A new trade and liberal arts school: “College of St. Joseph the Worker”

https://www.collegeofstjoseph.com

by jseliger • 4 years ago

176 205 4 years ago

seibelj3• 4 years ago

I think you could make a pretty inexpensive Computer Science non-profit that is unaccredited but issued its own degree. No one cares about accreditation anyway. It would take a wealthy person to put their name on it, and be a struggle to get the first cohort off the ground, but once you get solid lecturers and a good reputation it would be self-fulfilling. You only need cheap laptops and a single room for the whole cohort. Otherwise it's knowledge transfer. If you paid the lecturers above-average salary and outsourced everything else, you could probably do it for under $5 million a year, which for a rich tech person is peanuts.

rchaud• 4 years ago

It would take a wealthy person to put their name on it, and be a struggle to get the first cohort off the ground, but once you get solid lecturers and a good reputation it would be self-fulfilling.

Any real world examples of this? Besides the Thiel fund of course, which is a ideological vanity project.

seibelj3• 4 years ago

There is a new university called UATX that is trying https://www.uaustin.org/

But they seem to be going down the route of trying to get accredited. IMO no one cares about any of that except other academics, businesses only care about talent and intelligence.

RcouF1uZ4gsC• 4 years ago

Vanderbilt, Yale, Stanford, Duke, Carnegie Mellon.

Rich people have been putting their names on institutions of higher learning for some time.

ThrowawayR24• 4 years ago

"No one cares about accreditation anyway."

"... U.S. jurisdictions where the use of higher education credentials from diploma mills and unaccredited schools is explicitly illegal or legally restricted include Illinois, Indiana, Maine, Michigan, Missouri, Nevada, New Jersey, North Dakota, Oregon, South Dakota, Texas, Virginia, and Washington. Many other states are also considering restrictions on unaccredited degree use in order to help prevent fraud. ..." -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diploma_mills_in_the_United_St...

bencollier492• 4 years ago

This sounds like moat-building. But what does "the use of higher education credentials from diploma mills and unaccredited schools" actually amount to? Listing them on a CV?

wildrhythms2• 4 years ago

Oh you got your degree from Omnicorp College? Sorry, at Megacorp we only accept degrees from Megacorp University (a subsidiary of the Walt Disney-Unilever School). No one cares about accreditation.

whatshisface4• 4 years ago

How does writing a one-sentence cyberpunk story say anything about who cares about accreditation?

pram• 4 years ago

Costco degrees have pretty broad acceptance though.

nibbleshifter2• 4 years ago

No one cares about accreditation anyway.

Outside of HN and the SV bubble, accreditation really matters.

8bitsrule2• 4 years ago

Back when I was a manual laborer, if you could pick up a hammer and hit the nail every time - or mixup a good batch of mud - or drive a skidder of logs to the landing - that was the interview and accreditation.

College enabled me to talk fancier during that time.

tolleydbg2• 4 years ago

Not in trades. These students will graduate with years of experience, taking the website explanation at face value. There isn't something akin to ABET, or even FE/PE exams for these skills, but if they can count their work experience while in school here, they can become licensed tradesmen in states with work and apprenticeship requirements.

SV_BubbleTime2• 4 years ago

I’m hiring for a Flutter and BLE job right now. Couldn’t possibly care less about accreditation and far from an HN-typical.

We’re out there. Really doesn’t matter on the specific job, all I care is, can you do it, and will you be a distraction?

chaosharmonic• 4 years ago

An accredited CS degree program is actually one of FreeCodeCamp's long-term goals.[0]

[0] https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/free-accredited-bachelors-...

ModernMech2• 4 years ago

Our CS department just spent an entire year on our reaccreditation. It’s a huge pain in the ass and takes a ton of effort. But it’s one of the main thing parents ask about. People definitely care.

chrisseaton6• 4 years ago

Parents ask... do employers? I would guess not.

jollybean5• 4 years ago

Accreditation is not necessary, but it matters. Also the reputation of the college, particularly in professional fields.

For trade school, it probably does not matter at all.

the_only_law• 4 years ago

$15000 a year including room isn't bad, but I can still get similar education much cheaper at a nearby CC.

wildrhythms2• 4 years ago

There's also the fact that a CC is accredited, so not only do you get a degree, but you also get credits that can be transferred to another college.

reaperducer• 4 years ago

There's also the fact that a CC is accredited

Doesn't the school have to open first, and then get accredited later? Or is it possible to be accredited from day one?

tolleydbg2• 4 years ago

I don't think the student who who attend a trade school like this would care in the slightest that it isn't accredited. Taking them at their word that they teach five trades, offer employment at a local construction company, and set students up with an apprenticeship, these students could care less about accreditation or a degree. They'll finish with several years of experience in a trade.

