In our recent study of students’ goals, we find that almost every student implicitly understands our human pursuit of what I call Identity Excellence. They exhibit a desire to be excellent in their various sub-identities. Thus, they list goals such as “be a good friend to others,” “be a good brother,” “be a good wife,” “be a healthier person,” and “be a good student.”
They also, in most every identity, understand the implicit moral ends we associate with goodness or excellence in these areas. They recognize that the end of stewarding your body is health. They recognize that the end of excellent relationships with their family, neighbors, and others is loving relationships. They come into college recognizing the telos of these identity domains.
Yet, when it comes to the telos of being an excellent student, I find almost every student articulates problematic ends.
The Evidence
What is my evidence for this claim? As mentioned in a previous post, our research team recently obtained two to three goals from almost 2500 students at seventeen different campuses. Overall, we gathered 6500 goals. Over eleven hundred of these goals pertained to the ends, virtues, or practices related to being a good student, with goals related to the ends comprising 715 of the 1106.
Amazingly, only two students referred to wisdom, which I believe should be the telos of any Christian student.1 One student aimed to “pursue knowledge and wisdom” while another mentioned hoping to use “the wisdom and insight my best professors bestowed upon me.” That was it (not even 0.5%).
Instead, most students set their goals much lower. For example, over fifty students simply hoped to “stay on top of [academics, assignments, class work, deadlines, homework, responsibilities, school courses, school work, my work].” Another couple dozen simply wanted to “keep up [my studies, on schoolwork, with homework, with my studies].” They hoped to survive or, as one student put it, “keep my head afloat in academic stress.”
Another group of sixty-plus wanted to meet the baseline. These students hoped to “complete all my [assignments on time, homework on time, work, my homework for the day, assignments in a timely manner]” or “pass my classes.” They also aimed “to do my [assignments on time, homework on time].”
Of course, most students (over 300) sought to achieve, get, make, or maintain good grades or “do well [academically, in my classes, in my studies, in school]” or “perform well [academically, in my courses/classes, in school].”
Only twenty-one students (less than 1%) expressed a goal that I think comes closer to the true goal of the excellent Christian student. They actually talked about learning. They wanted to “learn as much as possible,” “learn and process as much knowledge from my courses as possible,” and “learn a lot.” One even mentioned, “learn and study to help others.” Beyond these students, I found the rest of the results deeply disturbing.
Why?
Why are our students so misshapen when it comes to the ultimate good of study and the end associated with the sub-identity of being a student? I have some hypotheses. Likely, our K-12 institutions and our students’ parents are likely misshaping students’ views of the ends of education or being a good student.
A second hypothesis comes from our data. There were a half dozen students who talked about engaging in spiritual practices, and when giving their reason for listing the goal, they cited the end/virtue of wisdom. One person mentioned they had the goal: “Spend time each day in God’s word,” because “That is the best place I know to gain wisdom, evaluate myself according to the truth, and further know God.” Another wanted to “read my Bible to get to know Jesus more…So that I can reflect Jesus’ character to others and walk in wisdom.” The impression I get from these responses is that these students have been taught to find wisdom through Christ, “in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” (Col. 2:3), but in their mind that only comes from the Bible or within a spiritual context. That’s great, but they do not show evidence of viewing their classes outside of the Bible as offering Christ-animating wisdom or even what the Psalmist declares of the heavens, “night after night they reveal knowledge” (Ps. 19:2b).
In other words, these students appear to have learned that they should pursue wisdom in church, but this admonition has not been transferred into how they think about their academic goals related to their student identity. They have been trained to survive, do the basics, or achieve good grades, but they have not been taught to set their sights upon seeking wisdom through academic study.
That leads to my third hypothesis that faculty themselves do not see themselves as offering wisdom. Instead, they see themselves as teaching skills, bags of knowledge, competencies, content, etc. That is likely because, as Marsden observed in the opening of The Outrageous Idea of Christian Scholarship, “‘Wisdom’ is hardly a term one thinks of in connection with such [university] studies, nor with our system of higher education generally.”2 Yet, if we recognize that every class should be connected to educating our students to be excellent in some identity domain, especially professional domains (e.g., an excellent accountant, biologist, historian, social worker, etc.), we should be providing students with wisdom that leads students toward that end. Moreover, Christian universities should be teaching them to be excellent image bearers of God. These forms of excellence cannot be achieved without wisdom.
Some of the problem stems from how we conceive the mission of our institutions as well. You would think that the pursuit or mention of wisdom would be a central feature in the mission statements of Christian universities. However, you would be wrong. Only sixteen of the 521 institutional mission statements of Christian universities mention wisdom (3 Mainline Protestant, 1 HBCU, 4 CCCU, 1 Other Protestant, and 7 Catholic). I find this lack of focus on wisdom odd, since doctoral institutions award Doctorates of Philosophy (Ph.D.s). The latter term literally comes from the ancient Greek (philo sophia) and means lover of wisdom. The reason for this title is that in early medieval universities, philosophy was not simply the name of one specific academic department, but the term used to describe all branches of knowledge. That is why early intellectual architects of the university, such as Hugh of St. Victor, saw the end of learning as friendship with God (i.e., the ultimate Wisdom). Friends get to know each other’s deepest thoughts, desires, and creations.
Thus, in light of my findings, I am adding to my syllabus a statement that I hope reminds my students and myself about this point. I already state:
First, I want to remind you that your worth and value do not depend upon your grades, or what you, your parents, or friends think of your grades. It depends upon the reality that you are made in God’s image with intrinsic worth.
Next semester, I am now going to add a second paragraph:
Second, I want to emphasize that good grades are not the goal of student excellence. They are merely one possible sign of progress toward the goal. The main goal we should pursue together, and one we will pursue in this class, is learning that leads to wisdom and friendship with God. You can obtain A’s but still lack wisdom and not be a wise person. Please set your sights higher than getting good grades. Together, let’s seek and learn wisdom.
I think our institutions could also do a better job of indicating the important role of providing wisdom to students. Finding Her (meaning wisdom as Proverbs 8 describes) really should be the telos of the excellent student at an excellent university.
Footnotes
- It is also the end that many other Christian thinkers, such as Hugh of St. Victor and Jon Amos Comenius, thought should be the end of education. See, for example, David I. Smith’s description of Comenius’ well-known invitation to students, “Come, Learn to Be Wise,” in Everyday Christian Teaching: A Guide to Practicing Faith in the Classroom (Eerdmans, 2025), 3-4, 33-38.
- George Marsden, The Outrageous Idea of Christian Scholarship (Oxford University Press, 2024), 1.
