Mentoring: How Small Schools Can Be Better than Big Ones

Faculty matter.

Other issues matter, but nothing counts more than faculty if we are discussing the quality of education at small schools. How can a small Bible college, liberal arts college, or university compete? The big players can match any innovation we try, but in a recent lecture, I suggested that small schools have an advantage big schools could match, but are unlikely to attempt due to the politics of  big time higher education. 

The best news is that this “new approach” to education is what almost every Christian sees modeled in the life of the Savior: discipleship.

Recently, a small college administrator wrote me saying:

I work at a very small Christian college struggling to effectively train students to live well and make a difference for Christ after leaving college.  I can see some real benefits to a cohort model for traditional students, from learning to retention, but beginning from a traditional educational model, I cannot quite grasp how I might advocate a move toward this “new” way of doing education.

The temptation for any small school, driven by tuition income, is to have teachers do more and mentor less. The good news is that doing the good, providing high quality mentoring, can help a school do well and survive the changes in higher education. Even better, one does not need a book to see that this method works, one need only turn to historic Oxford and Cambridge.

Lord Fluffy’s sons were not selected for their giftedness, but for being Lord Fluffy’s sons, but for generations mentoring (often) made leaders of mediocrities.

We can do it as well. How?

First, a small school must decide mentoring matters across every area of the school. Discipleship matters and so “student life” and “academics” must harmonize. Academics must remember that training happens on the sports field, on the stage, and in fellowship groups. Student Life academics must recall that discipleship also happens in the best classrooms in ways that can be imitated no place else.

Second, the small school needs a compelling vision that describes the community it is and wishes to become. A school may claim to have a vision, but if the vision doesn’t drive decision making, then the vision is unreal: a mirage.

HBU has the Ten Pillars, but this description of the school isn’t just a series of slogans: it controls every decision we make. Under the leadership of President Sloan, HBU knows who she is, what she is becoming, and what she aspires to be someday. We know what we wish, by God’s grace, each student to become and we will never rest until we do this job better.

Third, the small school must take scarce resources and put them into advising. This means putting money into training for faculty, whose graduate schools did not teach advising, to learn to mold leaders. It means allowing for some faculty to specialize in advising and teaching and rewarding them to the highest levels for those accomplishments.

Fourth, if resources are very limited, a small school should consider the “radical” step of allowing small tutorials and advising to count toward “class time.” A school needs contact hours with professors, but small class size can be wasted if the class is set up as if hundreds attended. Instead, a small school should “double down” on numerous intensive tutorials with small numbers of students visiting a faculty member.

A small school should “walk.” Jesus traveled over Palestine with His students. The ancient Greeks often walked to talk and a small school is ideally suited to bust open the campus and take her students abroad. Walk to the nearby town, teaching as you go. Experience a coffee shop downtown as you discuss the text.

Education for human beings is about human beings. Even the greatest texts exist for people and not people for the greatest texts. Too often the small school creates the same systems as the major state university, when the small school has a chance to put priority on professor/student interaction. Hire more professors. Dare to reduce class size, fight a bloat of part-time professors, and let some other things go.

Transformed students will spread the word and you will grow.