New college just dropped

[uuu]

The College of St. Joseph the Worker is a new Catholic college in Ohio that offers a six-year degree in which students earn both a BA in religious studies and complete an apprenticeship in a skilled trade.

Some quotes from their site:

Every student at the College of St. Joseph the Worker will earn a Catholic Studies degree. This degree explores the Catholic intellectual tradition, which teaches that man is a rational being, but one that needs the aids of grace and revelation to properly understand the full reality of the Holy Trinity and His creation. As grace perfects nature in accordance with the inner dynamism of the rational soul, so theology perfects philosophy and all studies of the humanities by illuminating the true sense and nature of being, allowing finite intellects to understand truths that they could never have discovered by their own power. The College of St. Joseph the Worker assumes the Catholic tradition not as an intellectual crutch but rather as the ladder by which man can scale beyond the natural limits of the human mind to reach more profound, dynamic, and complex truths that truly free the soul. The tradition is not merely propositional content. It is a method of seeking the truth always with the humility of a creature and so in a manner that is always receptive to the gift of revelation. Reason is not aided by faith. Reason is fulfilled in faith. Our curriculum is, therefore, not divided into “natural” and “supernatural” pursuits—standard secular economics here, theology over there. Rather, everywhere, in all of our studies, our reason is healed and perfected by our faith. Courses will cover everything from Scripture, metaphysics, and epistemology to history, economics, and mathematics, always with an eye toward the three unique dimensions of the lay vocation: work, family, and politics.

How does it work?

During year one, freshmen will study in the classroom and in the shop. During this year they will be introduced to all five trades and given the skills necessary to get to work on real projects.

During the next two years, the students will continue their classroom work and will start working as laborers and apprentices with our partner construction company on actual job sites—spending one year concentrating in electrical and plumbing, and another in carpentry, masonry, and HVAC. The students will be paid for this work.

Then comes a second phase of their education: we will arrange for students to become apprentices to master craftsmen all over the United States. Their education will then shift to an online platform.

At the end of their time with the College of St. Joseph the Worker, they will have gained knowledge in several trades, be well on their way to becoming a journeyman, and have gained the benefits of not just a college degree but of the ideas that make life most human.

https://www.collegeofstjoseph.com/

What do you think?

When I talk to older people about their regrets about how they spent their education years, I have heard many express that they wish there were something like this: A college-like experience where you get to debate timeless questions about the meaning of life and man's place in the world with intelligent peers, but one that also sets you up for a fulfilling and stable career.

And my impression of the zoomer generation, with their famous fracture between "progressives" and "trads," is that there is a substantial minority of them who will find this model very attractive. In other words, I think that this college will do well on pure marketing grounds. I hope that it makes good on its promises to its students.

What was your educational experience like? Did you go to college? What do you think about the idea that many people who are currently going to college would do better for themselves by going into a skilled trade?

How do you feel about the gendered flavor of the College of St. Joseph? (Yeah, yeah, I know the Pope is Catholic.) It feels like they are leaning hard into a very specific notion of nominally biblical masculinity.

 

[John K]

What do you think?

I think that this is a very good idea, particularly seen as an example of something more general that doesn't have to be explicitly Catholic or religious in ethos. I'm not familiar with tertiary education in the USA, but in Britain it's still rooted in the idea that an academic degree from a university is the best way to remove class distinctions. I think this is very unfortunate because I believe a lot of folks need more practical education rather than a theoretical one beyond school. I wish we could stop treating skilled practical careers as somehow inferior compared with the academics and the traditional professions - they need just as much intelligence, though it's expressed in a very different way. The combination of practical training with a philosophy of life education like this one seems very attractive to me - it doesn't have to be religious, though the great religions probably have some of the best resources and educators to launch such a scheme. I'm a Catholic myself, so this sounds rather appealing to me.

I don't think it would necessarily be male-biased by the way, despite our all-male clergy. Women have a powerful influence within the Church, and always have. Often it's the women who have been our bedrock down the ages, and I think they'd do fine in this sort of establishment. I hope we move to having women clergy eventually, but that's a separate issue.

 

[mintoots]

they need just as much intelligence

True. I think society in general underestimates just how difficult it can be to acquire skill. Craftsmanship is a hard earned lifetime profession and it may even require art. There is such a dearth of craftsmen in this world when their work should be more highly valued. For example, if you get a builder who does sloppy jobs, there's financial loss in that. The loss even transcends to other aspects sometimes like mental stress. I'm complaining because it's very hard to find skilled and talented craftsmen nowadays. People gear towards printing houses, or automating pipeline productions, which is okay but even with that much tech, the methods of the craftsmanship only evolve but the job often still requires humans for certain aspects of it.

 

[Wyote]

...did it break? Should we call the horsecoursepital?

 

[Faye]

Cost is $15,000 per year for the first three years (and they offer an accelerated three year program), which includes housing. That is very reasonable by liberal arts college standards, but it is very expensive when compared to the sort of places one would normally go to learn a trade (two year or junior colleges).

So is it worth it from a return on investment perspective? I don't think so really. People normally only get religious studies degrees if they are planning on going to a seminary, so unless they are willing to get that degree for its own sake, they could save a lot of time and money by going to a two year college instead. Also, there is an opportunity cost to spending that extra year or two studying when they could be actually working.