UIUC_06• 4 years ago

There's also the fact that a CC is accredited

One wonders if the accreditation agencies are neutral, or if they're going to say "well, you're not a real school, so we're not going to accredit you."

dragonwriter9• 4 years ago

No, you cannot get the politico-religious indoctrination that is the overt mission of the “Catholoc Studies” education this school offers at your local CC; give the current Supreme Court a few more terms and if you live in a predominantly Catholic state, that may change, but historically the Establishment Clause jurisprudence would prevent it.

jollybean5• 4 years ago

Since almost all of the early, 'good' Universities including the entire Ivy League (and of course the much older European schools) literally started as 'Seminaries' to train the Priesthood, and expanded from there, and the very notion of 'University' education in the US and around the world is based on this framework of higher learning, with integrated spiritual aspects, I think the material reality of the situation is a bit more nuanced.

Yes, there are issues of Separation of Church and State, yes, the current SCOTUS is a scary in terms of their willingness to bend the constitution ...

... but it's also given that our colleges are by some measures a grift, that communitarian values may not be directly taught as many would like, that far-left ideologues dominate the social and political language, and that many people would like their colleges to at least have some kind of Religious Affiliation though maybe not outright 'Religious School'.

This school seems to be really heavy on the 'Catholicism', but I can see something like it where there aren't any 'religious studies' directly, but rather with some affiliation, as resonating quite a lot with people.

barry-cotter5• 4 years ago

historically the Establishment Clause jurisprudence would prevent it

The USA isn’t France. It’s freedom of religion, not freedom from religion. The US Federal government is forbidden to establish a religion but the states are free to do so.

New Hampshire had a state church until 1877.

http://restore-christian-america.org/statechurches.html

silent_cal4• 4 years ago

What makes you think this anti-Catholic bigotry is okay? Would you say this about an institution affiliated with any other religion? Shameful.

HNresetPass• 4 years ago

why use big word when small word work fine

woevdbz3• 4 years ago

This is the kind of premium that practicing Catholic parents may be willing to pay to extend a sanitized, pro-church environment for their children, beyond the Catholic primary schools where these children have gone to before. (And which might have well cost more...)

tptacek12• 4 years ago

Marist High School, on the south side of Chicago, which is about as mainstream and middle-class as Chicago Catholic high schools get, is $14k/yr.

ThrowawayTestr• 4 years ago

I was hoping the religion part would be more of a background thing and not a core tenant of the program. No option to skip the BA in Catholic Studies.

riffic• 4 years ago

tenet

rossdavidh• 4 years ago

Less significant in and of itself, is the fact that this is not the first new college I've heard of being founded in the last few years, at a time when overall undergrad college enrollment is in decline, and a few colleges have recently either closed or merged with other institutions to make one college smaller than the two were when separate.

This would seem to be contradictory, if it is interpreted as a result of less demand for post-secondary education. It makes more sense, if it is the result of a dissatisfaction with current US post-secondary institutions.

indymike• 4 years ago

It makes more sense, if it is the result of a dissatisfaction with current US post-secondary institutions.

This is exactly what is going on. Boot camps, income share models, and a lot of newer colleges are simply attempts to disrupt the post-secondary industry. In this case, they have a really interesting table on the Tuition and fees page showing how students come out $171,000 ahead with their apprenticeship program (and it is quite conservative).

mikeryan• 4 years ago

Dunno this seems like a bit of a strange one and I'm sure others have popped up. This is a faith based, trade school where everyone graduates with a "Catholic Studies Degree"

It's barely a college, its not accredited AFAICT and seems more like a trade school - outside of the "Catholic Studies Degree" which maybe counts for a "real" BA?

philsnow3• 4 years ago

To my knowledge, accreditation takes a few years and requires demonstrating adherence to the accreditation standards over a similar period of years.

I don't know if, for a new school, accreditation groups retroactively "credit" any degrees that the school has granted since opening.

HWR_143• 4 years ago

its not accredited AFAICT and seems more like a trade school

AFAICT, trade schools also need to be accredited, if they're graduates are able to get into the trades that they are trained in.

