Intentional Change and the Maintenance of Mission: The Impact of Adult Education Programs on School Mission at Two Evangelical Colleges

Abstract

This paper is a comparative study of two evangelical colleges that have recently established non-traditional adult degree completion programs, and the effect these have on the traditional mission of these schools. As each school has reshaped its mission to take into account these new programs, the potential exists to impact the traditional mission of these schools, in particular for secularizing their historic religious mission. In contrast to approaches that assume the secularization of evangelical higher education as they develop their educational programs, I argue that as these schools negotiate both the educational environment and their particular religious environments, their continued reliance on their constituencies for their legitimacy as educational institutions restricts the range of development within each school and acts as a deterrent to secularizing pressures, thus allowing the school to maintain a connection to their institutional historv and identity.