(RNS) — When Alex Gruber first toured St. Norbert College, a small Catholic college in Wisconsin, it immediately felt like home. As a student there, he majored in religion and history, got involved in theater and served as a lector and in the choir at the campus parish.
Gruber said he probably wouldn’t pick St. Norbert if he were going to college today.
That’s because both of Gruber’s majors have been eliminated, as part of what the university says are necessary cost-cutting measures. In total, 15 majors and five minors have been slashed, and more than 60 faculty positions cut, representing more than half of the teaching staff. The college recently added new majors in exercise science, digital marketing, cybersecurity management and sacred music. Since the layoffs, some describe the campus today as a “ghost town.”
But Gruber, while still a proud alum, is less concerned about the size of St. Norbert than about its Catholic identity and the sense of community that has been a key value of the school’s sponsoring religious order, the Norbertines.
“A Catholic school without at least one full-time theology and religious studies faculty member will find it harder to live out its Catholic identity and distinguish itself from other private schools and even secular public schools,” said Gruber. “I think it means an impoverishment of the teaching of theology and the vibrancy of the Catholic identity.”
St. Norbert is not the only Catholic institution facing demographic and fiscal challenges, nor is it the only one to cut liberal arts to try to address …