TylerE2• 4 years ago

Sounds more like a slightly upmarket version of a southern “Bible college”

feet• 4 years ago

I remember reading recently about a new professor starting a nonprofit college/university to cut out as much admin bloat as possible, is that one of the ones you're talking about?

I ask because I can't remember what the name of the school was and I haven't been able to locate information even though I tried. Does anyone here remember what I'm talking about? I actually thought j read about it here on HN.

Yes, I tried the search function :)

karmicthreat3• 4 years ago

These new "freedom" or other themed universities set my griftdar off every time. Like the University of Austin does. I'm not very fond of the grifty nature of established post-secondary education either. But you at least get something of some value at the end.

melony• 4 years ago

Isn't UT Austin an established state school? They have a lot of alumni in the valley.

karmicthreat3• 4 years ago

UT Austin is a completely established school. I'm talking about the deceptively named University of Austin which is the Musk, Rogan, Fridman affiliated school opening maybe soon. I don't know if those 3 are actually affiliated with it, but their names come up with it.

webel0• 4 years ago

Parent is referring to a non-UT, liberal arts school [1].

[1] https://www.uaustin.org/

rayiner• 4 years ago

But you at least get something of some value at the end

Aside from a few elite universities, do you? What’s a Bachelors of Arts from Directional State worth?

karmicthreat3• 4 years ago

Probably get you through more doors than someone without one if you both have zero experience. It can lessen the hurdle of getting that first experience also if you take advantage of internship your university can arrange.

halffaday• 4 years ago

Elite universities are shameless credential laundering operations. I wouldn’t hire anybody with a degree from Harvard or Yale for anything other than sales.

A poor kid who wants to be successful is much more valuable than some legacy admission.

tptacek12• 4 years ago

This is a strange question. A BA from a 2nd or 3rd tier state school is sufficient to apply to a wide variety of white collar jobs, all of which require degrees.

jimbokun• 4 years ago

And the fortunes charged by long standing universities for degrees with little value in the marketplace, don't?

jollybean5• 4 years ago

They are literally directed at reducing crippling debt of students.

If they grift harder than Northwestern, and leave students in 2x more debt than a decent school, well, then I guess it's maybe a grift.

I would take their statements at face value.

I suggest they are absolutely trying to do what they state they are trying to do.

That said ... it's obviously a bit of a risk.

idiotsecant• 4 years ago

But you at least get something of some value at the end.

You very often get something that has little to no value in itself, along with a crushing pile of debt.

kulahan• 4 years ago

This college is charging $15k/year for a 3 year school. I dunno how that compares to others, but it sounds pretty affordable? I’ve been in the job market for quite a while, so my knowledge of tuition costs is very outdated.

haberman• 4 years ago

But you at least get something of some value at the end.

That makes it worse honestly. You can go hundreds of thousands of dollars into debt getting a BA in the humanities from a university whose tuition is increasing at 2x inflation, but society encourages that choice by giving the BA outsized value in unlocking professions like "salesman" and "firefighter." Meanwhile people are so under the weight of their debt that addressing it is a political issue at the national level, but so far the leading proposal is a one-time debt forgiveness package, which does nothing to address the structural issue.

Here we have a new college that is expressly trying to reduce costs substantially, while offering practical skills in in-demand trades. That sounds like a welcome correction to me. The idea that it is a "grift" only makes sense in an environment where society has made "accredited BA" the arbitrary entrance criteria into the professional class.

smkellat2• 4 years ago

According to the Secretary of State, the company was founded on March 3rd of this year. It doesn’t have legal authorization from the Chancellor of the Ohio Department of Education to operate in this state. The Chancellor can ask Attorney General Dave Yost to get an injunction to shut them down in short order if they enroll anyone.

The whole thing feels either like something is wrong or it is a sting by ICE. I remember them running one outside Detroit in the past couple years.

8bitsrule2• 4 years ago

devoted most of the years of his life on earth to manual work

Not sure sure about those missing 12 years, tho.;-|

Thorrez2• 4 years ago

Christian tradition suggests that Jesus simply lived in Galilee during that period

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unknown_years_of_Jesus#New_Tes...

That period is what they're referring to by "most of the years of his life".

philsnow3• 4 years ago

My understanding of this new college is that it's aimed at solving the perceived problem of four-year Catholic liberal arts schools, namely that they graduate a lot of young adults with the same (or roughly the same) degrees, but without an obvious career path laid out for them.

