Analysis of Mission Statements or Similar Documents of Jesuit Universities and Higher Education Institutions

3.3.3. US and not-US

Finally, we thought it worthwhile to have a glance at the major differences between US answers and the others, since when saying that the answers reach a score of more than 30% or less than 20%, we run the risk of ignoring that that mean is hiding discrepancies. Let us take an example: 29.6% of non-US answers consider as one of our characteristics "Humanism with science and technology, community between sciences"; the US rate is 0%. 37.0% of non-US answers vs. 0% also for "Relationships between and among professors and students, community of persons and groups; participation". In contrast, US answers give a score of 92% to "Catholic and/or Jesuit character, Judeo-Christian Tradition, in the Spirit of [the Spiritual exercises of] St. Ignatius, in the Jesuit humanist tradition, with Ignatian Spirituality" whereas non-US answers are 59.3%.

Let us be more systematic, considering, on the one hand, the >30% results and, on the other, the <20%. This time we have included the results whose mean for "all combined results" does not reach the 30% but where the specific US or non-US answers do so. We kept here the sequence of the items as they occur in the two grids of analysis.

a. In the list of >30% answers, according to the Harvanek-Berleur grid

Table 7 shows that US Mission statements seem more sensitive to academic excellence, freedom of thought and research, the global development of persons (intellectual as well as spiritual and moral), their commitment to the service of others and collaboration with non Christians. On the other hand, non-US Mission statements stress the critical role of Universities towards science, emphasizing among others interdisciplinarity, the role of philosophy and theology, developing also Christian vision and principles. They seem also more sensitive to the relationships within the University Community and its participation.

Table 7 : Differences between the US and the others for the >30% items (Harvanek-Berleur grid)

b. In the list of >30% answers, according to the Arango-Berleur grid

Table 8 : Differences between the US and the others for the >30% items (Arango-Berleur grid)

As appears in this Table 8, all the items obtain a higher score from the high rate in the US Mission statements.

c. In the list of <20% answers, according to the Harvanek-Berleur grid

Table 9: Differences between the US and the others for the <20% items (Harvanek-Berleur grid)

Table 9 shows that nearly all the items come mainly from the non-US documents, except "Faith expressed in wisdom, service and worship" and "Strives for interfaith dialogue and ecumenism".

d. In the list of <20% answers, according to the Arango-Berleur grid

Table 10 would suggest that "values" is a preoccupation of non-US documents, but "Reflection on values" shows the opposite. "Interdisciplinarity" is not a major item in the US mission statements, whereas collaboration Jesuit-laity gets its higher score from the US answers. Regarding the Òinternational preoccupationÓ, we can say the two last items establish a balance.

Table 10: Differences between the US and the others for the <20% items (Arango-Berleur grid)

The Tables 14 and 15 of Annex 2 give also some ideas of "How many sections were selected from the proposed grids?", or: "How many items were selected from a section or sub-items under a specific item?" Here again some differences between the US and the others are worth noting.