Every three years, the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education (CCIHE) categorizes schools into different groupings depending on their degree offerings. For several decades, CCIHE classified Moravian University as a national liberal arts college, but in Feb. 2022, it moved Moravian to the status of a northeast regional master’s comprehensive university (small).
What is a Liberal Arts Education?
A liberal arts college is an institution that primarily features liberal arts degrees at a rate of at least 50%, according to U.S. News & World Report. The Carnegie classification defines these schools as Baccalaureate Colleges: Arts and Sciences Focus.
By that definition, Muhlenberg College and Lafayette College are the only liberal arts colleges in the Lehigh Valley.
Chair of the History Department, Professor Heikki Lempa, explains that students at liberal arts institutions receive a broad education, allowing them to explore numerous fields until they find the one that suits them best.
“Liberal arts was never a free choice,” said Lempa. “Liberal arts means that those fields liberate you. You cannot choose them. Actually, it’s the field that chooses you.”
Composer-in-Residence and Professor of Music Larry Lipkis, who has been a part of Moravian since 1979, emphasizes the broadening effect of the liberal arts.
“In theory, by experiencing a breadth of knowledge rather than a specialized education, students learn to think critically, communicate effectively, and be capable of more complex reasoning,” he said. “Studies have shown that many employers favor workers who bring a liberal arts background to the workplace.”
Moravian No Longer Fits Liberal Arts Classifications
Provost Carol Traupman-Carr noted that as Moravian has added more graduate programs, most notably nursing, the university no longer fits CCIHE’s liberal arts category.
The Carnegie Foundation classifies schools on the number of degrees it offers, says Traupman-Carr, not on their general education programs, philosophical approach to education, or undergraduate majors.
“Once we hit a tipping point on the number of graduate degrees (it’s an actual number, I believe, and not a percentage), [The Carnegie Foundation] will reclassify your institution,” she said. “The classifications have nothing to do with the philosophical approach to education. On that level, we would still align well with liberal arts colleges.”
What Does Reclassification Mean?
CCIHE’s reclassification of Moravian from a national liberal arts college to a northeast regional master’s comprehensive university (small) makes sense in other ways, too, says Traupman-Carr.
For one, “‘northeast regional’ does better match our student body (especially at the undergraduate level) than does the term ‘national,’” she said, and “master’s” more clearly indicates that the bulk of Moravian’s graduate degrees are offered at the master’s level.
For now, at least. “We might see ourselves get bumped into the doctoral category, based on the increased number of doctoral degrees we now have,” she added.
Moravian’s classification as “small” – which refers not to the size of the student population but to the number of graduate degrees offered – may likewise change as the university increases that number.
Downsides of Reclassification
This reclassification may have practical implications for Moravian’s visibility and appeal to prospective students. One of them is that students seeking liberal arts institutions in college-searching databases might not find Moravian in their searches, potentially affecting the university’s applicant pool.
Carl Salter, professor of chemistry at the university since 1993, is also concerned that the reclassification could limit the breadth of a Moravian education.
“I worry that our courses will drift away from educating how to think to instructing what to think,” he said. “I want to be part of a campus where both physics and philosophy are vibrant majors, where the performing and visual arts are vital, where ideas are examined and weighed in public.”
That shift raises questions about the fate of traditional liberal arts programs at Moravian. Nationally, departments in theater, English, and history are facing declining enrollments, exacerbated by a growing focus on career-oriented fields, a trend Salter has observed first-hand.
“At least since the pandemic, I have seen a decrease in the number of students that want to study chemistry and other lab sciences, and I fear that the decline will continue to the point where some science majors can no longer be offered,” he said. “And I fear the same for some majors in the humanities.”
Lipkis shares that concern. “My colleagues in the humanities and fine arts, and the faculty at large need to be ever vigilant to make sure the University protects the liberal arts in the face of massive growth in the fields of business administration, health sciences, and other fields,” he said.
