Frank Boyd
Frank Boyd is Vice President of the Higher Education Practice at McAllister & Quinn. Frank brings 26 years of experience in higher education as a faculty member and academic administrator.
Research shows that purpose‑driven educational environments improve student engagement, persistence, and outcomes.
College students arrive on campus at a critical juncture in their development, when they are resolving key questions that will define them as professionals and people. These students and their parents assume that institutions of higher education (IHEs) will provide guidance around these important questions. Examples of these questions are:
There is an expansive literature that documents students’ desire for support in defining their purpose in life while they are in undergraduate school. Colleges vary widely in the extent to which they provide this support, with faith-informed institutions generally providing more effective support than their secular peers. There are clear implications for student success, as well as a direct impact on the ability of colleges and universities to retain and graduate their students.
Why are students increasingly expecting IHEs to provide this support? This broad trend can be explained in part by the declining role of other institutions in the development and socialization of college students. For many years, the role of other institutions like churches and civic organizations has declined for college-aged students. Religious participation among young adults has until recently steadily decreased, with fewer and fewer college-age students associating themselves with traditional religious congregations. This decline has coincided with a broad, secular trend among college students who increasingly express a desire to define a broader life purpose that goes beyond their intended college major or post-graduate profession. IHEs have responded unevenly to this important need, but there also has emerged a spate of research and evidence-based practices that can inform institutional efforts to better support their students.
In sum, students enter college hoping to earn their degree and prepare for the world after graduation, while at the same time they also want to develop a clearer sense of their broader purpose in the world
Why College Students Are Searching for Purpose and Meaning
For decades, research in developmental psychology and higher education policy has documented the importance that students place on understanding their purpose, broadly defined. Anyone who has worked on a college campus will be familiar with the survey of first-year students from the Cooperative Institutional Research Program (CIRP) that has documented student attitudes about their sense of purpose. In fact, the Higher Education Research Institute’s (HERI) longitudinal study has found very high levels of interest in broader questions of meaning and purpose among incoming students, a trend that has been very stable over two decades and has only increased since the COVID pandemic.2 The research effort spanned seven years between 2004-2011 and included responses from more than 100,000 students from 236 institutions. The research found that 76 percent of freshmen said they were “searching for meaning/purpose in life,” a finding that has been remarkably stable until the aforementioned increase after the external shock of the pandemic in 2020-2022. A broad swath of qualitative and quantitative studies has affirmed the findings of the HERI study.3
What the Research Shows About Student Purpose in Higher Education
In sum, students enter college hoping to earn their degree and prepare for the world after graduation, while at the same time they also want to develop a clearer sense of their broader purpose in the world. A subsequent study explored the extent to which IHEs provide support in that regard, asking the same cohort of students about their experiences at the end of their first year and their senior year of college. Your First College Year (YFCY) survey enables analysis of how students’ initial aspirations concerning purpose evolve during the first year of college, and the College Senior Survey (CSS) measures their development as they leave college. Taken together, the findings demonstrate that it is neither guaranteed nor uniform that students receive support in developing their sense of purpose. The gains are very modest; however, students exposed to particular educational environments—frequent faculty interaction, mentoring relationships, service learning, and first-year seminars that encourage reflection—report stronger growth than their peers. Certainly, by their senior year many students report stronger gains in their sense of purpose when compared to their first year in college. But as noted earlier, the findings underscore that these gains are highly contingent on the experience of individual students.
How Colleges Can Reduce Gaps in Purpose Development: Lessons from Faith-Informed Institutions
HERI’s extensive research demonstrates how the development of a student’s sense of purpose can be highly contingent. What about the experience of students at institutions who foreground student development in this area? Faith-informed institutions do exactly that, and I had a chance to discuss this approach with leaders from the Network of ELCA Colleges and Universities (NECU)4 last summer, when I was the keynote speaker for The Vocation of Lutheran Higher Education Conference at Augsburg University in St. Paul, Minnesota. For Lutherans, vocation (or “calling”) refers to a broad definition of how people should understand purpose, work, and daily life. Their perspective is rooted in Martin Luther’s notion of not limiting vocation or “calling” to clergy, but instead to include all of the ways that individuals serve their neighbors and participate in the world. Because a student’s broader purpose in life is not tied to a certain profession, faculty encourage students to consider how their academic interests can contribute to the common good.
