As Tuition Rises, Students Pay More and BGCO Pays Less

Last Friday, OBU's trustees met in Shawnee. We may have more to say later as we receive more information. But for now, we want to highlight that, unsurprisingly, the university is raising tuition for 2013-2014:

"OBU's tuition for full-time students will increase 4.95 percent, from $18,894 for the current academic year to $19,830 for the 2013-14 academic year.  The overall costs, which include tuition, fees, room and board, will increase by 4.47 percent, from $26,996 for 2012-13 to $28,202 for 2013-14."

To be clear, we're not protesting the tuition hike.  Presumably it's typical.  And as we all know, OBU is consistently recognized as a "best value" college in national publications.

We just want to point out that the BGCO will continue to provide a smaller and smaller proportion of OBU's annual budget.  In 2011, the convention pledged just under $2.5 million to OBU's support, which accounts for less than 5% of OBU's $53 million annual budget.  Another factor that further erodes the value of the BGCO's subsidy is the fact that enrollment is increasing.  The BGCO's subsidy amounts to about $1,250 per student.

Many people who haven't thought much about the issue probably assume that OBU is financially dependent on the BGCO.  It's not.  As recently as the early 1980s, the convention was providing 25% of OBU's operating funds.  That number has plummeted over the years to less than 5%.  For only slightly more than an average tuition increase, OBU could replace the BGCO's subsidy altogether.

What would OBU get in exchange for saying thanks-but-no-thanks to the convention's annual institutional welfare check?  For one thing, freedom.  OBU could elect its own trustees, and not have to have them elected by the BGCO.  Furthermore, OBU would certainly not continue down the path indicated by recent changes which suggest, among other problems, that being a fundamentalist is now a prerequisite for employment in the school's religion department.

For its part, the convention would instantaneously free up 24% of its annual Oklahoma Cooperative Program allocations for evangelism, church planting, missions, vital ministries, and especially campus ministries at the 3 dozen other Oklahoma colleges.  Those Baptist Collegiate Ministries are solely dependent on the BGCO's meager funding and are not even permitted to petition individual churches for support.

Alumni, please be aware that the BGCO is funding a much tinier fraction of students' education today than when you attended.  Students and parents, as you write checks and sign loan agreements, you can be grateful that the state convention nominally reduces your out-of-pocket expense.  But be aware of what it's going to cost in the long run.

The Next Two Weeks

Happy Saturday, everyone!

I'm in the middle of teaching a monthlong summer school course on Comparative Political Systems at Georgetown.  Veronica will be squeezing in another condensed, weeklong seminary course at TCU later this month as well.  Even if the pace of our blog posting has slowed somewhat, a lot is going on behind the scenes.  We're continuing to build collaborations with other teetering Baptist institutions and learning from their experiences.  (Take a moment to read Save Our Shorter's description of its trustees' negligence.  Then say a prayer of thanksgiving that OBU still has good trustees!)

Recent Posts
This week, we noted that OBU conferred an honorary doctorate upon Rev. Fred Luter, the New Orleans pastor who will be elected president of the Southern Baptist Convention next week.  I still don't have a straight answer on whether a committee decides who should get honorary degrees or whether it's based on the president's unitary executive authority.  But we were fairly alarmed to learn that OBU has given doctorates to two post-Takeover SBC presidents in the past year alone.  Until now, we hadn't typically used the honorary degree as a way to cozy up to fundamentalist SBC elites, especially one without any OBU or Oklahoma connections besides being Stan Norman's friend.  If you look at the list of post-Takeover SBC presidents, OBU has only honored Luter and the Rev. Dr. Tom Elliff.  Though Elliff did enough damage on his own, it would be horrendous for OBU to go back and start giving honorary doctorates to Takeover-era SBC presidents, since many of them shamefully abided the destruction/fundamentalization of once-proud Baptist institutions.

On Thursday, I took at pass at blaming the SBC's membership decline on fundamentalism.  It took some restraint.

The Next Two Weeks
Next week, the SBC Pastor's Conference and Annual Meeting take place in New Orleans.  We'll be providing updates through our Facebook and Twitter feeds, but here on the blog we'll be taking a holistic look at the history of fundamentalism in the SBC.  Clayton Mauritzen ('06) who has written here before, will be leading us through a six-part series that seeks to understand and explain the causes and consequences of the convention's institutionalization of fundamentalism.

The following week, past contributor Caitlin Dacus ('11) will lead us through a four-part examination of the Takeover's effect on Baptist missionaries.  This is a tragic story that not many people know, and Caitlin's interests and experiences make her the ideal person to tell it.  I definitely look forward to welcoming Clayton and Caitlin back to the blog!

