U.S. News just released its 2020 Best Colleges rankings on September 8. Published annually since 1985, they are the most widely read of any national rankings of colleges and universities. While they are often criticized for the predictability of the rankings of elite schools like Yale or Carleton, based on wealth and status rather than student learning, what — if anything — might they tell us about the eight Adventist undergraduate institutions in the United States?
What it demonstrates is that in hindsight the Mormon model would have been better. Many more SDA colleges will inevitably close. How much better off we would be if they were all combined into one campus that ranks where it really counts.
I wouldn’t put a whole lot of stock in the US News rankings. A few years ago I was a member of the site visit team for an institution that was on probation. They succeeded in getting that status lifted and were listed as one institution on the “best of the West” list the following year. The improbability of that meteoric recovery and ascent is astonishing. As long as SDA institutions are preparing students for graduate and professional schools, they are doing their job and that standard is all that means much. In the broader world of higher education it’s what graduates can do that counts. Whether one’s institution is “major league, minor league, bush league or the wasteland” doesn’t really matter. As some one has said “Harvard don’t mean nothin’ if you ain’t got talent.”
As for the Mormon model and its applicatiion to consolidating SDA higher education, there is limited comparison. In national surveys slightly more than 5 per cent of students travel more than 500 miles to attend an institution of higher education. Mormons have had one flagship institution (and a couple more now) through much of their history. SDA’s are tied to the regional model as witnessed by the proliferation of duplicate programs across institutions. Nothing short of extreme exingency will change that–and perhaps not even that will lead to change.
It seems that one of the best determining is “Is a student when completing
their course of study able to be successful in what they wanted to do?” If
any professional licensing exams, are they able to complete with high scores?
This would be the same for any educational program –
Elementary school
Middle school
Jr. High
High school
College/University
If one lives in a Christian home then the best solution is to commute to a local Public or private college or university. Graduate school is soon enough to venture out.
No suggestion was intended that we should be looking belatedly at one consolidated campus but rather, given the size of our church and how easy and cheap transport is today, it would be better to have the benefits of scale and standing of a Brigham Young. I am sure there are plenty of graduates of BYU who get job interviews and other opportunities not afforded to graduates of a college or university no one has even heard of.
Perhaps more ON LINE LEARNING offerings might be helpful to
cut the cost of Tuition Fees at our SDA Colleges/Universities.
there are probably many SDA families whose INCOMES are over
$50,000 and so not eligible for any grants or government loans,
and have to purchase loans from other lending places.
One thing is noticeable.
Students speak highly of the SDA schools they attend.
Southern has had a lot of students from other Unions.
I completed requirements for a BS/Nursing in '83 there.
I heard a lot of great things about SouthWestern from persons
who attended.
My daughter went to both Southern and then to WallaWalla for
her masters. Enjoyed both.
A number of her friends went to Loma Linda for specialties.
From what I see on Internet on Sabbaths, LaSierra is very good.
So, in a way all these ranking mean nothing. Depending mostly on
the instruction offered and word of mouth advertising.
There is something Local Churches fail to do for students who do
not attend Academy, but local secular high schools. And those who
attend local secular colleges.
Offer the Academy Bible Classes [Fr, So, Jr, Sr] with Academy textbooks
on Sabbath or maybe Sunday.
Offer College level Religion classes with textbooks on Sabbath or maybe
Sunday.
For students NOT attending Academy or College, Religious Education
as taught in the Local church is very Primitive and not challenging to
their developing thought processes of their age group.
Some did. Many of my friends from MBA ended up finishing at non-SDA colleges and universities after starting at La Sierra or PUC.
Also, at the time I don’t think we really knew how bad it was. Most of us came to this opinion with time and the advantage hindsight.
PUC, for example, is more or less run like a high school. Students are treated like children much as high school students are. Granted they are young, but they’re technically adults and should be treated as such.
