Institutional Vision in Christian Higher Education: A Comparison of ACCU, ELCA, and CCCU Institutions

Most religious colleges and universities have made a conscientious effort to embed a declaration of religious identity and its defining values and guiding principles into their institutional vision. School administrators have been less successful at clearly and effectively articulating this message. A content analysis of the mission and vision statements from a nation-wide sample of Catholic, Evangelical, and “Christ-centered” schools was performed, and key linguistic components found to constitute a well conceived, viable, and easily diffused institutional vision were isolated. Findings reveal significant stylistic differences across religious institution types in terms of vision, clarity, complexity, pragmatics, optimism, and their use of language to unify the campus community. How mission and vision statements can better serve as guiding, governing and promotional documents is discussed.