The Joy of Education

AN INITIAL STUDY OF CATHOLIC LIBERAL ARTS SCHOOLS

The Institute for Catholic Liberal Education (ICLE) is proud to release the results of The Joy of Education, an Initial Study of Catholic Liberal Arts Schools. This survey was conducted in the spring of 2022 and draws on ICLE’s pool of 147 member schools. The concept for this survey arose from many requests for information from various stakeholders, desiring to more deeply understand the experience of and results from a Catholic Liberal Arts education. While public education in the United States is measured and evaluated extensively, there is a void of research on Catholic Liberal Arts schools and the students they educate. This report is the first of its kind to attempt to fill this gap.

It’s no secret that Catholic education in the United States has been experiencing a steady decline for decades. This is most obviously shown by the precipitous fall in enrollment figures and number of Catholic schools since the high-water mark in the 1960s. More importantly though, the Catholic schools which do operate, do not seem to stem the exodus of young Catholics abandoning the faith as they enter adulthood. Even less understood than the closure of Catholic schools and increasing secularization of the culture, is the heartening renaissance of a growing number of Catholic schools which are recapturing the Church’s tradition on human formation, in the unity of faith and reason, and offering those pearls to their students through both curriculum and pedagogy.

This survey was created as a preliminary inquiry to better understand the experience of Catholic schools which have reclaimed the Church’s rich heritage of human formation. Our findings in this report show encouraging results across a number of critical areas including Enrollment, Catholic Identity and School Culture, and Academics. With an overall survey response rate of 48%, our most powerful results come from schools who have transitioned from a Catholic non-Liberal Arts school to a Catholic Liberal Arts education.