Why Faith-Informed Colleges are Seeing Strong Enrollment Growth
Perhaps as a result of this focus, the broader sector of faith-informed institutions have experienced marked growth since the end of the pandemic. As Clark Gilbert wrote in The Chronicle of Higher Education, the National Center for Education Statistics indicates that enrollment at faith-based institutions has increased by more than 80 percent since 1980, a figure that significantly exceeds the national average for all institutions. Today there are over 1.8 million college students enrolled at over 850 Faith-based Colleges and Universities (FBCUs). In a recent meeting of the American Council on Education’s Commission on FBCUs, presidents from Baptist, Catholic, and Jewish colleges reported sustained increases in student applications.
Donna Carroll, executive director of the Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities (ACCU), sees this enrollment growth in part as a function of an institutional focus on a broader framing of the educative enterprise at Catholic schools. Dr. Carroll observed in The National Catholic Reporter that, “These are morally treacherous times, and it is not surprising that families are choosing faith-based higher education for its community orientation and for the promise of a values-driven educational setting.” The same argument is made by Dr. Amanda Staggenborg at the Council of Christian Colleges and Universities (CCCU), who cites the recent evidence of enrollment strength in their member institutions.
In recent years, individual schools whose mission is not directly informed by a faith tradition have also recognized the importance of this work.
How Secular and Non-Sectarian Colleges Support Student Purpose and Character
It is not only religious institutions that recognize the importance of a broader conceptualization of undergraduate education. The Council of Independent Colleges (CIC) coordinates an effort, Network for Vocation in Undergraduate Education (NetVUE) that includes more than 300 primarily small to mid-sized, private colleges and universities committed to integrating vocational exploration into the academic and co-curricular experience. NetVUE employs a broad understanding of vocation that connects students’ talents and aspirations with the needs of the world. Crucial to the effort is the assumption that IHEs are essential to this development process. Members of the consortium have formed a “community of practice” that allows them to share program design, assessment efforts, and professional development needs of faculty and staff.
The American Council on Education (ACE) has recognized the particular strength of faith-informed institutions, and in 2024 convened the Commission on Faith-Based Colleges and Universities that includes leaders from a wide variety of traditions, including those from Catholic, Protestant, Evangelical, Jewish, and Muslim institutions. In establishing the commission, ACE explicitly cited the work of these institutions in promoting student well-being and purpose formation, emphasizing that this focus often leads to higher levels of student engagement and, in turn, persistence and achievement.
The decision by ACE to charter the Commission on Faith-Based Colleges and Universities affirms the notion that some aspects of the work at faith-based institutions are naturally consonant with efforts to support students’ search for purpose or meaning. In recent years, individual schools whose mission is not directly informed by a faith tradition have also recognized the importance of this work.5 Witness the wide array of institutions that are participating in the Educating Character Initiative at Wake Forest University. The program has been funded by the Lilly Endowment —long recognized for supporting Christian higher education—and focuses on the development of students’ leadership and character. The program enumerates the core facets of character such as hospitality, humility, and common purpose, values that are very closely related to the stated mission of faith-informed institutions.
Why Purpose Formation Should Be a Core Priority for Higher Education Leaders
Colleges and universities seem to be coalescing around the conclusion that all college students, regardless of their background, are interested in a broader sense of purpose, and that institutions ignore this developmental need at their own peril. The evidence from CIRP and related HERI studies suggests that large majorities of students arrive on college campuses with an interest in defining and understanding their broader purpose. Yet, the degree to which they receive institutional support in that process is highly dependent on the environments they encounter. Faith-informed institutions—illustrated here by Lutheran and Catholic approaches to vocation and community—make purpose formation a more explicit part of their students’ education.
At the same time, ACE’s Commission on Faith-Based Colleges and Universities and initiatives such as Wake Forest’s Educating Character Initiative show that this work is not the exclusive province of religious colleges. As Ted Mitchell, the president of ACE, notes that the work of these schools has, “…discovered and rediscovered one of the things that is most important to success across all of America.” Campus leaders could better serve both students and institutions by making the discernment of vocation and purpose less contingent and more intentionally cultivate
Discover the McAllister & Quinn Impact
McAllister & Quinn is committed to helping colleges and universities turn strategic intelligence into action, ensuring they are prepared to meet today’s challenges and respond with agility. Our team closely monitors legislative actions, executive orders, and regulatory updates so that institutional leaders are equipped with timely insights to inform decision-making. If you are interested in learning more about our strategic intelligence and upcoming grant opportunities in 2026, please contact us today for a complimentary consultation.