One of the top-ranked Catholic universities in the country today is Providence College (PC). It has consistently ranked in the top five of the US News and World Report "top master's universities -- northeast" category for many years, and has received commendation among a host of other, lesser known college guides.
The institution, which is primarily undergraduate in scope, is operated by the Dominican Fathers (a.k.a. Order of Preachers Friars) Province of St. Joseph. No other higher education outfit in North America (besides a few seminaries) is affiliated exclusively with Dominican clergymen.
PC is especially unique not only for achieving top secular rankings, but a particularly notable religious one as well. In 2007, the Cardinal Newman Society, the de facto watchdog of Catholic education in America (on the basis of orthodoxy), included PC in its then-newly debuted college guide. Listed among barely two-dozen of America's "most Catholic" colleges, PC was lauded for its uniquely rigorous, freshman and sophomore Development of Western Civilization (DWC) core curriculum, an anomaly even among Catholic schools today. This particular core curriculum imitates the traditional, classical model, emphasizing the Great Books, theology, Western philosophy, and other humanities concerns. The institution was likewise lauded for its then-recently installed president, Father Brian Shanley, O.P.
In 2006, Father Shanley forced the annual V-Day, or Vagina Monologues production to leave the campus. This was in spite of fairly widespread faculty and student dissent. PC had been among three-dozen or so Catholic colleges (of some 220 in the US) to harbor the annual man-bashing, obscene spectacle, a supposed celebration of female sexuality and protest against man vs. woman violence. That same year, a notorious sociology professor, who had been exposed by the student newspaper for engaging female undergraduates in lewd speech during classes over many years, was abruptly "retired."
I wrote about these and other serious irregularities for a feature on PC in the October 2004 edition of New Oxford Review. This article was largely written in reaction to the continued praise heaped upon PC by the right wing Intercollegiate Studies Institute's College Guide.
A number of folks have requested that I write an update on the College, given some seemingly positive developments (at least from the traditional Catholic perspective) in more recent times. Consider also that the Dominican's St. Joseph Province, and the loosely-affiliated Dominican Sisters of St. Cecilia are both among the more conservative Catholic religious communities in the US today, the latter of which has become far more involved with the campus.
Unfortunately, the update is not a positive one. The Newman Guide has obviously booted PC off of its select "recommended colleges" list.
Among other matters, are perhaps the student body subculture themes embodied in this serious viewer warning candid camera spoof, live from the PC quad, seen below:
How's that for some religious conversion? Let me tell you, that little scene is TAME for what happens at PC. For several years, Providence College has ranked as one of America's top party schools, listing as #3 in "most beer drinkers" and #1 in "most hard liquor drinkers." PC has long hosted an on-campus watering hole as well. In common parlance, this is f'ing extreme...
Recently, the TFP Student Action, another conservative activist group focused on higher education, listed Providence College as among the 52 percent of American Catholic colleges and universities that hosts a "pro-homosexual club." If I recall, this "SHEPHERD" group goes back about nine years. If 52 percent of Catholic colleges have such a club, then 48 percent do not. Yet, somehow PC has been able to finagle its way onto the highly recommended lists of two of the most conservative-leaning college guides in the last several years, in spite of its true substantive nature.
As for academics: The most recent major to be added to the undergraduate roster is Women's Studies. Previously, it was an interdiciplinary minor. Then, having been severely henpecked by the campus-based feminists in the face of expelling V-Day from college grounds (over its outward obscenities), Father Shanley has been looking for ways to make it up to them. Women's Studies is one of the most politicized majors in existence, bent on inculcating radical feminism into the minds of students.
The new core curriculum has some interesting features as well: "DWC is four semesters of 4‐hours each in the new Core as opposed to 4 semesters of 5‐hours each in the former Core." Now, there's "One Core‐designated diversity course. Students will demonstrate proficiency in diversity, understood as either cross‐cultural or involving diversity within the American context."
Rather than emphasizing didactic tradition, it's now about "diversity." I'm not going to be the one to insist on ecclesial purity and total orthopraxy for Providence College. If it's anyone's job, it's the job of the alumni to do so. Notwithstanding, the issue here is as much as it was eight years ago: truth in advertising.
I've known many PC students and alumni over the years. Quite a number of them are rather bright and ambitious. Then there are others -- of the religious element -- who've insisted upon my self-censorship, mainly because the school is an outfit of the venerable Dominican Order. That is simply low-brow clericalism if I've ever heard it. These certain theology students and grads need to know that PC is NOT a seminary, and most students are not there for theology training. Nontheless, if Catholic values were of such high priority for the instutution, they would be conveyed across the disciplines. Not just by the few Dominicans who still teach courses on Thomas Aquinas.
2013 UPDATE: Apparently, PC's best-known and renowned conservative Catholic professor has some issues with the campus's administration as well.
Rather than delivering another sermon on the state of Catholic higher education (as I think what you've noted above stands on its own), I will say this: PC is yet another Rhode Island institution gone wrong. There are many today, including state agencies, hospitals, other universities, and yes, other religious entities.
