| Scope and Method of Study. This descriptive study compared developments among the ten American institutions of higher education in the Church of the Nazarene during the period from 1945 to 1978. The primary focus of the study was on the eight liberal arts colleges of the Nazarene movement. To provide a proper basis for the research, the study analyzed both the development of higher education at large in the United States between 1945 and 1978 and the origins of Nazarene higher education between 1900 and 1945. The study sought to determine to what extent developments in the most recent period of the church's life were either indigenous or caused by interaction with the environment, particularly the mainstream of American higher education thought and practice. The present study proposed five hypothesis to explain the development of Nazarene higher education in response to both internal and external factors. The hypothesis were tested by examining selected aspects of each educational institution and comparing them to similar aspects of the other institutions to determine either if any significant changes had occurred or important trends were being established. The selected areas analyzed were institutional expansion, restructure and relocation, curriculum, finance, governance and administrative organization, accreditation, student profiles, faculty profiles, administrative profiles, stated academic missions and goals. Source material from each of the college archives and libraries as well as the General Archives of the Church of the Nazarene were used to provide basic documentation for the study. Secondary documentation was secured through interviews with individuals whose involvement with higher education in the Church of the Nazarene makes their observations significant.;Findings and Conclusions. The results of the study demonstrated that the educational profile of Nazarene higher education has been shaped internally by several forces: the interaction and conflict between forces of Christian intellectualism and Christian pietism; the impact of maturational changes in the life of the denomination itself; and the economic and cultural changes brought on by shifts in the socio-economic composition of the Church's constituency. The external forces which the study concluded have shaped the educational development in the Church were the standards of accreditating agencies; and, the desire for acceptance by the academic mainstream which has generally led to an increasing degree of educational pluralism in the institutions of the Church of the Nazarene. |