We also have some exciting guest posts planned for later in the summer.  Of course, we'll also be releasing the results of our BGCO pastor/church staff survey.  And we have some interesting facts to present that will highlight Oklahoma Baptists' need to beef up their BCM funding, even if it comes at the expense of subsidizing OBU.

Save OBU Connections Continue to Build
Now that our movement is more than six months old, we're starting to see the positive, snowballing effects of connecting geographically- and temporally-dispersed faculty (current and former), alumni, retirees, students, and concerned Baptists.  I'm hearing reports of Save OBU helping people connections, sharing stories, and building friendships at conferences, churches, and educational institutions.  This is so wonderful to hear!  Please keep the stories coming!  (jlupfer [at] gmail [dot] com).

We didn't act in time to get a booth at the CBF General Assembly (June 20-23 in Ft. Worth), but please don't let that stop you from talking up OBU at an event where many concerned constituents will be present!  We'll try to have a formal presence at next year's CBF assembly.  And since next year's SBC is in Baltimore, I may just go myself.  Until I get kicked out along with all the other barnacles and parasites :-)

Finally, if any of you are going to be in the Washington, D.C. area this summer, let me know!  I'd love to compare notes and get to know you better.

-Jacob

Money Monday: The Cooperative Program and the Great Recession

As everyone knows, the economic contraction that began in 2007 has been the worst in generations.  Churches and denominations, like families and businesses, have been hit hard.  Budgets have shrunk, contributions are down, and tough decisions have to be made.

The Georgia Baptist Convention, situated in a state with above average unemployment, has particularly struggled to fund ministry priorities and meet obligations to the SBC.  Oklahoma's employment and housing valuation statistics are not as bad as most of the rest of the nation.  Thus, the BGCO has had a somewhat easier time funding ministries and missions.  Of course, state convention elites are under tremendous pressure from Nashville to fund the SBC at the highest possible level.

Yet whether states are struggling a lot or a little, Baptist leaders have thus far been unwilling to defund the colleges and universities they subsidize and control.  We have already discussed how the BGCO's huge OBU subsidy cuts into what it can spend on evangelism and collegiate ministries at 35 other colleges in Oklahoma.

Baptist state conventions operate 51 colleges, most of which have endowments running into the tens and even hundreds of millions of dollars.  These institutions raise, on average, close to 95% of their revenue on their own.  Yet because the conventions contribute 5 or 6% and control the colleges through the trustee selection process, these schools are descending headlong into fundamentalism.  OBU is not unique in this case.  But fundamentalists will never relinquish control, no matter how small their contribution and no matter how bad the economy gets.  In fact, they will only partner with organizations they can completely dominate and control.  (Note the SBC's withdrawal from the Baptist World Alliance, the Baptist Joint Committee on Public Affairs, and other interdenominational and ecumenical arrangements since the Fundamentalist Takeover.)

Even though academic freedom, open inquiry, and the liberty of the conscience are now at odds with Baptist elites' agenda, they still pay the price to maintain control of these schools.  Even though the economy is in a once-in-a-lifetime recession, they still happily throw millions and millions of dollars to institutions with eight and nine figure endowments.  Even as ministry professionals at state convention offices are laid off and budgets are drastically cut, fundamentalist leaders are still happy to subsidize Baptist colleges with huge annual institutional welfare checks.

Why?  Because it's a great deal for them.  They get 100% of the power for providing only 6 or 7% of the revenue!  Unfortunately, it's a horrible deal for everyone else, not least for the Baptist clergy and laypeople who care less about waging ideological warfare and more about impacting lostness.  I would argue that Baptist elites' continued insistence on buying institutional power and control on the cheap calls into question their professed concern about lostness.

(These Baptist universities, where 99% of students and 100% of faculty are already Christians, may be [to varying degrees] good training grounds, but they are not impacting lostness and they certainly are not doing so efficiently.  Here in Oklahoma, we already know that the robust Falls Creek program has much more to do with Oklahoma Baptists' contributions to the missionary ranks than OBU.  It's also fascinating to note that most of the pastors who please the BGCO elites are state school grads who went to Southwestern Seminary.  A startling proportion of OBU grads, on the other hand, went to moderate seminaries, are ministering outside Oklahoma, and/or comprise the moderate faction of Oklahoma Baptist life the BGCO leaders love to hate!  It's also interesting to note how few BCM leaders statewide came from OBU.)