 

[Matty]

It sounds vaguely like they're trying to emulate the kind of education Benedictine monks get in their first few years in a monastery, without the celibacy, prayer obligations, and poverty.

I can see its appeal to some, but you'd get the same education or formation just joining a monastery, then leaving after a few years, without having paid for anything. In this sense, I dislike it, because instead of contributing to the educational community by becoming a part of it, you're just a client, and instead contributing and sharing, you're just paying for a product.

 

[uuu]

So is it worth it from a return on investment perspective? I don't think so really.

you'd get the same education or formation just joining a monastery, then leaving after a few years, without having paid for anything.

An interesting pair of reactions here—Faye points out that the technical certification can be obtained at a lower cost, Sometimes says that the spiritual formation can be found elsewhere. But this is just the point: This school gives you both the certification and the spiritual formation!

I think that both of you are underestimating the size of the niche this college is trying to target—in my mind, young men who enjoy intellectual debate and know how to wax poetic, but find traditional school/work environments to be lifeless and unstimulating and want a career where they can build something with their hands and look someone in the eye and know that they made their day a little better. But also: men who want to be worldly and conversant in profound human questions, and have a more-or-less conservative worldview when it comes to relationships and values.

This not the majority of young men, to be sure, but it is a large group, and one that seems to be becoming more well-defined as the counterweight to the "woke knowledge workers" who dominate the modern economy.

As for the value/ROI thing, if you believe that the majority of St. Joseph students would otherwise have gone to trade school, then it's a loss; if you believe they would otherwise have gone to a four-year liberal arts college, then it's a huge win. I think there will be students in both groups in the ultimate entering class. And this assumes that you define college ROI as the present value of expected lifetime earnings minus tuition expenditures, which is cool and rational, but this isn't how most students make decisions (for better or for worse), in no small part because parents are often footing the bill.

I think this college won't have much trouble obtaining students relative to other colleges in the sector—but we should note that liberal arts colleges on the whole have been declining in popularity for several years now.

 

[Sloe Djinn]

I wonder what their profit margins are. It has to be lucrative.

 

[uuu]

I wonder what their profit margins are. It has to be lucrative.

AFAICT they haven't started their first school year yet, so the jury is out.

In the US, profit margins in higher education overall are high for the winners due to a high degree of regulatory capture: since the fixed costs of starting a new college are so high, most people don't bother, and the huge universities (10k+ students) tend to capture the bulk of the demand. Margins are highest, actually, in graduate education rather than undergrad—Harvard and other Ivy Leagues are famous for using their master's degrees in education, data analysis, health care administration, etc. to subsidize their small, elite undergrad class. This is why you should react with suspicion when you see schools like Stanford brag about offering 100% tuition waivers to undergraduates. Undergraduates are a tiny portion of the student body!

But the US higher ed system has a clear divide between the "winners" above and the "losers," which are mostly small liberal arts colleges, the majority of which have been in a steep financial decline lately. St. Joseph's approach of offering a technical certification alongside an abbreviated liberal arts curriculum is novel, and if you think that the liberal arts model of education is a good one, then you should hope that St. Joseph's succeeds, because the rest of the sector is really hurting and there is a need for innovation.

Needless to say, in most other countries, higher ed is more directly managed by the government and the notion of "profit margins" is less meaningful.

 

[MoonFlier]

The College of St. Joseph the Worker is a new Catholic college in Ohio that offers a six-year degree in which students earn both a BA in religious studies and complete an apprenticeship in a skilled trade.

Some quotes from their site:




https://www.collegeofstjoseph.com/

What do you think?

When I talk to older people about their regrets about how they spent their education years, I have heard many express that they wish there were something like this: A college-like experience where you get to debate timeless questions about the meaning of life and man's place in the world with intelligent peers, but one that also sets you up for a fulfilling and stable career.

And my impression of the zoomer generation, with their famous fracture between "progressives" and "trads," is that there is a substantial minority of them who will find this model very attractive. In other words, I think that this college will do well on pure marketing grounds. I hope that it makes good on its promises to its students.

What was your educational experience like? Did you go to college? What do you think about the idea that many people who are currently going to college would do better for themselves by going into a skilled trade?

How do you feel about the gendered flavor of the College of St. Joseph? (Yeah, yeah, I know the Pope is Catholic.) It feels like they are leaning hard into a very specific notion of nominally biblical masculinity.

I think I'm reasonably qualified to chime in here in that the first 3.5 years of my undergrad was from a Catholic College (and I was raised Catholic). Finished up my last 2 years at a well known school. The difference in quality of learning was like night and day and leaving there was the best thing I did.

First-first impressions: The church is losing followers at an alarming rate, they're willing to try anything to get the younger generation to buy in... Yes, I said buy in, quite literally.

Second-First Impression: They're looking for priests and don't know where to find them. Why not try the good old college route? Sweet talk some of those debaters into religious leaders. They don't have to adhere to the program of beliefs 100%, never did. It's all about what message they send to the community to keep them coming to mass and donating. Of course they're looking for men. The church still does not believe women are equals.

Now, as to my experience in an actual catholic college: They lied to, stole from and pigeon holed students. That's why I left. I was promised "X" for a program and received "S" with the school claiming that the two sounded the same. That has left me skeptical of not just Catholic schools, but all considering my son got a similar run around when he was headed off to a big university.