• On top of its field

When Wittenberg joined with dozens of other Lutheran colleges in the United States to study its performance, it discovered more than it expected.

President Baird Tipson was chair of the Council of College Presidents for the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) for the past year as the study was completed, and the results analyzed.

Commonly called the LECNA Study,* after the Lutheran Education Commission of North America that commissioned it, the study revealed that in measure after measure, small residential Lutheran colleges out performed the very best public universities.

“The results were beyond my expectations,” Tipson said. “I knew we did a good job. I didn’t realize we did quite so much better than the public universities in the things that matter most to us.

These LECNA data provide objective support for what I discover every time I go out and talk to a group of Wittenberg alums — that their Wittenberg experience was exceptionally effective in their future success.”

The research was also needed to clarify the major differences in institutional character and effectiveness between Lutheran colleges and large tax-subsidized public universities.

Supposedly objective college rankings, such as those by U.S. News and World Report, are based almost entirely on resources put into the educational program rather than how well the students learn and succeed.

From a nationwide sample, a telephone survey of college graduates from the years 1958-93 allowed comparisons of public and private school experiences and outcomes.

By wide margins, Lutheran college graduates reported a more rigorous academic program, more involvement on campus, more interaction with professors, more opportunities for off-campus study, and more consideration of values and ethics in the classroom.

Tipson said he and his fellow presidents anticipated the results of the study for very practical reasons.
• At present, only five percent of Lutheran students attend Lutheran colleges.
• One-quarter of college-bound students never even consider alternatives to public universities.

“To some extent we had imagined that we were competing with one another for Lutheran students,” Tipson said.

But Wittenberg’s own research showed that the greatest overlap in the competition for students was with the public universities, especially the best ones, the flagship universities in Ohio.

When Lutheran presidents put their heads together, “it turned out that was the case for everybody else, too.

In virtually all of our cases, the major overlaps in applications were with the public universities in their states,” he said.

“All of us are finding that the competition for students, and for visibility, is fierce. It’s not like we can rest on our laurels,” Tipson said.

“If we could raise the percentage of Lutheran students we attract by just a point or two, that would have a wonderful impact on our campuses.”

But Wittenberg also works to attract a diverse student body regardless of its religious views. Tipson said the LECNA results should be powerful in recruiting those students as well.

The results give Wittenberg and its Lutheran peer institutions a way to prove there are differences in what goes into the two forms of higher education and how students come out.

“Wittenberg goes to great lengths to promote the lifetime benefits of a small residential program, where faculty work very closely with students in a values-based environment, where they are encouraged to grow through both their successes and failures,” Tipson said.

“Unless you’ve been through it, it is difficult to understand the power of liberal arts study in this kind of environment.

It’s hard to make parents understand we develop the tools for successful lives, not just prepare students for a first job,” he continued. This new evidence gives Wittenberg its best opportunity yet to make that case.

The LECNA study also surveyed more than 600 Lutheran opinion leaders and nearly 900 Lutheran parents of college-bound ninth and tenth graders.

It is here that the study also revealed some troubling results, which will challenge Wittenberg to do a better job of selling itself. Although alumni clearly demonstrated the outcomes of the different styles of education, prospective parents did not understand the difference.

For instance, only 14 percent of those families understood what a liberal arts education is.

“When a daughter comes home and says ‘Mom, I’m going to major in philosophy, or sociology or political science,’ her parents think, ‘Oh, you’re going to be a politician or a social worker,’” Tipson explained.

“Or, ‘What are you going to do if you are a philosophy major?’ In fact that’s not what those majors are primarily designed to do.

They prepare you to think, to put things in context, to solve problems, and that’s what we’re about.”

Another problem was that Lutheran parents surveyed tended not to be concerned about the drawbacks of large classes at big public universities.

“That didn’t seem to translate to an understanding that their children were much less likely to have a relationship with a faculty member, or much less likely to be able to engage the material in a dialogue rather than just sit in a lecture hall and hear somebody talk about it.”

“We support a faculty culture that can draw out the ability of motivated students,” Tipson said. “This is something people outside of higher education often don’t realize.Just look at the final examination in a course.

In a large lecture course, that exam is very likely to be almost entirely objective — true-false, multiple choice, fill in the blanks — because that kind of learning is something you can pick up if you are sitting in a lecture hall, and it’s easy to grade several hundred objective papers.

At Wittenberg there are going to be essay exams, things that require you to think about a problem, put it in context, bring evidence to bear for and against, and draw a conclusion.

Those are the very kinds of things we think our graduates are going to need to do when they get out of here.” Even Lutheran opinion leaders did not understand all of the best aspects of a Wittenberg-style education.

“It’s clear to me that we are not doing a good job in the church,” Tipson said. “Lutheran opinion leaders don’t know nearly as much about us as they should.

The major opportunity that this data provide is a charge to go out to congregations and talk about what we do.” Tipson noted that a number of measures indicate student interests have been changing in recent years.

“The surveys now are telling us that there is a deepening interest in spirituality among students, that enrollments in religion courses around the country are up, that students are searching for meaning and searching for purpose,” he noted.

“But I would hate to hang my hat on that. I think to some extent we are always going to be attracting a particular niche — a student who combines a serious interest in academic values with a significant interest in personal growth. They are looking for more than credentialing.

“For us at Wittenberg the on-campus experience is tremendously important — being around other people with similar aspirations 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

To some extent I think that this kind of education will become counter cultural,” Tipson predicted. “The predominant wish among many students and parents is to get your credential and get out.

But I would like to think that there will always be significant interest in the broader experience that we provide.

“I think the LECNA study is great data, not only for Lutherans but for anyone, including non-Christians, who are interested in having a son or daughter go to a place where values matter,” Tipson said.

“It’s something I am always surprised that parents don’t understand. I am acutely aware of it because I have taught at public universities.

There are a lot of things that simply can’t happen at a public university because of the separation of church and state. But because we are a private institution with an historic relationship to the church, values are a natural part of the conversation.”