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.
That vision is increasingly difficult to see on many smaller campuses today.
In the competition for enrollment, smaller colleges have begun mimicking the external trappings of the large research university. Carefully branded “campus experiences” are treated as the key to institutional survival. New athletic complexes and boutique dormitories are the norm. The logic is familiar: if the facilities are impressive enough, students will follow.
But smaller institutions are trying to compete in a game designed for universities with vastly different resources and priorities.
A college with a few thousand students cannot realistically replicate the scale of institutions like the University of Michigan or The Ohio State University. Those universities operate within an ecosystem of research funding and massive alumni bases that smaller colleges simply do not possess. Attempting to imitate that model often produces a strange institutional mimicry —something that looks like a university brochure but lacks the underlying infrastructure.
More importantly, it risks displacing the very purpose that made the small college valuable in the first place.
I attend a small college precisely because I want the environment that only a small institution can provide. Many students deliberately make the same decision. They want professors who know their names. They want classrooms built for discussion rather than anonymous lecture halls, and an academic culture in which faculty are teachers first.
The small college environment fosters genuine intellectual community, something the modern university often struggles to sustain.
Yet many smaller institutions seem oddly hesitant to embrace this advantage. Instead of leaning into their strengths, they attempt to approximate the aesthetics of the large state university. In doing so, they often begin neglecting the quieter but far more important elements of student formation.
One can see this tension in the kinds of investments colleges choose to prioritize.
My own institution, Grace Christian University, has recently explored investing roughly $3 million in a new soccer field and expanded bleachers. There is nothing inherently wrong with athletics. Sports can enrich campus life and provide valuable opportunities for student athletes.
However, every major institutional investment communicates a vision of what the college believes itself to be.
Grace Christian University is not widely known for elite athletic programs, nor should it attempt to become one overnight. What has historically made its athletic programs meaningful is that students can pursue competitive sports while participating in a distinctly Christian academic environment. Athletics function as one part of a broader educational vision. It does not need to become the defining feature of the institution.
When a small Christian college begins directing millions of dollars toward athletic infrastructure while simultaneously reducing or dismissing academic programs that students deeply care about, it creates a troubling institutional contradiction. The college begins pulling itself in two directions at once —toward an athletic identity it cannot fully sustain and away from the academic mission that once defined it.
This tension reveals a deeper problem within modern higher education: the gradual replacement of formation with marketing.
Universities once spoke openly about forming virtuous citizens. Today, they speak primarily about “experiences” and “amenities.” These concepts are not meaningless, but they often obscure the kind of person an institution tries to form.
Christian colleges should be uniquely positioned to answer that question. Their mission statements typically emphasize spiritual formation and preparation for meaningful vocation. In theory, they exist to educate students and shape Christian leaders capable of serving the church and the broader culture.
Missions, though, cannot remain rhetorical, however pleasant and disciplined they sound. They must be reflected in budgets.
Facilities matter, of course. Students should not be asked to pay substantial tuition for deteriorating buildings or neglected dormitories. A campus should be capable of supporting student life.
Yet facilities are not the foundation of a university.
The true fundamentals are less glamorous and far more demanding. Excellent faculty who prioritize teaching and mentorship. Academic programs that are rigorous and connected to real vocational pathways. Thoughtful advising and career services that prepare students for life beyond graduation. Alumni networks that remain engaged with the institution’s long-term mission.
Most importantly, a clear and confident institutional identity.
The small college will never outbuild the flagship public university. It will never outspend the massive research institution. But it does not need to. Its strength lies precisely in what those institutions struggle to provide.
When smaller colleges forget this, they begin drifting toward a strange middle ground. They are no longer fully committed to the older vision of the college, yet they cannot realistically become the kind of large university they imitate. The result is institutional confusion, an identity caught somewhere between.
Students notice this confusion more quickly than administrators might expect.
Most students who enroll in smaller colleges are searching for something different. The irony is that many smaller colleges already possess the ingredients necessary to provide exactly that kind of education. Their faculty is accessible, their communities intimate.
What they often lack is the confidence to build around those strengths.
If Christian colleges want to remain viable in the coming decades, they will need to recover the older understanding of what a university is for. A university, properly understood, is a community devoted to the formation of minds and the shaping of character.
That vision may not produce the most impressive campus brochure. But it is the only one that will ultimately sustain the small college.
