Covenant Must Grow Up as Well As Out

In our last editorial, the Bagpipe talked about next year’s budget pinch and the drive to recruit or retain 53 more students than projected. As promised, this piece will examine some related questions. Our editorial staff feels that some bumps in the road may indicate a disconnect between the students and administration.

The Bagpipe has already supported the positive side of the current admissions drive, but this editorial is going to ask some questions. We feel that the questions need to be addressed, because it may be that the fiscal squeeze of the upcoming year is just the beginning of more serious privations that our current course of growth may entail. We are confident that the administration has many of the same concerns, but we fear that such qualms have been ignored all too often of late.

In short, our concern is that any sense of an officially sponsored recruitment and retainment drive is one aspect of new dynamic slowly making its presence known at Covenant. That dynamic is a sort of “growth for growth’s sake.” And it manifests itself not only in the 53-student drive, but also in large-scale, long-term expansion plans, and in efforts to advertise Covenant as a competitor to academically prestigious schools. There is certainly an ethos of growth drifting about from Probasco Hall to the Ashe Center, suggesting that Covenant should aim toward becoming large (or at least less small).

But Covenant’s unique atmosphere depends heavily on its intimacy – it is a college where professors are accessible, the student community has a pulse, and members of the administration like the students, and even invite them over to dinner sometimes. Covenant finds itself in an interesting place: we have an active intellectual community to be sure, but are in transition – expanding our academic programs and developing an identity as a good school for the liberal arts. We also have an obligation to create an environment that is not simply intellectual, but also reflects the Church, and specifically our governing church, the PCA.

No one will dissent if the Bagpipe suggests that there are a many different ways to grow in our current situation. We need to be careful with physical growth, as well as any other kind of expansion. The danger here is threefold: In addition to the obvious financial risks, we risk becoming less selective and threaten the intimacy on campus.

On a simply financial level, it is more difficult to start – or expand – a college today than in the recent past, because expectations are different and there are already a plethora of colleges. As Covenant attempts to create a firm academic reputation, we are competing against old, heavily endowed colleges. If we continue to raise tuition in that pursuit, we will price ourselves into competition with more established schools, and lose students. We assume that this particular scenario has been addressed by the board and planning committee, but are concerned that our governing growth projections may not be sufficiently realistic.

Our concern with selectivity requires some explanation. It does not appear that we are in much danger of lowering our SAT score standards or grade-point average requirements, but we may have already let slide other considerations. Covenant’s size makes it possible to evaluate applicants in terms of personal motivations and attitudes. Real academic growth requires an inquisitive and teachable student body, not just a “smart” one. Moreover, our peculiar Christian commitment makes it our duty to consider applicants as members of the community and not simply as academic units. An admissions department focused on growth will find it increasingly difficult to keep such factors in mind.

The threat to intimacy on campus we can understand by analogy to the insertion of business into personal relationship: it is probable that if our program of growth ever makes it necessary to fill seats, the college will be giving up a vital element of its relationship with its students. The development of a respectable intellectual community depends in part on Covenant’s success in resisting the transformation of students into consumers, a cancer endemic in American higher education. To the extent that our growth encourages such a mentality, it is not growth at all.

We need to resist a slavish pursuit of the kind of academic achievement preached by the greater American collegiate community. Before it pushes for growth, Covenant should develop a particular, well-defined set of distinctives, a map that clearly defines the ways in which we use our education as a means to live in the Church with each other. We are not just members of an institution of higher learning, but members of the body of Christ. This gives us freedom to pursue types of growth that other schools cannot, and should give us perspective from which to evaluate ourselves.

We can learn about service: a small group of students excited about the possibilities of the Practical Service program could breathe life into an old institution. We could learn about transcending differences: Covenant could be a place where young people are not segregated by age, where students could become friends with members of other generations. We could have the best student newspaper in the southeast.

These thoughts are in an open editorial because we readily recognize that the most vital life of any institution comes from the bottom up. The burden of Covenant’s future rests on the shoulders of the students at least as much as it rests on the board, faculty, and staff.

That said, the administration sets a great deal of the tone of the school, and treating students like consumers by our admissions process is very bad business. We at Covenant College need to be sure that we are growing up as well as out.