In this book the fullness of the Baptist experience in Christian higher education is explored, charted, and analyzed. Beginning with the establishment in 1756 of the Academy and reaching to the present the author explores the need for Baptists to pursue education and the types of schools they founded. Included are colleges, universities, manual labor schools, literary and theological institutions, theological schools, and bible colleges. Special attention is given to women and higher education and the Black Baptist achievements. Details are provided about what makes a Baptist school Baptist: charters, trustees, presidents, support, church accountability. Chapters at the end of the typological and chronological narratives ponder the meaning of denominational education at present, with suggestions about the future of faith-based institutions and the failure of contemporary literature to attend properly to Baptist idiosyncrasies.

Stetson University, founded in 1883 in historic DeLand, Florida, has been educating students for over a century thanks to the passionate vision of the town's early promoter, Henry Addison DeLand. DeLand, a New Yorker with a dream, wanted his newly adopted town to be distinctive in rural Central Florida. Since the state had no four-year college, his foresight brought to fruition the excellent educational facility we have today.

The Future of Baptist Higher Education investigates four key issues that inform Baptist efforts at higher education -- the denominational conflict that has afflicted Baptists since the 1980s, the secularization of higher education in America, the dominance of the market-driven tendencies in American higher education today, and the meaning of Christian higher education, but more specifically, the meaning of Baptist higher education. This volume clearly illustrates that the meaning of Baptist and Christian higher education, as with the Christian life itself, is far more complex than any one imperial interpretation.