Our kids are still in middle school, so we’ve got a few years to go before we need to help them make the two of the biggest decisions they’ll make: where to go to college and what to do when they get there. But as I’ve started to think ahead to a process that many of my friends and colleagues are already going through, I’ve wondered if I might be able to help families like ours and theirs navigate the transition from high school to college. After all, I not only have twenty years of experience as a college professor myself, but higher education is one of the primary topics that I study and write about.
More than that, I’m used to thinking about that topic in light of my faith as a Christian. With millions of Americans starting college each year at one of thousands of colleges and universities, there’s no shortage of college advice guides. But few center on the religious and spiritual dimensions of the college experience.
Of course, I’ll still want to grapple with questions that families of any or no faith should consider: How do you know if a college is a good fit, or worth its cost? How does financial aid work? How do you pick a major, and why are there so many “gen ed” requirements? But I’d especially want to help fellow Christians think through the particular questions that I’ll have when my own kids start touring campuses and writing applications: Does college help students to “make their faith their own”? Does it help students to hear God’s calling on their lives — not just what they should do, but who they should be? Are we being good stewards if we borrow money to pay for college?
I’ve started to “think in public” about some of those questions — e.g., through a podcast I co-hosted last year with a Bethel colleague and as I taught a seminar on higher education this past spring. But this summer I’m committed to writing the rough draft of the book itself: a college advice guide for Christian families.
I rarely know exactly what I want to say until I start writing. But I’ve already decided on three principles that should shape the book and hopefully make it a distinctively helpful contribution to a crowded genre:
1. I’m here to help families ask better questions, not just provide answers.
When I first started thinking about this project, I asked a variety of people to share the questions they had about higher ed. Not surprisingly, most were questions of definition: What is _______? What does that mean? Like any complicated industry, higher ed has developed its own jargon that can be confusing and (especially for “first-generation” students) intimidating. So I do plan to spend part of the book unpacking that vocabulary, everything from FAFSA to Title IX to the frightening concept of “office hours.”
But what’s more important to me is that a book like this gives me the chance to help families ask questions so fundamental that they often go unasked. Most basically, rather than assume that college is the four-year experience that follows four years of high school, I’d like readers to pause and ask themselves: Should you go to college? If so, why? What do you expect out of it? Or rather than just explain the difference between “sticker price” and “net cost,” I’d like to nudge families to interrogate their own understanding of the value of a college education.
In the process, I hope I can clarify the most opaque terminology in higher ed and suggest different ways of thinking about everything from college rankings to “return on investment.” And where I do ask questions so big and broad that the answers are bound to vary from student to student, family to family, I’ll try to suggest strategies for finding those answers.
2. I want to offer two related types of “college advice”: how to choose a college and how to make the most of that choice.
These are often treated as the subjects of different kinds of books, but I think it’s essential to consider both sets of advice in tandem. First, how you answer the most important questions everyone should ask during the search process — Why am I going to college? Is it worth the cost? What do I expect from college? — should then shape how you approach the experience of college itself. Second, it’s increasingly common for students to go to college before they choose their college — thanks to the rise of “early college” options like “dual enrollment,” which let high school students take postsecondary courses and even live on a college campus.
3. I’m writing a college advice guide for Christian families… not a sales pitch for Christian colleges.
Don’t get me wrong: I’d be happy to have many students who read this book decide to attend Bethel or another college or university like it. There’s so much I appreciate about our model of higher education.
But it’s not the right fit for everyone. I went to a public college and benefited from encountering more diverse perspectives than I’d known in the churches of my childhood. My wife had a similar experience at a smaller, private institution: a Lutheran college whose religious values informed its educational mission, but were much less explicit than they are at evangelical colleges that require faculty and students alike to profess Christian belief.
But if I’m not trying sell every reader on the merits of any single Christian approach to higher education, I do hope to convince them all to think about college — a time of profound transition when young adults explore identity, form relationships, and set the trajectory for their future lives — in light of their vocation as followers of Jesus Christ.
Chris Gehrz is professor of history at Bethel University in St. Paul, Minnesota. He is the author or editor of five books, including a spiritual biography of Charles Lindbergh, and writes The Pietist Schoolman, a newsletter at Substack.
Sounds like you are going to provide a lot of help to families. More power to you!
A much needed resource!