In these difficult times, you couldn't blame Baptist leaders for saying to the colleges: "Look, you guys are sitting on huge endowments.  Our receipts are down.  We need to significantly cut back on our subsidies to you."  But instead, they are cutting staff, starving vital ministry areas, and doing whatever is necessary to keep institutional welfare flowing to the colleges.  Just remember, it's not about ministry, friends.  It's about control.  And even in the worst economic climate since the Great Depression, the price is so cheap they just can't help themselves.

Getting OBU Parents Involved

One of our goals is to build a diverse, broad coalition united in support of OBU's liberal arts tradition.  We know there is unprecedented discontent among students, faculty (current and retired), and alumni.  But we often forget about some of OBU's most important stakeholders: parents.  These men and women are ten times more important to OBU's revenue stream than the BGCO, and oftentimes, we do not even inform them about what is going on.

If you are a current student, talk to your parents about what is going on at OBU!  Email them a link to this page.  Get them involved in the conversation.  Our success depends in large part on their support!

We have added a section for parents to the navigation bar at right.  For your convenience, our open letter to OBU parents is printed here.


Dear Parents of OBU Students,

Welcome to the Save OBU blog!  On behalf of the many supporters who have long histories of deep affection for OBU, we are grateful to you for investing in Oklahoma Baptist University.  Though OBU is owned and operated by the Baptist General Convention of Oklahoma (which funds about 6% of OBU's operating budget), parents and lenders provide the overwhelming majority of OBU's revenue.  You are a significant stakeholder in OBU!

As you probably know (especially if your son or daughter is an upperclassman), discontent among students, faculty, and alumni is at an all-time high.  Last spring, you may have heard about a student-produced newsletter called "The Norm."  You may also have heard about an alumni petition that circulated last fall and generated hundreds of signatures.  Perhaps your student has discussed these issues with you.  But unless you are unusually engaged in campus life, we suspect you may be wondering about what all the fuss is about.

Save OBU has an informational function in addition to an activist one.  The university, understandably, does not publicize the rather substantial discontent to prospective students and their families.  We want to provide some relevant facts and data that give evidence for our primary contention: that OBU's identity as a leading liberal arts college is perilously in danger.  In our view, the trouble has been brewing for nearly a generation, but has accelerated dramatically in just the past two or three years.

Some History
In the 1960s, after longtime President John Wesley Raley built OBU into an esteemed institution, the university established a proud tradition of offering a balanced, moderate Christian liberal arts education.  Presidents James Ralph Scales (who went on to the presidency of Wake Fores University) and Grady C. Cothen championed academic freedom, open inquiry, and Baptist values like the liberty of the conscience.  Even as fundamentalists at the national level planned and executed a takeover of the Southern Baptist Convention's boards and agencies in the 1980s, OBU remained a proud, moderate institution.

But the glory days would be short lived.  By the early 1990s, fundamentalists had taken over the Baptist General Convention of Oklahoma.  As an example of the extremism and paranoia, the BGCO formally censured a former executive director who had served the convention for more than two decades.  His infraction?  "Consorting with moderates."  With the election of Mark Brister to the OBU presidency in 1998, the BGCO's dream of remaking OBU in its own fundamentalist image seemed close to fruition.  Several moderate faculty were nudged into early retirement.  Student journalism was censored.  But President Brister ultimately came into his own as a leader who stood up for students and faculty, and not the puppet president the Baptist Building in Oklahoma City had hoped for.

Some Current Events
Today, the BGCO's negative influence on Bison Hill is everywhere apparent.  Two professors have been unjustly dismissed in violation of Faculty Handbook policies and basic H.R. ethics simply because of their relatively more moderate views.  Philosophy, one of the core disciplines in the liberal arts, is being replaced by courses in "Christian apologetics" and "Christian worldview" -- classes you are more likely to find at unaccredited fundamentalist Bible academies than reputable liberal arts universities.  Even the OBU bookstore, which Barnes & Noble capably managed for years, is now run by a fundamentalist company that stocks 99 cent Christian romances, but refuses to carry mainstream works in the social and natural sciences, history, literature, philosophy, and theology.

As you are aware, OBU prides itself on being well-rated by national magazines that publish annual college rankings.  While OBU is expensive, it does its best with financial aid and is a very good value compared to peer institutions.  But OBU does not tell you that in the past two years, it has fallen from #109 (2009) to #299 (2011) in the Forbes college rankings.  The unfortunate personnel, curriculum, and bookstore policies are already having an effect.  Increasingly, faculty openings will be filled by fundamentalists who lack the impressive faculty credentials that characterized OBU for decades.  The best and brightest students and professors have many options in Christian higher education.  They will not settle for the fundamentalist Bible academy OBU seems to be devolving into.  At some point, OBU's accreditation may even be at risk.  As OBU's academic reputation continues to suffer, your child's OBU degree will not have the same value on resumes and graduate school applications that it did even a decade ago.  Of course, student loans have to be repaid regardless.  As you can see, it's a dire situation.