My daughter graduated from Walla Walla University with a degree in engineering. I have never regretted that she attended PUC or WWU. I think both are top notch higher education institutions. It was expensive, but worth it. I saved, scrimped, invested and paid for it all. IMO too many public colleges are hotbeds of leftwing political activism. I totally left the choice up to my daughter, with one exception; I wouldn’t pay a dime if she chose UC Berkeley.
My other daughter attended Weimar Institute. That was a disaster. At the time I gave Weimar high marks here on spectrum, but boy did I change my mind. It was an indoctrination center for “Last Generation Theology”.
When did you go to MBA? I attended my freshman year in '66-'67. I hated it. I thought I was in prison. the dean must have been a protégé of FBI director J. Edgar Hoover.
I attended 83 - 85, in its heyday. I think 85 was the largest class ever. Now it’s just a (literally) rotting shell of what it once was. Hard to believe it’d even open.
I had a reasonably good experience despite every effort by the administration to indoctrinate me.
I imagined that college would be so different and better. That I could finally be free of petty rules and such. What a huge disappointment PUC was. It was basically boarding high school for older children.
My son visited MBA at a friends behest when he went to Socal campmeeting. His mother and I were separated, and I was having a hard time with him. So I let him go to MBA in 2002 when he was a junior. I had no love lost for the place, and I don’t think shipping kids off to boarding academies is the way to go, especially when you are an unsecure freshman like I was when I went. I begrudgingly caved in because I couldn’t see any other alternative, and at the time I sorta saw it as an answer to prayer. His mother was quite insistent I let him go.
Egads, the cost!!! It was $1600 when I went in 66-67. The minimum wage was $1.30 but you could make considerable more at Harris Pine mill. Some kids paid their entire tuition working at Harris Pine. By 2002 tuition was $12,000. Harris Pine was gone even before you went there. Now it is $22,000!!! The minimum wage would have to be nearly $18.00 just to match tuition increases.
In 2002 the dorm looked like a run down ghetto. It was basically the same as when I went there, only 36 years of added wear and tear. The cafeteria had been remodeled and looked nice. My guess is with declining enrollment the school has not had the money for capital improvements. Enrollment was less than half of what it was 35 years earlier.
Dean Willy was a whole lot better than old Pirate Wheeler , who must have had a job at one time working for FBI director J. Edgar Hoover. The Byrd’s were the only faculty members there in 2002 who were there when I went. I never took a class from either.
In the end, my son flunked out in the first semester of his second year there. I can’t blame the school one bit. It was entirely his fault. As a senior his classes were in the morning that year, and he was too lazy to get out of bed and go. I landed him a posh job in the dorm and he got fired for being AWOL when on duty. There were other issues too. When I was there the dorm was sealed like a penetentary and we were treated like inmates. When my son was there the dorm security leaked like a sieve.
His very mother who insisted I let him go there, snuck down and brought him home. He never did graduate from high school.
I did the best I could. I finally got peace of mind when my wife divorced me 4 years ago and a year later I left the SDA church. The very church I was so devoted to, donated tons of money to for over 30 years, treated me badly when my wife and I divorced and I came out of the closet and revealed that I was gay. I was, and am the same person I was before they knew. The church just had some added information. I guess it doesn’t pay to be honest. I reckon it’s okay to break the 9th commandment, but you are hell bound if you do not keep the 4th one.
There is a boarding academy in the state in which I live. Last year they had 54 students. About 25% were from outside the USA. I don’t see how this school can continue. I don’t know what the enrollment is this year, but I doubt it’s all that much different. It has been in steady decline for 20+ yrs. I wish I knew what was being discussed behind closed doors about the future of this school, although I’m sure we can all figure that out. It’s like pulling teeth to close an SDA school, regardless of the numbers and financials.
PUC costs $31,000 a year and is ranked #10 in the Regional Colleges West, somewhat after the Oral Roberts University (of all places) and just before Southwestern Adventist University at #11.
I’d pick Berkeley & get a better education and pay 1/2 as much.
