The uniqueness of Holy Cross We can begin with the obvious. But in a time when there are fewer Jesuits on the teaching faculty, one wonders what this really means. Similarly, we know that Holy Cross is a liberal arts college. It is not a business school or a research university. Yet, once again, we are left wondering.
Contemporary academics pride themselves on being professionals.
They see themselves as engaged in a career rather than a vocation. While claiming expert knowledge about very specific areas, they do not claim any kind of privileged insight or life wisdom. Not only are professors trained in such universities, but important procedures, such as those that govern the award of tenure and promotion, were originally constituted with the needs of the research university in mind. The difficulty, then, is that the research university, with its focus on expert and highly specialized forms of knowledge, was designed to accomplish aims that only partly correspond with the aims of a Jesuit liberal arts college. These aims are generally directed towards servicing the needs of corporate America.