It is a season of change in the American higher education world. The technological tsunami of online education has broken across the university beachfront and the economic efficiency for students being able to earn a degree without leaving home, and often at reduced tuition, has produced a massive increase in online programs. At the same time, universities have found they can use online classes to globalize their student body without having to invest in bricks and mortar. The combination of student efficiency and university growth has created a disruptive force across the entire industry. College Transitions names Liberty University as the largest US university in 2025 with only 16,131 students in residence but over 140,000 total.1 Other sources put Liberty third after Southern New Hampshire University and Western Governors University with over 150,000 students each.2 Clearly, the online modality has proven its value. Institutions that balk at entering the online space are limiting their market, and faculty who cannot teach online may find their careers in higher education growing increasingly limited.
Meanwhile, the anticipated drop in the number of traditional college-aged Americans is expected to hit in earnest this fall.3 The so-called “demographic cliff” has been long anticipated in higher education, but preparations for its arrival have been mixed. Christian universities in particular have been concerned that the overall drop in traditional college students coincides with a continual decline in church attendance across the country. The percentage of Americans with no faith affiliation has increased from 9% in the early 2000’s to over 20% in the early 2020’s.4 Christian Scholar’s Review editor, Perry Glanzer, has offered some sophisticated analysis suggesting that the impact on Christian universities may not be as bad, or at least not as comprehensive, as some would think.5 He sees the risk for Christian universities from a more strategic angle, fearing they will respond to enrollment and other pressures by secularizing. Their choice to secularize may be ill-informed, but the choice evidences mounting pressures to craft a strategic response to a negative demographic trend.
American higher education is also experiencing a realignment of demand for various degree programs. Over the last fifty years, the disciplines showing the largest percentage growth of degrees conferred by US universities were in the fields of supply chain management and computer science. Two of the lowest performing disciplines were in English language and literature and in foreign languages.6 Given the siloed structures of most universities, these kinds of changes have a dramatic effect not just on faculty in the related programs but also in faculty structures overall. When I began my university teaching career at Gordon College in Massachusetts, faculty were compensated more or less in lockstep according to their years of service (or so I was advised). In 2025, qualified faculty in high demand programs expect market compensation, and university administrators must choose between awarding it to them or missing out on educational trends. Meanwhile, professors in lower demand disciplines may be obliged to offset the high wages of the more sought-after faculty.
The overall picture is one of dramatic change in the university world, and those that prove unable to adapt may risk extinction. Following the widespread failures of for-profit colleges between 2012 and 2018, the failure rate for non-profit colleges has increased since the 2020 pandemic. Best Colleges reports that since March 2020, 41 colleges on its list have closed or announced their intent to close and another 32 colleges have merged or announced plans to merge with another institution.7 However, institutions are not the only ones called upon to adapt. I have a number of friends in the university world, including tenured faculty, who have seen their careers go sideways as their positions have become uneconomic or their skill sets fall out of favor. How can we, at both the personal level and the institutional, respond to this level of disruption?
People fail to adapt to change for many reasons. Sometimes we find that the demands of the new environment are beyond our ability. When I was a varsity swimmer in college, the post-season competition quickly revealed the limits of my ability to adapt to the ever-increasing caliber of rivals. In my professional life, my limitations have tended to be driven more by my character than by my physical or mental ability. I experienced the evolving demands of the academic environment as an unfair “changing of the rules in the middle of the game.” I have resented finding skills, and even content, that I had worked hard to develop over long periods becoming less valuable or too inefficiently delivered to meet the demands of students. I have seen evidence of this same roadblock to change in my peers across the Christian university landscape. Fortunately, this is a roadblock we have ample tools available to clear from our path.
Kurt Lewin’s classic change management model involves three stages, unfreezing from the status quo, changing the person or organization to adapt to its new environment, and then refreezing in that more adapted form to cement its new identity and functionality.8 Change management experts like John Kotter have developed popular programs that businesses and other organizations have adopted to lead them through the difficult process of change.9 These change models often involve a series of incentives, positive and negative, to encourage breaking the inertia that keeps us stuck in our current position. Kotter recommends creating an attractive vision of what the organization can become and how employees will benefit under that new model. Al Dunlap, famous for his turnaround of Sunbeam and other companies, was more prone to dismissing anyone who stood in the way of his plans for change, often immediately and in large numbers.10
Christian professors and universities, however, have another change management strategy modeled for them in the New Testament, the process of “ekenosen” (εκενωσεν), or “emptying out.” Famously appearing in Philippians 2:7, it is the process by which Jesus surrendered the prerogatives of his divinity in order to suffer the incarnation and take on a human life. In terms of a detrimental change of environment, the difference between the splendor of heaven and the harsh reality of Jewish life in first century Palestine could not be starker. Many of us have proved hard to “unfreeze” from much less advantaged environments. Scripture, however, reveals a particular character to this kind of change management. Rather than being compelled with incentives or threats, Jesus demonstrated that the process of emptying one’s prerogatives, status, position, and advantages is a reflexive process. Jesus did it to Himself. He sacrificed what was His to take on the mission that had been laid out for Him.
