Professional Education and the Christian Liberal Arts College (PECLAC)

This report, revised February 1973, and updated with an appendix in January 1986, discusses the relation between Christian liberal arts education and Christian programs in professional education.

From the report:

“The questions with which we are faced have to do with the degree to which we will revise and expand existing professional programs, and contract new ones. It is our recommendation that Calvin College should engage in a conscious effort towards such expansion and addition. In support of our recommendation we offer the following four considerations.

“(1) We live in an age in which it is difficult to justify the existence of non-service-oriented institutions.… [I]n such a milieu the proper response is not to spurn action, but rather to demonstrate the necessary connections between it and theory. This may well be an important mission for the Christian College in this age.

“(2) Another important consideration for the Christian community is stewardship.… In a day when ‘austerity,’ ‘pairing,’ and ‘cutting,’ are much-repeated words in discussions of the state of the liberal arts college there is a clear obligation to work toward consolidation of programs and pooling of resources and services.…

“(3) Liberal arts education, as an attempt to cover the main ideas in the arts and sciences, has radically altered its scope and content since the earlier days of the cultural renaissance man, or rationalist.… [L]iberal arts education, in much of its contemporary subject matter, is becoming increasingly ‘professionalized.’

“(4) Professional education is also altering its content and scope.… [T]he need for a serious alteration in programs of professional education has also been accentuated by a growing awareness of difficult moral, social and political issues which fall within the scope of professional concerns, but which demand more than mere technological ability to deal with them: issues such as abortion, urban development, and the myriad of issues which relate to concerns over racism, military involvement, and ‘the environment.’”