The University
The Jesuit School will, on occasion, provide a focused look at individual institutions of higher education–public, private, and Catholic–that strive to provide an academic program that contains a core set of courses that prepare a student wisely for the 21st century by grounding students in the intellectual, scientific, historical, economic, religious. and artistic thought and achievements that compose the heritage of Judeo-Christian Civilization. It will also offer a glimpse into the postmodern corruption of Jesuit Colleges and Universities.
The Cardinal Newman Society is dedicated to the defense “of faithful Catholic education.” Their Newman Guide is an excellent resource for parents who are searching for guidance when it comes to the selection of a university or college for their Jesuit graduates.
The Cardinal Newman Guide is, for parents who wish their children to continue their education in a self-confidently Catholic environment, a great place to begin. Over 20 Catholic universities and colleges are cited with links to their websites. Both students and parents may benefit from the Newman Guide’s tips on Navigating the College Search.
In addition, the Cardinal Newman Society provides specific Catholic Curriculum Standards as a resource for educators and parents.
What Will They Learn does not rank schools. It rates them according to objective academic criteria based on the strength of each school’s core curriculum involving seven key subjects.
This yearly evaluation, an initiative of the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, now rates over 1,000 colleges and universities annually.
“Reasoned debate and free inquiry” are cornerstones of a quality collegiate education: What Will They Learn? reveals which institutions make the grade.
The Georgetown Law School dean, William Treanor, recently suspended incoming law professor Ilya Shapiro for a tweet skeptical of the wisdom of making race and sex a priority over other considerations in selecting Supreme Court justices. Treanor, who met with law students upset by the tweet, had previously indicated that he would strongly consider making Critical Race Theory mandatory study for all law students and having professor tenure tied to a commitment to DEI.
Jesuit St. Joseph’s University has not renewed the contract of an assistant math professor (and volunteer assistant coach for St. Joe’s baseball team) who has been with the university since 2005. Apparently, his tweets denouncing reparations and skepticism of racial sensitivity training triggered one or more students, convinced the administration to launch an investigation, and resulted in non-renewal of contract.
Located in Belmont, North Carolina, near Charlotte, Belmont Abbey College is unashamedly Catholic, with a mission “to educate students in the liberal arts and sciences so that in all things God may be glorified.”
Belmont Abbey College is faithful to the 1990 encyclical by Pope John Paul II, Ex Corde Ecclesiae, which concerns”the identity of a Catholic university and the mission of service” of such a university.
All students take over 50 hours of core curriculum that explores “the history of Western civilization, the classics of Western literature and political philosophy, rhetoric, the natural and social sciences, the Bible, the fundamentals of Catholic theology, and the fine arts.” Along with its various majors and minors offered in its academic program, Belmont Abbey is also home to the Honors College dedicated to the study of the Great Books.
Located in Steubenville, Ohio, which resides along the Ohio River in the easternmost part of the state across from the northern panhandle of West Virginia, Franciscan University furthers the higher education of men and women by offering academic programs of liberal, professional, and pre-professional studies leading to baccalaureate and master degrees in the arts and sciences.
Publicly and passionately Catholic, Franciscan is committed to “being truly Catholic in its full submission to the teaching authority of the Catholic Church” and offers a core curriculum for undergraduates rooted in Catholic Intellectual Tradition.
At Franciscan, “faith and reason, knowledge and experience, past and present”come together to provide an education that is “as intellectually challenging and spiritually enriching as it is professionally formative.”
Thomas Aquinas College
Thomas Aquinas College was founded in the late 1960s as a new Catholic institution of higher education “determined to be faithful to Christ and never to compromise its principles.” With two locations—one in Santa Paula, California; the other in Northfield, Massachusetts—the founders resolved to “pass on the great intellectual patrimony of our Western civilization” and to do so faithful to the Catholic Church and her Magisterium.
Offering a liberal arts degree with a four-year core entirely focused on the Great Books, Thomas Aquinas College nurtures tools of inquiry and argument through sustained discussion and analysis, mathematical demonstration, and laboratory investigation.
Guided by tutor-educators throughout the four-year program, Thomas Aquinas graduates “are fortified to undertake any area of study, professional training, or vocation…,prepared to live well the life of the free citizen and of the Christian.”
Hillsdale is a small, non-sectarian Christian, classical liberal arts college in southern Michigan that accepts no government funding. “Learning, character, faith, and freedom” are its core values.
The school’s 44 majors and minors are undergirded by a structured two-year core curriculum centered on the “spiritual and intellectual inheritance of the Western Tradition.” That which is the True, the Good, and the Beautiful—from mathematics and philosophy to the hard sciences, from literature and fine arts to the social sciences—is considered “best preparation for meeting the challenges of modern life.”
