accountants who understand tax law and its ethical implications. We need math teachers who can explain the nuances of equations and statistics in such a way that they become alive for younger generations. But student learning is more complex than what happens in the classroom, because the people we aim to graduate are more complex than their careers.  

Since the opening of the first colleges in North America (and with a much longer history elsewhere in the world), the goals of student learning have reached far beyond the skills necessary to complete a job. For decades, faculty and tutors lived alongside students to prepare them for life. Further, what is learned outside the classroom—in a late-night conversation in a dorm, over lunch in the dining hall, or during that 6:00 a.m. workout—shapes us in significant ways. Learning to live with a roommate who is not from the big city, who doesn’t also love country music, or whose family situation is completely different from your own can be life altering and foundational to developing empathy and understanding.  

A prominent component of the college experience in North America is that learning happens within a community. College is one of the few remaining places where young men and women from all walks of life mutually agree to do something together and for an extended amount of time—to give up some of their personal freedoms in exchange for the difficult, messy, and rich reality that is a college community. As we think about how to help the loneliest and most anxious generation, one of the biggest benefits of college might be the preparation for life itself. 

Yet who, if anyone, is looking after this? 

Today’s Institution Builder

In the chaotic world of college recruitment and the constant fears of possible closure, the modern college has created the field of enrollment management. For most colleges, enrollment management is the means by which institutions are built. And within enrollment management there is the special role of the admissions counsellor. Sometimes known as a recruiter, enrollment representative, or university liaison, the admissions counsellor exists to break through the noise of the recruitment cycle by sitting face to face with applicants and their families and discussing their “fit” at their respective college.  

I started my work in enrollment as an admissions counsellor and still believe it can be one of the best jobs. Travelling far and wide to schools, college fairs, and receptions to meet students and their families, you get to see the world (literally, if your portfolio includes international recruitment), meet a wide variety of people, and, if done well, have meaningful conversations with students about their dreams, goals, and sense of calling. I have had the privilege to work with, hire, and train dozens of admissions counsellors, and I know that admissions counsellors have the potential to shape the educational journeys of countless young people, whether for faithful purpose and vocation or for competitive ROI. 

While the potential exists to equip admissions counsellors to have meaningful conversations about the purpose of undergraduate education, the higher education industry has opted to use the admissions counsellor as a relatively affordable, replaceable, and scalable way to increase the reach of a college. The average tenure for an admissions counsellor is about two years, and the universally accepted standard for an admissions counsellor is someone who is about twenty-four years old, attractive (or at least a snappy dresser), quick to strike up a conversation, and ideally an alumni of the institution. For many colleges, admissions counsellors are similar to the institution’s direct mail promotional pieces: just informational enough to move the applicant to the next stage of the application process.  

The secret of the best admissions counsellors today is not that they are great at conversing about the ends or purposes of undergraduate education. They are unlikely to know about John Henry Newman, Neil Postman, or Wendell Berry, let alone Dave Guthrie. They are not expected to. This is true for their managers and directors as well. Rather, the secret of great enrollment managers is that they are excellent technicians. The best enrollment professionals are like chameleons: they are dangerous enough to manipulate a spreadsheet, confident enough to argue with faculty about new program development, charismatic enough to rile up a crowd of visitors at an open house, smart enough to have an advanced degree such as an MBA or MEd, and cunning enough to evaluate the right vendors, software, and higher education marketing trends to deliver a magical number of students to ensure that their respective institutions remain viable. 

I understand why enrollment management at large is focused on the execution of means and tactics, and not on the conversation of ends. The success metrics for enrollment are extremely demanding, and “enrollment leaders are wearing down and burning out,” as Eric Hoover, senior writer at the Chronicle for Higher Education, reports. For most smaller colleges and universities, enrollment represents somewhere around 70 percent of annual revenue. When enrollment staff miss their targets, it is likely someone will lose their job or not have their contract renewed, and in the worst (but not rare) cases the college will move one step closer to shutting down. There is a base level of stress and anxiety in the life of an enrollment leader that takes a toll. Speaking candidly, this job has taken its toll on my physical and mental health, my work-life balance, and the equilibrium of my family. It has tested my faith. 

It is in this context that I understand, and often contribute to, the technical and utilitarian approach to building and sustaining institutions of higher education. I want to keep my job, and I don’t want others to lose their jobs. I really care about the continued existence and mission of the institution that my team and I are working so hard to grow. Having yet another conversation about job readiness instead of one on educational mission can keep the doors open and our jobs secure. The pressures of maintaining operational viability, which Edward LeRoy Long, author of Higher Education as a Moral Enterprise, warned about more than thirty years ago, are real and felt. 

Enrollment leaders are tasked with “building” the next class—preferably a class that is smarter, larger, and in less need of financial assistance. In their efforts to do so, they reach for the utilitarian tools available to them. We benchmark against our competitors, use similar financial-aid models, chase the latest enrollment trends, and purchase tens of thousands of names from testing companies to ensure we have a viable pool of inquiring students. Yet as a professional industry, rarely do we prioritize having conversations about the purposes of education—we ignore the ends and are stuck in the means. This does not mean that enrollment leaders should not be the ones unilaterally to suggest or decide what new initiative or program is missional and should be invested in. However, their position between the rest of college leadership and the staff who are recruiting tomorrow’s alumni makes them uniquely able to connect the dots between the future student and the current leadership. By virtue of holding this office, they ought to be more interested in the mission than what our industry demands and more adept at translating that mission to their staff and prospective students.  

