Cultural Diversity in a Catholic University

The modern university is no longer a unified entity. Not only are there different faculties, but these faculties are clustered into a number of cultures, centered around variables that are unrelated to the content of the academic fields of study. This has an impact on the identity of a university, especially when this identity is based on religious affiliation. Our research shows that the Catholic University of Nijmegen does not have one identity for the university as a whole. We found a multitude of sub-identities or sub-cultures. Six faculty cultures were identified. One of those is the culture of the theology faculty, whose students were found to differ so significantly from those in other faculties that the faculty was considered a separate culture. If we can still speak of a Catholic identity, it is to be found there.