Hillsdale values the merit of each person, rather than succumbing to the dehumanizing, discriminatory trend of so-called ‘social justice’ and ‘multicultural diversity,’ which judges individuals not as individuals, but as members of a group and which pits one group against other competing groups in divisive power struggles.”
In 1844 Hillsdale opened its doors to all, regardless of race or religion. It was the second college in the United States to admit women “on par with men.” Its students graduate with B.A. and B.S. degrees that prepare them for graduate study in any field, for professional schools, and for numerous vocational and cultural pursuits.
Committed to sharing the rich heritage of Judeo-Christian Civilization with all, Hillsdale is justly noted for its online courses that are available “free of charge to any who wish to learn.” Not only are these courses excellent resources for adults seeking to know more, but they are valuable resources for educators looking to advance the knowledge of their students, including Jesuit students.
The new Marquette University seal removes the images of both the school’s namesake, Fr. Jacques Marquette, and his Native American guide. The original seal, created in 1881, was based upon Wilhelm Lamprecht’s 1869 painting “Pere Marquette and the Indians.” According to those who view the seal through both a Critical race and post-colonial lens, the seal’s depiction makes it look like Fr. Marquette is instructing the guide where to go, “a misleading depiction of the power dynamic between the Jesuits and their Native guides—one rooted in the mindset of settler colonialism.” Native American students occupied the university’s administration building on Indigenous People’s Day in 2020, with one of their demands being the change of the seal.
Providing a “safe space” for white theater students to educate themselves about their own racism and how to struggle against it, the White Anti-Racist Working Group of Fordham University theater students has apparently been initiated in fulfillment of the August 2020 demands of the BIPOC (black, indigenous, and people of color) Students of Fordham Theater, one of which is the creation of affinity groups that support the goals of “underrepresented demographics.” The segregated caucusing of anti-racist students is a common feature at institutions around the country. The White Anti-Racist Working Group is, according to its most recent meeting, encouraged to become well-versed in the demands of the BIPOC Alliance, the full listing of demands being available here.
The Thomas More College of Liberal Arts in Merrimack, New Hampshire, intends to provide all students with a strong Catholic education in the liberal arts for students of all religious faiths “united in the quest for what is true, good, and beautiful.”
Because it believes “every human life, from the moment of conception until natural death, is sacred because the human person has been willed for his own sake in the image and likeness of the living and holy God,” Thomas More College understands that “man and his endeavors” are doubtlessly “worthy of our regard, interest, and study.”
Thomas More sees as its responsibility engaging the “age-old tradition” of studying the “masterworks of Classical and Christian civilization” and is firmly convinced that the “path to Wisdom is best found with the good companions of the Catholic intellectual tradition…” as the college fulfills its mission in which, in the words of St. Thomas More, “learning is joined with virtue.”
Offering a degree in the liberal arts through the study of the great books, including a full semester in Rome, Thomas More College provides an education that gives students “a broad and agile mind and the character capable of navigating the unforeseen—and inevitable—changes of the future. We believe that the ‘great books’ approach that produced leaders over the last 3,000 years is more relevant than ever.”
Located in Front Royal, Virginia, by the Blue Ridge Mountains, Christendom College was founded in 1977 in response to the “devastating blow inflicted on Catholic higher education by the cultural revolution which swept across America in the 1960s.”
Christendom offers “a truly Catholic education in fidelity to the Magisterium of the Catholic Church and thereby to prepare students for their role of restoring all things in Christ.”
Every Christendom student will complete a core curriculum that “provides all our students with a thorough education across the disciplines, allowing them to choose a major field of study from a position of insight and intellectual maturity.”
Consisting of 86 semester hours, the core is structured according to several principles: “the conviction that truth can be known by the human mind, the confidence that faith and reason have nothing to fear from one another, and commitment to the intrinsic value and complementarity of humanistic and scientific knowledge.”
Students at Christendom College are also eligible for opportunities to study a semester in Rome as well as a three-week summer at the St. Columcille Institute in Donegal, which is in the north of Ireland.
Committed to the “religious, ethical, and intellectual traditions of Catholic higher education,” Houston’s University of St. Thomas is refreshingly unembarrassed by its Catholic identity. Located in the heart of downtown Houston near the Texas Medical Center, the university embodies and “instills in our students the core values of its founders, the Basilian Fathers: goodness, discipline, and knowledge.”
The core curriculum at St. Thomas “illuminates who we are–including our nature and purpose–and prepares us to fulfill our calling wisely and courageously.” The core is integrated into the degree program of each student and is mapped out here in Created for a Purpose. Providing all students with a background in the foundations and history of Western civilization’s culture and ideas related to philosophy, theology, literature, the arts, mathematics and the sciences, St. Thomas’ core guides students into the “great conversation unfolding across human history.”
