The Decline Of Valparaiso University A Tragedy For American Lutherans
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(OPINION) Valparaiso University, a Lutheran institution in northwest Indiana, has faced significant challenges in the last decade. High education in general is in crisis, and there is no part of the industry more vulnerable than faith-based institutions. Valparaiso has experienced a significant decline in students from its peak enrollment in 2015. Administrators are rightly seeking ways to right the ship and provide sustainability into the future.
Faith-based institutions have depended historically on denominational connections to attract students, and as the denominations decline, so does the pool of institutionally loyal prospective students. They are just a few of many victims of the overall decline of religious participation in the United States, but the decline of these institutions is a unique tragedy for their denominations as well as for American Christianity more broadly.
These institutions are often the repositories of the history of religious movements, immigrant movements that brought Old World expressions of faith to the New World and America’s westward expansion, as well as a platform by which theologians within particular traditions can do their work and train their successors.
READ: Can Christian Colleges ‘Keep The Faith’ In 21st Century America?
So, it is a tragedy for American Lutherans for Valparaiso University to face decline. Lutherans purchased the university in 1925 via an association independent of any denomination that was formed especially for the purchase, and the historic success of this pan-Lutheran university and subsequent decline may be, to an outside observer like myself, an indicator of a decline in our capacity for cross-denominational cooperation.
In 1925, the university was already more than 60 years old with an established reputation. The new owners beat out the next highest bidder, the Ku Klux Klan, and then set to work transforming the already well-regarded institution into what has been described as “the Notre Dame of Lutheranism,” referencing America’s most prestigious Catholic university.
It would be irresponsible for Valparaiso administrators not to find ways to make the institution viable into the future, and any plan that involves cuts to make that happen will always meet with controversy from some quarters, but the institution seems to be making some significant missteps.
Early last year, President Jose Padilla announced his intention to sell three pieces of artwork that form the cornerstone of the campus’s Brauer Museum of Art to finance capital improvements. That plan met with so much resistance that a lawsuit was filed to stop it.
The latest plan to “right-size” the university was announced just this month by Provost Eric Johnson, himself a Valparaiso alumni and longtime faculty member and administrator. This plan would see 28 degree programs shuttered that serve less than 3% of the campus population. The school has already made a similarly difficult decision when it closed its nearly 150-year-old law school in 2020. While a controversial decision, it was probably the right one as applications and bar passage rates had declined significantly, even if it was a profound disappointment for alumni and the community.
The latest plan has been criticized by a group of students who claim that the elimination of three of these programs — theology, German and music — compromise the “Christian heritage” of the university. The list of programs on the chopping block includes quite a few that should be at the heart of any university committed to the liberal arts, including the three listed above. The elimination of a philosophy program, for example, is almost always unwise. The solution to bolster the department and the degree program might be to require all students to take more philosophy and in the process increase the lifetime earning capacity of graduates. Who would be hurt by learning how to think?
But the elimination of the theology, German and music programs is terribly misguided. Even if the programs cannot support themselves through enrollment, programs like these that are directly related to distinctive aspects of a faith tradition woven into the DNA of an institution cannot be cut without compromising something about the institution’s identity. I might not frame it as compromising its Christian heritage, but it certainly does compromise its Lutheran one. “How much sawdust,” we might ask, “can be added to the feeding trough before it kills the horse?”
In this case, an historically Lutheran institution should actively seek to serve the wider American Lutheran community by doubling down on the things that make it distinctively Lutheran. It is impossible to understand Christianity without the discipline of theology, difficult to understand American Lutheranism without German language and culture, and an impoverished attempt to understand Lutheranism without understanding Bach and German hymnody.
In an increasingly competitive and challenging market, students and their families are looking for institutions that align with their values and for many Christian families that search is becoming more and more difficult. While there are other controversies at Valparaiso related to ethical and moral issues that can and should be resolved, one nonnegotiable for the “Notre Dame of Lutheranism” is the Lutheranism in terms of the institutional preservation of a tradition and the replication of the tradition in the next generation.
Otherwise, Valparaiso runs the risk of being neither Lutheran nor Notre Dame and settling into being an expensive university among many others just a bit too far from Chicago to be accessible and a bit too rural to be attractive. Why go to Valpo if it ceases to be what made it great? It appears that thousands of students since the university’s peak in 2015 have not been able to find a satisfactory answer that question.
Trey Dimsdale is the Executive Director of the Center for Religion, Culture & Democracy. He earned both his law degree and undergraduate degree from the University of Missouri-Kansas City. He also holds masters degrees in theology and ethics. Follow him on X @TreyDimsdale.