Doubly Marginalized, Part 1: How the university is marginalized

Christians in the university very often feel like outsiders in both their churches and their institutions. In this series, I take a look at the different aspects of this situation of being doubly marginalized.

It might not seem like the university is marginalized in America. There are certainly a lot of higher education institutions all around. Doing a Google search of "College Jacksonville, FL" turns up least 17 different institutions in my immediate area alone.

But I think this plethora actually speaks to the marginalization of the university. There are many institutions available because it's relatively easy to make money off of a higher education institution, and the more career/business-oriented those institutions are, the more profitable they are.

For example, if you search for physics departments or humanities departments or music departments in Jacksonville, you'll find much fewer results. And why should all of these smaller career-oriented colleges offer physics or humanities or music? There's a lot more money to be made in training physicians' assistants and computer technicians and court stenographers---because we need more of these people than we need physicists or humanities professors or trombone players. (Note I didn't say that we need PAs and techies and stenographers more than we need physicists and humanities professors and trombone players, just that we need more of them.)

But in this process of training people to fill roles with greater demand, the more traditional idea of the university has gotten lost in the conversation, and physicists and humanities professors and trombone players get put to the side and treated like they're not necessary for society. Hence the marginalization of the university.

John Sommerville (no, I won't mention him in every blog post) says it much better in his The Decline of the Secular University. I highly recommend reading it.

What do you think? How do you see the university as marginalized in America? In your city? In your church (now there's a thought that deserves a series of blog posts all its own)?