The Recent Emergence of Australian Christian Higher Education Institutions: How They Operationalize Their Christian Identity

Historically, Australian higher education has been statist, uniform, and secular. Indeed, up until 1989, even communist Poland had more Christian universities than Australia. Only in the last 3½ decades have eight different Christian universities and colleges emerged. This article first explores the origins of these new institutions and the historical factors that allowed for the emergence of Australian Christian higher education (CHE). It then employs the recently developed Operationalizing Christian Identity Guide (OCIG) to determine the extent to which these new Australian institutions use their Christian identity to guide administrative decisions. The OCIG identifies the number of publicly expressed markers that indicate whether and how Christian identity makes a difference in key administrative decisions regarding the life of the institution. These markers include things such as membership requirements for the board, president, faculty, and students; the institution's official rhetoric and mission; the number of required Christian courses; and the nature of co-curricular programming. An analysis of these institutions using the OCIG reveals that Australia's Christian institutions are observably distinct from their secular Australian counterparts in key areas such as mission, hiring practices, curricular requirements, co-curricular opportunities, and student conduct codes. All of these Christian institutions require core courses that extend beyond professional education. Within the Christian sector, significant diversity also exists regarding religious symbols, funding, and governance. A comparison of these Australian institutions to Christian institutions in the United States and Canada, however, finds that Australian institutions operationalize their Christian identities less than institutions in these countries.