As evidence, he notes that the theater program has been subsumed by the Music Department and that it lacks a dedicated performing space, rendering “it a shadow of its former self. ”
“I believe a healthy theater program is integral to a healthy liberal arts school,” Lipkis said.
Traupman-Carr, however, argues that the reclassification has no impact on the university’s liberal arts approach to education.
“We believe strongly in the skills, knowledge, and attitudes that students gain and develop through our educational program,” she said. Among them are “things like written communication, oral communication, quantitative reasoning skills, qualitative reasoning skills, scientific reasoning, critical thinking, the ability to incorporate diverse perspectives, and so much more.”
That belief has not changed, she contends. Unlike graduate programs at many other schools, Moravian requires proposals for new graduate programs to demonstrate how they are continuing to incorporate these core tenets of the liberal arts – sometimes called liberal education principles – in those programs.
Moravian’s History as a Liberal Arts Institution
Another challenge Moravian faces is balancing its historical liberal arts identity with its expanding pre-professional focus. John Amos Comenius, Moravian’s “patron saint,” after all, is considered the Father of Modern Education and, consequently, the Father of Liberal Arts who advocated for the systemization of human knowledge.
But Grigsby asserts that Moravian was never fully a liberal arts college because of its Seminary, which focuses somewhat on graduate education.
“We have always had strong education and business programs, thus focusing on professional programs,” he added. “I prefer to think about education the way Comenius [also] articulated: that education should concern itself with that which concerns society. Our society needs English, nursing, history, and criminal justice majors. We need biology, occupational therapy, chemistry, physical therapy, and religious studies majors.”
Instead of putting Moravian into a category, Grigsby says it’s more useful to recognize that “Moravian provides a great education for all students to achieve their career goals.”
From LINC to MILE
In fact, Moravian had long been classified as a “comprehensive institution,” a school that offers a wide range of programs, with some master’s degrees, for a mostly regional population of students. That designation changed some time before Lipkis chaired a committee in the late 1990s that developed the current Learning in Common (LinC) curriculum, which put liberal arts at the center of the academic life of the university.
The curriculum Lipkis helped develop was greatly influenced by the writings of former U.S. Commissioner of Education Ernest Boyer, who emphasized the importance of general education. In 2019, Moravian joined New American Colleges and Universities (NACU), an organization that fuses the liberal education promoted by Boyer with workplace preparation. Still, many faculty reported feeling cautiously optimistic that the liberal arts would not be shunted off to the side.
“I believe it has not been [shunted], and remains central to our mission,” Lipkis said. “Indeed, the words ‘liberal arts’ are the third and fourth words in our mission statement.”
However, over the years, the original LinC requirements – a full complement of Fs, Ms, and Us – were reduced to only six of the eight M and U courses. The change allowed more students to double major, among other academic changes, but it has come at a cost.
“While double majoring is a good thing, I and others felt that the integrity of the LinC curriculum was being degraded,” Lipkis said. “I am heartened, though, that the new MILE curriculum appears designed to perpetuate the foundations of a liberal arts education.”
Balancing Career Focus with Liberal Arts
Some argue that a move away from liberal arts is necessary for Moravian to survive and even thrive and to align with student (and parental) demand for a more career-focused education.
“It’s true that over the past several decades, many liberal arts colleges have closed their doors or are perilously close to doing so,” Lipkis said. “Our new career-focused programs, for the most part, appear to be attracting students. I’ve been struck by the sheer number of names listed on the commencement program of the graduates from the new programs.”
However, the change brings with it some unease.
“I am aware that there is concern among my colleagues about the threats (potential or real) to the liberal arts,” Lipkis said. “The resources that will be used to support the new School for Professional Studies and Innovation is a concern: will the liberal arts component of the curriculum suffer?”
Some question whether more students committing to Moravian for pre-professional majors and fewer for social sciences and humanities will change the institution’s culture.
“[I want to be] part of a community that challenges its students to think about big ideas on a regular basis,” Salter said. “These things are certainly possible at a comprehensive institution – but will they be a part of the comprehensive institution that Moravian is likely to become?”