A Path Forward

I believe there are ways to bridge the gap between sustaining our institution of higher education through the means of enrollment and inviting students (and staff) into conversation about the ends of education. Newman gives us a clue: “A university is, according to the usual designation, an Alma Mater [a nourishing or bountiful mother], knowing her children one by one, not a foundry, or a mint, or a treadmill.” Newman puts the concept of claiming an alma mater on its head. What if claiming an alma mater is not so much about prestige to gain financially as about acknowledging a parent—a nourishing and bountiful parent? 

Most parents desire to give their children what is best, even if this desire is not always matched by ability or resources to do so. This idea of the college acting as a parent who desires to nourish and bestow bounty on her children radically changes what a college is for. An alma mater that accepts this view would want her children to be ready to live lives of faithful and fruitful service wherever they are called, and to succeed in all areas of life and not only in their careers. An alma mater would want her children to be good neighbours, leaders, spouses, and employees. Understandably, colleges and universities are currently focused on remaining financially viable, yet being financially viable does not have to come at the cost of knowing and seeing our students. We mustn’t forget the why amid the how. 

Three things must happen for higher education to achieve this. First, we must remind ourselves and perhaps relearn what education is for. Yes, college can and should be a critical place where young men and women prepare for potential careers. As such, our colleges are wise to pay attention to equipping our students with the foundational skills to navigate a rapidly changing society. However, colleges need to remember that core to the educational mission, as Guthrie would say, is the development of wisdom—inside and outside the classroom, formally and informally—as preparation for life. We need to invite our students to think about the big questions.  

Colleges and universities must also know the particular mission of their institution. A Geneva College education should look significantly different from an education at Penn State University, or Carnegie Mellon University, not only in the verbiage it uses promotionally, but in its curriculum, co-curriculum, pedagogy, and outcomes, as well as the rationale behind all these. Each institution must prioritize and communicate its mission in considering how to build its next class. 

Numerous colleges have thought deeply about their educational mission and are showcasing what it looks like for a defined vision of undergraduate education to be a key ingredient of sustainability. Beyond my own institution, where I can see the ways we are thinking about educational aims and mission, Benedictine College, Berry College, College of the Ozarks, Colorado College, Dordt University, and Sienna College are examples of institutions that have a clearly defined missional identity that has led to operational sustainability. Thinking about mission, claiming that college is for more than job readiness, and designing a curriculum that engages the whole person do not make a college idealistic, removed from reality, or outdated; they set a college apart and provides a pathway for it to know its students and guide them in a clear direction. 

At my own alma mater and former workplace, Redeemer University, I had the opportunity to invite several founding faculty to speak with my admissions counsellors about why they quit their tenure-track positions across North America to join a start-up college that had enough finances to last till Christmas. In hearing of the sacrifices and deep sense of purpose of these retired faculty members, my staff members were able to understand the mission and heart of the institution itself. Likewise, I’ve regularly invited my admissions teams to sit in on key classes throughout the school year. Opportunities like this, which are available at any institution, invite the enrollment team more fully into the mission of the institution. 

Second, college leaders, and specifically enrollment leaders, must do better in terms of thinking through the particulars of mission. Yes, the pressure on presidents, provosts, CFOs, and enrollment leaders is immense. However, when we put all our effort into benchmarking against our competitors, we start looking like them. As leaders on our campuses, we must resist the urge to simply follow the latest best practices. We need to ask ourselves tough questions before we make decisions about new programs and initiatives.  

What is possible might not be beneficial. Do we really think an entire degree that is designed to be completed on your smartphone moves our institution and society forward? Do we think it’s missional to launch another graduate program that is indistinguishable from the program offered down the road and cobbled together simply to be competitive? Do we truly believe that our online program that is focused solely on efficiency and that serves thousands of students prepares our students well for life? Unfortunately, I see this flattening happening across higher education, including among Christian colleges. We must hold ourselves to a higher standard than Job-Ready Programs + Chapel = A Christian Education. We need to do better. 

As college leaders, we are called to actively pursue a deeper understanding of the ends of education in order to offer our students programs (means) that can equip them for life. This will take time. If you were to consider getting a master’s in higher education leadership today, you would be hard pressed to find more than a handful of programs that even ask their students to consider the purpose of education, the foundation of knowledge, or what entails student learning. Campus leaders who are thinking about changing their academic programs to be more market-aligned should ask themselves to what end they are doing so. A job skill or technical skill may well be outdated by the time one graduates. The beautiful thing about an education that prepares students for life is that it also prepares them to navigate the changes that AI, AGI, or quantum computing might bring, because it is not dependent on a time-bound set of skills. An education for life is not a Luddite argument against technological advancement or emerging programs. Rather, it’s an invitation to think deeply about the questions that will direct these technologies and programs. 

Finally, parents as well as educators, pastors, and mentors must raise the bar on what they demand from colleges and universities and how those institutions shape the long-term understanding and expectations of prospective students in the purposes of a university education. If parents are exclusively focused on the ability of their children to get a job or complete an internship, the market will continue to provide these opportunities. Parents should be asking undergraduate institutions to be alma maters in the original sense of the phrase. We should ask institutions to be nourishing and bountiful in their care. We should ask them how they prepare students for times that are disorienting, gut-wrenching, and seemingly overwhelming. We should ask institutions how they will equip students to live into relationships in the age of AI. We should ask college leaders what animates the educational project of their institutions, including how such foundations are operationalized inside and outside the classroom. 

The educational landscape is always changing. The University of Bologna changed when the printing press was invented, learning at Magdalen College in Oxford looked different during World War II, and the internet changed the way research was conducted at Stanford University (and every other university). Higher education is again at an inflection point. The perceived value of education, AI, the regulatory environment, and global dynamics will change many of the particulars of how colleges and universities operate. But we should not let these trends and changes define what education is for. The deeper end goals of education—the mission and bedrock pursuits of each institution—must transcend and shape the means of achievement, not get lost in the noise of survival.