Small Colleges Must Prioritize Mission Over Marketing

The modern university was not originally conceived as a lifestyle brand.

For centuries, universities existed for a far less glamorous purpose: the formation of minds and the shaping of character. From the medieval colleges of the University of Oxford and University of Cambridge to the early American colleges like Harvard University and Yale University, higher education was understood as a moral and intellectual enterprise. A university existed to cultivate habits of thought and a sense of vocation within the world.

The older Christian colleges understood this especially well. They envisioned communities of study where intellectual discipline and moral responsibility were intertwined. There were no “forever” students, no concepts of perpetual recreation. Students who acquired knowledge were trained to become a certain kind of person.