Christian professors and those of us responsible for the administration of Christian organizations are called to participate in this same process. After all, Philippians 2:7 is just an explication of St. Paul’s admonition in Philippians 2:5 that we are to pursue humility and have the same mindset as Christ.
This calling we share of εκενωσεν can be a powerful tool in our adapting to the brave new world of higher education. Rather than holding on to our celebrated classroom performance, we can set those accolades aside and take on the work of an online subject matter expert who must teach students without the advantages of face to face interaction. Rather than railing against the new economic reality of serving as university faculty, where wage increases are rarer and the security of tenure has been undermined by program shifts, we can accept that our calling was never to an easy, lucrative career. (We have a saying in my college that, if you got into Christian higher ed for the money, you aren’t smart enough to be here.) Those expectations of a secure, scholarly life in which we repeat the same lectures year after year to an endless series of admiring students may need to be emptied out. Following Jesus will require us to unfreeze, not just because our environment is changing but because that is what He did and calls us to do.
Having laid aside our comforts and qualifications, the adventure of the new college environment can begin. There are new skills to learn, new disciplines to explore, and new landscapes to navigate. Spencer Johnson’s business classic, Who Moved My Cheese (Vermilion, 1999), advises that we should adopt a state of continuous transformation, repeatedly unfreezing, changing, and refreezing to capture our new form and function. It seems ironic that we need the advice of ancient scripture and books from the 1990’s to encourage us to be life-long learners. This is the position to which holding on to our professional status has brought us; however, it is not a position in which we must remain. If Jesus can endure the shock of being born in a Bethlehem stable, we can learn a new technology or tool in a new discipline. If we cannot find the means in ourselves to adapt to the emerging world of higher education, let’s look for it in our faith in Christ and in our commitment to follow Him.
Footnotes
- “50 Largest Colleges in the US – 2025,” College Transitions, November 4, 2024, 50 Largest Colleges in the US – 2025 – College Transitions
- “2025 Largest Online Colleges Rankings,” College Evaluator, n.d., 2024 Largest Online Colleges
- Jon Marcus, “A looming ‘demographic cliff’: Fewer college students and ultimately fewer graduates,” NPR, January 8, 2025, U.S. colleges face enrollment drop, fewer high school seniors : NPR
- Jeffrey M. Jones, “Church Attendance Has Declined in Most U.S. Religious Groups,” Gallup, March 25, 2024, Church Attendance Has Declined in Most U.S. Religious Groups
- Perry L. Glanzer, “Scaremongers Take Note: Christian Higher Education Enrollment Recently Grew by 1.4%,” Christian Scholar’s Review Blog, January 16, 2025, Scaremongers Take Note: Christian Higher Education Enrollment Recently Grew by 1.4% – Christian Scholar’s Review
- Digest of Education Statistics, “Table 322.10. Bachelor’s degrees conferred by postsecondary institutions, by field of study: Selected academic years, 1970-71 through 2021-22,” National Center for Education Statistics, n.d., Bachelor’s degrees conferred by postsecondary institutions, by field of study: Selected academic years, 1970-71 through 2021-22
- Evan Castillo and Lyss Welding, “Tracking College Closures and Mergers,” Best Colleges, updated January 7, 2025, Closed Colleges: List of Closures, Mergers, and Trendline | BestColleges
- Syed Talib Hussain, Shen Lei, Tayyaba Akram, Muhammad Jamal Haider, Syed Hadi Hussain, Muhammad Ali, “Kurt Lewin’s change model: A critical review of the role of leadership and employee involvement in organizational change,” Journal of Innovation & Knowledge, Volume 3, Issue 3, 2018, 123-127, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jik.2016.07.002.
- “The 8 Steps for Leading Change,” Kotterinc, n.d., The 8-Step Process for Leading Change | Dr. John Kotter
- Mary Kane, “Firing for Profit,” Tampa Bay Times, updated 2005, FIRING FOR PROFIT.
