At This New College, Accreditation Is Beside the Point

American higher education is alive but not well. For decades, the quality of the instruction available at both private and public institutions has declined at the same time, or perhaps because of an extreme diversification of the subjects in which degrees can be awarded.

The advent of distance learning and online universities has changed learning. Eventually, the new technology will eclipse and overtake the large factory-model educational institutions that have existed for centuries. People will still go where the knowledge is, but they will learn less and less of it in the physical classroom.

There are powerful interests that support legacy institutions – alumni, politicians, city leaders, unions – and these will resist change. They have various tools at their disposal to do so, especially the process of accreditation, which can be, and some argue is, used to keep competitors to the currently accepted model of higher education at bay.

Still, some institutions are managing to push the envelope. One such school is Ralston College, which offers an innovative master’s degree with classes divided between Greece and Savannah, Georgia.

There is also the University of Austin, whose founders have promised to revolutionize university-style education even though they have yet to admit a single student. And then there is tiny Mount Liberty College in Utah, which began with just ten students in its initial class four years ago.

Those students have just become its first graduates, with more to come, fulfilling the dream of the two dedicated educators responsible for its existence.

Looking around the landscape of higher education five years ago, Jennifer Jensen and Gordon Jones realized there were no institutions of higher education in their state providing the kind of deep education required for a liberal arts degree, so they started one.

It wasn’t easy. The first enrollees came to the school because they and their parents were eager for a rigorous engagement with the classic books of the world’s history and literature using the Socratic method. Mount Liberty, licensed by the state of Utah to offer college degrees but not accredited, sought to provide such an education.

For some, accreditation means academic life or death. Not so for the people behind Mount Liberty. “Accreditation is the tool the education establishment uses to enforce conformity,” said Jones. “If there was ever a case to be made for it, its time has passed.” 

Jones, who has degrees from Columbia, Stanford, and The George Washington University, believes “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. It's better to rely on aptitude tests and the GRE.”

He points to students like Ari Johnson, who graduates in April 2023 summa cum laude and has been accepted into a graduate program conducted by the Columbia School of Journalism at Oxford next fall. 

Mount Liberty makes a careful distinction between education and training. “Some training takes a long time – think of medical school,” Jensen said. “Some take a matter of weeks. Think of coding. But training should come after a solid grounding in what makes us human and special: the arts; history; thinking about truth, beauty, and freedom. These are the subjects of the great conversation that we invite our students to share in.” 

Jensen thinks the emphasis on STEM – science, technology, engineering, and math – programs is misplaced. “Those are precisely the jobs that will be filled by AI,” she said. 

The school is revolutionary in another way: it’s inexpensive. Tuition for a full load of 15 semester hours is only $2,250. Thanks to a modest grant from The Sorensen Legacy Foundation, all students so far have received scholarships.

“We would never give a student a ‘full ride,’” Jensen said. “We don’t want them to have to go into debt, but they need some of their own skin in the game.” Naturally, as enrollees at a non-accredited institution, they are ineligible for federal student loans. 

The college relies on “The Great Books” but it’s not bound to the so-called “Dead White Male” model. “My students get everything from Gilgamesh to the Popul Vuh, from the Indian Ramayana to the Japanese Nihongi, from Jane Austen to Ochoa Achebe,” Jones said.

And they have a lot of fun along the way. “Whatever we read, Mr. Jones has an opera aria, a reference from an Aubrey/Maturin novel, or an episode of Doctor Who that is right on point. And there is always the poetry. ...” student Ari Johnson said.

In addition to Jones’ course on the Development of Civilization, the college offers courses in Thinking and Writing, Political Economy, Latin, and the philosophy of mathematics and science. Needing to live in the real world, each student must complete two practica, during which they work in a local business or nonprofit, side-by-side with professionals engaged in entrepreneurial activities.

One student did a practicum at a community garden using her Spanish skills and was later made a supervisor despite being only 18 years old.

The faculty is likewise different. Salaries are so low that none can teach full-time. Every one of them, however, has practical experience starting and running a business. From mortgage companies to political consulting firms to software companies, the range of entrepreneurial activity is impressive. “If you look at those who run the highest of high-tech companies, you find that they usually have a liberal arts background. We do not educate students to be cogs in a machine, but to run the companies that own the machines,” Jensen said.

There is no simple solution to the vast problems within the contemporary American academy. But competition from innovative schools like Mount Liberty could pressure bigger schools to perform better. Jensen seems to have hit on a formula that might produce fruitful outcomes and original thinkers.  “Anyone can learn to code,” she said, “but knowing what – and what not – to code. That’s the important thing. 

Mount Liberty is betting it will be classically grounded entrepreneurs rather than the scientists who lead the way into the future. If its leaders are right, it will be the disruptive change in the educational marketplace its founders hoped it would be.