With over 40 undergraduate majors, many of them in the various STEM fields, as well as schools of nursing, education, and business, St. Thomas offers its students opportunities for study abroad and service-learning in the community. The School of Arts and Sciences’ podcast Spelunking with Plato is a terrific way for anyone to understand why St. Thomas is a uniquely Catholic academic institution that “drinks deeply” in the Catholic intellectual and spiritual traditions that the university intends to bequeath to its students.
Here is a university that proclaims “academic rigor” as the foundation of all of its programs. With a student-faculty ratio of 10:1, the university’s two-year 60-credit core curriculum is focused on the Great Books of Western literature and culture. The core “typically culminates” with a semester at UD’s campus located in Rome, Italy, where students immerse themselves in the architecture, culture and history of the region where much of Western civilization originated.
The core demonstrates the university’s “dedication to the pursuit of wisdom, truth, and virtue as the proper and primary ends of education.” The students read and discuss original sources, the primary texts of the Western tradition. The critical thinking skills and inspired love of intellectual inquiry serve as the foundation for the 27 majors in the humanities, liberal arts, and sciences offered in UD’s Constantin College of Liberal Arts.
The University of Dallas fosters a community atmosphere that combines the intellectual life with a rich residential experience. Every student under the age of 21 lives on campus. There is large variety of competitive sports for men and women athletes. And while it welcomes students of all denominations, genuinely respecting the faith tradition of each person, UD remains a distinctly Catholic university, where the Catholic faith “illuminates every aspect of life at UD, from social activities to clubs and organizations.”
Located an hour southeast of Fort Myers, Florida, Ave Maria University is “Catholic to The Core.” Offering a liberal arts education dedicated to the “advancement of human culture, the promotion of dialogue between faith and reason, and the formation of men and women in the intellectual and moral virtues of the Catholic faith, ” Ave Maria is unabashedly Catholic, a university that articulates the apostolic constitution for Catholic higher education as expressed in Ex Corde Ecclesiae.
Students can select from over 30 majors for their undergraduate studies, and all will take a core curriculum of 56 credit hours that includes two courses in Western Civilization and Culture as well as a number of courses in Catholic theology, foreign language, and philosophy.
Not a university Catholic in name only, Ave Maria’s culture is identifiably Catholic. Students have access to 24-hour Perpetual Adoration, daily Mass, retreats, and confessions, as well as involvement in numerous clubs, organizations, intramurals, and athletic programs for 21 varsity sports. Plus, the nearest beach is 20 miles away.
Philadelphia’s Jesuit university now offers three certifications for those developing “critical business skills like risk analysis, scaling operations, and regulatory compliance” as they pursue careers in the rapidly emerging field of Getting High Legally with Cannabis. The three online courses cost $2,950.00.
St. Joseph’s mission is to educate and care for “the whole person” within an inclusive, diverse community, which models a “lifelong commitment to thinking critically, making ethical decisions, pursuing social justice and finding God in all things.”
William Spruance entered Georgetown Law School in August 2019. Within two years, he realized Georgetown Law has substituted groupthink for “articulate, logic-based communication.”
In an essay for Brownstone Institute, Spruance reveals his encounter with the school’s anonymous, dissident-reporting Law Compliance hotline and Georgetown Law’s Dean of Students, Mitch Bailin.
After being encouraged by the dean to join the “conversation” about school Covid policy, the consequences of his subsequent involvement awaits a Coen Brothers treatment.
Located in Lander, a town in central Wyoming — south of the Wind River Reservation and about 150 miles east of the Grand Tetons and Yellowstone — Wyoming Catholic College offers its students a “rigorous immersion in the primary sources of the Catholic liberal arts tradition, the grandeur of the mountain wilderness, and the spiritual heritage of the Catholic Church.”
Founded in 2007, WCC “joyfully accepts” Pope John Paul II’s Apostolic Constitution for the Catholic University, Ex Corde Ecclesiae. Its commitment to its Catholic identity is demonstrated each year when its Catholic educators make a public Profession of Faith and take an Oath of Fidelity. Its non-Catholic educators make a pledge of respect for the Catholic Church and her teaching authority. All theology faculty have asked for and received an academic mandatum from the Bishop of Cheyenne, signifying that the teaching in their classes is in communion with the church.
Students graduate with a B.A. in the Liberal Arts, all of them taking the same courses in the same order for a total of 140 credit hours. The 8 curricular tracks involve Humanities, Theology, Philosophy, Math/Science, Fine Arts, Latin, Leadership, and the Trivium of grammar, logic, and rhetoric. Freshman-year begins with a three-week backpacking trip in the Wilderness, “God’s First Book.” During their four years at WCC, students spend at least ten weeks in the wilderness (with two Outdoor-Weeks per year for course credit) and take a course in horsemanship. An interactive account of WCC’s various goals can be found here.
Wyoming Catholic College believes that Catholic liberal education “produces the truly free man who, because he possesses the intellectual, moral, and theological virtues, can direct himself — with God’s grace — to his proper end.