ON CAMPUS
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the Ramsay programs be able to build
formative communities?
Other programs exist on the edge of our
higher education system which embody
our three ingredients. One is Arrow
Leadership, which for many years has run
programs for emerging and executive
leaders firmly grounded in the Christian
tradition and emphasising formation in
community.
Another is the Lachlan Macquarie
Institute, where participants with a
vocation for political leadership spend
three months on a property outside
Canberra, in community, and studying
theology, political theory, law, economics
and other relevant subjects.
In my view, the greatest unrealised
potential in our higher education system
exists in the residential colleges on our
public university campuses. These residential
colleges are distinct from the theological
colleges which train ministers for the
different church denominations. Residential
colleges go back to the beginning of our
university system in the mid-19th century,
when various churches were given plots of
land around the campus of the University of
Sydney to accommodate their students and
provide formation in the tradition of their
particular denomination.
The University of Sydney was modelled
more on the Scottish system and the
University of London than Oxford and
Cambridge. It was secular, with no
theology taught, clerics excluded from
any formal role, and no religious tests
for students. The situation was similar
at the University of Melbourne, with
the teaching of theology excluded, and
the colleges of the different churches
providing accommodation and formation,
Trinity for the Anglicans, Ormond for
the Presbyterians and so forth. These
were universities which included the
advancement of religion among their aims,
founded by Anglican and Presbyterian
laymen, who saw the exclusion of the
institutional church denominations
as advantageous for advancing
religion. Remember that this was the
period of intense sectarian conflict in
the English universities, with their
Anglican foundations, over the place of
non-conformists and Roman Catholics.
Since the foundation of Australian
university residential colleges, much has
changed. The expansion of this university
system in the post-World War II period
has brought with it needs for student
accommodation which have been met
occasionally by the foundation of new
colleges such as the Anglican Burgmann
College at ANU, New College at the
University of New South Wales and Robert
Menzies College at Macquarie University.
Mostly, however, the need has been met
by universities building non-collegiate
student residences, and recently by
private developers getting into the student
accommodation business.
Both the old and the new Australian
university residential colleges face
pressures from rising costs, competition
from non-collegiate residences, growing
concerns about student mental health,
scandals over alcohol abuse, hazing,
sexual assault, etc. The colleges were
mostly set up to cater for undergraduates,
but the university population is increasingly
postgraduate, and it is the postgraduates,
especially international postgraduates, who
have the greatest need for housing.
They are also struggling to find their
educational niche in universities, which
not only assume full responsibility for
teaching but expanding student support
services of all kinds.
Many colleges also struggle with their
Christian mission and identity in a culture
which is increasingly hostile to Christianity.
The temptation that many councils and
heads of university residential colleges
have succumbed to is abandoning the
educational and Christian formation
dimensions of their college and focusing
instead on the less complicated domains
of finance and buildings. College heads
seem to be increasingly glorified bursars
or accommodation managers, with fewer
and fewer senior academics and Christian
leaders being appointed to these roles.
Councils of our Christian residential
colleges have an opportunity to renew
their vision and fulfil their potential to grow
Christian leaders for Australia, in all walks
of life. The supply of bright young people
wanting to change things for the better
is not the problem. Nor are academic
standards the problem, at least measured
by grades. It is the other ingredients of a
Christian story and formative communities
that need to be recovered. Recovering
the Christian story means having enough
well-educated Christians in the college who
can tell it well, and connect it to all areas of
study in the university, at all levels. Christians
need to both tell the story and embody it.
College heads who can lead in storytelling
and recruit others to work alongside them
are absolutely essential. They also need
to be able to lead in building formative
Christian communities in their colleges.
In both their intellectual task and their
community building task, the college head’s
personal example is the most powerful
thing. Any hint of hypocrisy is fatal.
It is the councils of the colleges who
must take the initiative in recruiting and
supporting such heads, not the institutional
churches who have usually been part of the
problem, and it is hard to see the solution
coming from reassertion of their control
over the colleges.
Councils also must take a discerning
approach to the voice of the old collegians
who elect many of the councillors. In
recent years, old collegians standing up
for the autonomy of their colleges have
often been defending the wrong things
– alcoholism and misogyny. Similarly, a
discerning approach is needed to university
managers seeking more control over
residential colleges, for the universities have
no expertise in telling the Christian story,
or any similar story about an overarching
meaning and purpose of study, and
universities long ago abandoned any
attempt at spiritual and moral formation
Councils of our Christian
residential colleges have an
opportunity to renew their vision.
of their students. Or perhaps ‘paying
customers’ is the more appropriate
terminology. Governance arrangements in
some of the residential colleges, especially
the older ones, might need a rethink.
With their distinguished histories,
accumulated resources, and position within
the universities, there is perhaps no other
institution with greater potential to renew
Australia’s moral and intellectual leadership
than our Christian residential colleges. This
may be a surprising conclusion with the
recent controversy surrounding some of
our oldest residential colleges, and some
may view it as naivety, but I’d prefer to call
it well-grounded hope. ■
Paul Oslington is a professor of
economics and theology at Alphacrucis
College, Sydney.
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