Connecting the Dots
As Southern Baptist elites and bureaucrats have become radically more conservative in the past 30 years, they are desperately clinging to the power they hold over Baptist institutions.  OBU is being pulled from its moderate moorings and will fall into fundamentalist control unless it gains independence from the Baptist General Convention of Oklahoma.  Many Baptist schools have already parted ways with their increasingly fundamentalist state conventions (Baylor, Wake Forest, Furman, Mercer, and Stetson, to name just a few).  Unsurprisingly, in every case both the school and the convention are much better off.  The schools are freed from fundamentalist control and can continue to provide liberal arts education in the best spirit of the Baptist tradition.  The state conventions are freed from burdensome financial obligations and can invest more effectively in their core ministries and missions.

Without BGCO control, OBU administrators would not have had to fire professors, gut curriculum areas, or dumb down the bookstore.  And without having to spend 17% of its budget on OBU, the BGCO could invest significantly in other collegiate ministries, missions, and evangelism.  At some point in the past, it probably made sense for the BGCO to operate a university.  But as the convention has changed so radically, the partnership no longer makes sense.  BGCO control is having a deleterious effect on OBU's quality, and it needs to end.

We invite you to explore our website, join our movement, and even like us on Facebookor follow us on Twitter if you wish!  Let OBU know of your concern, and, if you are anOklahoma Baptist, start a conversation in your church about why OBU and the BGCO would each be better off without one another.  Spread the word to your friends and any OBU alumni you know.  And, as always, feel free to contact us any time (SaveOBU@gmail.com).

Thank you for your consideration.  The fundamentalists are counting on your silence and inaction as they remake OBU in their own image.  We cannot let that happen.  Please make your voice heard.

Money Monday: OBU Subsidy Dwarfs the BGCO's Evangelism Budget

Previous "Money Monday" posts have pointed out that the BGCO's enormous OBU subsidy starves vital ministry areas (such as college ministries and Falls Creek) of needed funds.  Even though OBU generates $40 million of annual revenue on its own and has an $80 million endowment, the BGCO still pays $2.5 million per year in order to maintain control of OBU while other ministries make due with a fraction of the amount.

Lately, the BGCO has been promoting its annual evangelism conference, to be held later this month at Southern Hills Baptist Church, a fundamentalist megachurch.  Interestingly, since pastoral and executive leadership is almost completely off limits to women in Southern Baptist life, the Baptist Messenger notes that the evangelism conference offers special opportunities for women.  Notably, women can hear a heart-warming story about a boy who died and went to heaven, then came back to life to help his parents get rich off writing a book about the ordeal.  They can also hear from something called Redeemed Girl Ministries, which helps young women learn how much fun and liberating it is to be a submissive fundamentalist woman, a topic we covered last week.

Even though evangelism is arguably the most important imperative for Southern Baptist churches, the BGCO's 2011 Financial Plan indicates that the convention only spends less than 3% of its $14.5 million budget on evangelism:

Ethnic Evangelism................................................................................$35,814
Personal Evangelism...........................................................................$156,000
Student Evangelism............................................................................$220,000
Emerging Generation Evangelism........................................................$22,900

By comparison, the BGCO spends more than 17% of its budget to control OBU -- nearly six times what it spends on evangelism.  If you apply the "Student Evangelism" sum to collegiate ministries, you are left with only 1.5% of the BGCO's budget committed to evangelism, less than a tenth of what OBU gets.

Without OBU eating up 17% of the BGCO's budget (an investment with a shockingly low return for the convention), the BGCO could literally double its evangelism budget and its entire collegiate ministry budget!

BGCO leaders try to argue that subsidizing OBU is an important part of the convention's mission.  But the truth is, if OBU was a true liberal arts college that cherished academic freedom, open inquiry, and best practices in HR ethics, the BGCO would not give it a dime.  The only reason the BGCO is even interested in OBU is because, under the present arrangement, it is free to chip away at academic freedom, squelch open inquiry, and cheerlead for shameful, unethical HR practices.

It's long past time for OBU to tell the BGCO that it can keep its $2.5 million.  Focus on evangelism.  You're good at that, and could be great with adequate funding.  Sorry, but running a liberal arts university is just not going well for you.  We'll run our own university from now on.