ABSTRACT
Concerns about secularization and loss of identity re-emerged, however, as one of the speakers at the meetings of the Catholic Educational Association lamented that to most Catholics, scholastic philosophy had become a name and nothing more. In his history of Catholic colleges, Philip Gleason points out that structural differences followed philosophical differences between secular and sectarian colleges as the early model of Catholic higher education rejected the idea of electives, claiming that a Scholastic classical education stressing philosophy was the only path to excellence. Gleason maintains that Carnegie's actions directly contributed to the secularization of higher education by this discriminatory policy. For Gleason, "one could hardly ask for clearer evidence of the linkage between modernization and secularization than that policy." Not surprisingly, eventually it was status concerns that brought the Jesuits closer to the American model as "the Jesuits leaders belatedly awoke to the realization that, in terms of true collegians, their schools were in most cases well nigh deserted.".
