I hate to think of what would happen to college education in this country should too many young people take this article too seriously.
While our cost is definitely on the lowest end of the spectrum, can you imagine what would happen if a motivated high school graduate decided to take advantage of all the resources available to educate himself or herself? Even in the area of Bible and ministry, if plugged into an active local church, the amount of supplemental knowledge available online is such that the value proposition of Bible college is starting to become less clear.
It really makes the value of the personal interaction, discipleship, and student development the real X-factor for our students. There are any number of places they can find knowledge. But the community, support, and mentoring is what they can’t get for free online.
As you prepare for classes this semester, make sure you are providing more for your students than just what they could look up for themselves online if they wanted to. That extra value is what makes all the difference in our education.
A major short-coming of a degree earned in some college settings (e.g. on-line degrees that simply add up a total of course content) can be the void of not providing socio-moral-ethical collegial meals, collegial housing, collegial activities, collegial friendships, collegial mentor-ships, chapel, Christian service development, internships, Christian disciplinary action, and the like. Such items — no longer a part of many degrees — are what made Harvard great (check out Harvard’s first 250 years). So, our serious concern is to assure that our students meet verifiably solid standards in general college course content (equivalent to CLEP and AP standards, for example, in English, Physical Science, General Psychology, American History) before we pass them. Are we tough enough? D J D