MCSI will not continue in its current form in 2009 following an insufficient number of students enrolling in subjects this year.

The Macquarie Christian Studies Institute (MCSI), which has offered a range of university-level subjects from a Christian perspective for over a decade, no longer has the relationship with Macquarie University that is needed to continue its work, says MCSI Director Dr Greg Clarke.

The MCSI raised a Fighting Fund of $100,000 in a just a few weeks back in June.

However, MCSI also needed 100 students to enrol for semester two subjects to demonstrate the organisation's capacity to attract students across many Australian campuses, including its home campus, Macquarie University.

Achieving this goal became more difficult at Macquarie University, as MCSI was no longer a natural part of the enrolment process due to administrative changes.

"Unfortunately, we didn't make it," Dr Clarke says.

"We have around 63 students enrolled in subjects that are financially viable."

Based on these numbers the MCSI board felt that the responsible position was to teach those students, but to not move forward with efforts to attract students in 2009.

"In other words, we expect this will be the last semester of MCSI in its current form," Dr Clarke says.

"A number of other ideas are floating around about MCSI in the future, but at this stage we are not expecting to offer any subjects next year.

MCSI's work still needed

Dr Clarke is adamant that courses such as those offered at MCSI are still needed in the landscape of Australia's tertiary education institutions.

"In order for Christians to be involved in shaping the minds of tomorrow’s leaders, we have to be involved in university teaching and research," Dr Clarke says.

"Students who take MCSI units tend to report not just gaining knowledge, but being transformed by their learning. Isn’t that what university should be all about?"

Dr Clarke believes the atheists are taking the universities far more seriously than Christians are.

"I understand that Richard Dawkins got his professorship at Oxford because a Microsoft executive put up enough money for the Chair and wanted Dawkins to have it. That’s the level of seriousness I’m talking about," he says.

"In areas of significance for the Christian faith, particularly history, philosophy and science, we need smart, academically-inclined Christians to carve out careers."

Dr Clarke wants the church to put more resources into encouraging Christians into significant university positions and supporting them as they relate their faith appropriately to their work.

"We are doing it for schools, but most of us have put the university in the ‘too-hard’ basket," he says.

Dr Clarke is currently in discussions with a number of university figures about how to ensure that Christian perspectives have a place in Australian university courses.

"I’d like to see a generation of Christian PhDs who get appointments in Australian universities and teach and research their material with integrity, without having to hide or ignore the place of Christian theology in their work," he says.