The Priority Has To Be Education – Training Comes Later

Washington, D.C. – The reports of the collapse of America's educational institutions are, as Mark Twain might have put it “greatly exaggerated.” That does not mean their current performance is flawless or even adequate. The reality is they are in a state of prolonged decline.

This is as true for institutions of higher learning as it is for local K-12 establishments. Test scores are down. Violence on campus and truancy are up. Simply put, in far too many places like the city of Chicago, there's considerable evidence that our children are not learning.

This is not because they are somehow deficient or because they cannot learn. They can. It's that many of the institutions now in operation are failing, something few are willing to address because it means taking on powerful lobbies that have acquired profound political influence.

There is hope. Ralston College, with its innovative Masters' only program, divides its classes between Greece and Savannah, Georgia. The innovative University of Austin also makes headlines even though it has yet to enroll any students. Then there is Mount Liberty College in Utah which one of us helped found and which will produce its first graduating class later in April.

The purpose of Mount Liberty is to provide a true Liberal Arts education for its students. It started with ten students who responded eagerly to its program, providing a rigorous engagement with the classic books of the world's history and literature, using the Socratic method.

Licensed by the State of Utah to offer college degrees, Mount Liberty has not sought accreditation, nor will it. Accreditation is the tool the educational establishment uses to enforce conformity. If there was ever a case to be made for it, its time has passed. Graduate schools, professional schools and employers are looking for graduates who can do the job. Accreditation really says nothing about the quality of education an undergraduate receives. Better to rely on aptitude tests and the GRE.

Doubters should take note that one MLC graduate, Ari Johnson, (summa cum laude), has been accepted to a graduate program conducted by the Columbia School of Journalism at Oxford next fall.

The difference between Mount Liberty and so many other institutions of higher learning is that the emphasis is on education, not training. The need for a solid grounding in what makes us human and special is the top-line concern for its administrators and faculty. The arts, history, thinking about truth, beauty and freedom are the constituent parts of the Great Conversation in which students must participate if they are to learn how to learn anything.

Mount Liberty is revolutionary in that it wants to be accessible rather than elite, the aspiration of most private colleges and universities. Tuition for a full load of fifteen semester hours is only $2,250 and, thanks to a modest grant from the Sorenson Legacy Foundation, all enrolled students (so far) receive financial assistance.

That matters because the higher education cartel has it fixed so that no one attending an unaccredited school is eligible for federal financial aid. It's one more way of keeping potential innovators from breaking ranks.

The college has no full-time faculty. Each has practical experience starting and running a business. From mortgage companies to political consulting firms to software companies, the diversity of entrepreneurial activity is impressive, more so than can be found on the campus of the elite schools in the east.

Jennifer Jensen, another of Mount Liberty's co-founders thinks this approach generates graduates well prepared for the challenges ahead. “If you look at those who run the highest of high-tech companies,” she says, “you find that they usually have a liberal arts background.”

The purpose of Mount Liberty is not to “produce more cogs for the machine,” she says. “We want to produce the people who will run the companies that own the machines. Anyone can learn to code; but knowing what – and what not – to code, that's the important thing. We need more entrepreneurs and what better way to learn than from those with the experience.”

This is the kind of innovation that will save American education which, in turn, will save the nation from intellectual collapse. The accreditation monster stands in the way, ready to stomp on the proponents of change by impeding their ability to compete in the marketplace of knowledge. The school's founders, however, welcome the challenge. As Emerson's “better mousetrap” probably was not built in a day, neither will higher education be fixed. So long as there are examples for others to follow, like Mount Liberty, the idea of reform shall not die.

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the positions of American Liberty News.

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