So, to begin with, high school graduates who go to these schools were predisposed to go to a Catholic liberal arts college. If the College in the article is successful in its mission, these folks will graduate with the degree they wanted, in the surroundings/environment they wanted, but also with solid career possibilities.

People have been swearing up and down for over a decade that the US graduates far more people with bachelors degrees than we "need", and that more parents[0] should be encouraging their kids to learn a trade. This new college is a response to that.

[0] it's seldom "us"; the problem seems to be isolated, in many peoples' minds, to other peoples' kids, and they don't want their own kids to be the ones who learn a trade.

sircastor2• 4 years ago

My mom frequently encouraged me to learn a trade on top of my chosen (at the time) field (Special Effects). She always pointed out that people would need their cars fixed and would need their electrical wired.

jseliger• 4 years ago

people would need their cars fixed

This may turn out to be false: electric cars require almost no maintenance.

jameshart• 4 years ago

Special effects is a trade.

And people will always need stuff that snuck into shot rotoscoping out. Don’t worry.

Baeocystin• 4 years ago

When the first dotcom crash hit, I paused working in tech and welded at a shipyard for a while. Enjoyed the work, and was very, very thankful I had a fallback skill!

3a2d292• 4 years ago

To add, there are so many kids that go to college just because it’s suppose to be the next chapter of life.

Allowing people to learn trades while still having “the college experience” I think would fix this.

ethanbond2• 4 years ago

Kids go to college because even despite the wildly unacceptable costs, it remains the single best investment a person can make in their future earning potential. They go to college because it is actually very likely the correct decision with the information they have at the time.

kwatsonafter2• 4 years ago

This is going to turn our country backwards. We're the richest country in the world. We should be training our citizens to be PhDs and exporting innovation and culture. The standard for "skilled trade" should be world-class skills (Hyperbaric Welding, Robotics, Civil Engineering; ie. "skills an advanced society would export") and not work that can be exported to the developing world. These, "advanced skills" require a level of critical thinking that requires college education. We're beginning to forget that we can't have an advanced society without a well-educated and informed voting populace.

Relevant:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolfsburg

abakker• 4 years ago

Sure, but college attendance is very high now and wasn’t back when we had a “more informed electorate”. Educational achievement is not a catch all for actually being a thinking and critical person.

Also, not everyone has equal potential, and the people who do have it may not want to use it. Having many trade paths, not just elite ones helps our society to match achievement and desire. We certainly need the full spectrum and should encourage the development of more choice.

chadash• 4 years ago

I need a plumber. And I don't care what plumbers in Vietnam charge, because I need a plumber here. And if everyone I know made twice as much money, we'd still need plumbers, maybe even more so, and we'd just pay more for them.

teakettle42• 4 years ago

First, we still need plumbers, painters, and tradesmen of all sorts.

Second, not everyone is equipped to earn a PhD by significantly advancing our knowledge in a useful field. In fact, the majority of people are not.

Third, the demand for degrees — due to the idea that everyone must go to college, and misguided subsidies to make that happen — already far exceeds what colleges are able to supply while still being achievable by the majority of their customer base.

The result has been degree inflation, cost inflation, and a huge number of useless workers with useless degrees unable to pay off their crippling college debt.

bjornsing2• 4 years ago

This is going to turn our country backwards. We're the richest country in the world. We should be training our citizens to be PhDs and exporting innovation and culture.

I’m Swedish and this is the ideology Sweden is based on. But I’ve come to see it as backwards, even immoral.

There’s a dream on the left side of the political spectrum that everyone is borne a blank slate that society can fill with whatever it wants. By this logic a rich country can fill their blank slates with wonderfully productive and innovative PhDs, because all it takes is economic resources invested in education.

But that’s simply not true. Highly challenging, creative, innovative thinking doesn’t work that way. Take Srinivasa Ramanujan as an example. With no formal education at all he wrote himself into the history books of mathematics. He’s an extreme example. But consider e.g. the distribution of scores on the Putnam: top scores are around 125, and most years the median is zero(!). Those with a zero score do not in general lack education.

I have one brother that has a mild intellectual handicap and one that has a PhD in medicine. The former makes sandwiches for the kids in a local school and works in a stable. The latter makes equipment for medical research. They are both perfectly happy with their stations in life. But taken to the extreme this ideology means that if they were borne in different countries then their positions may very well be switched. Nobody benefits from this. It would make them both miserable, the sandwiches worse and (probably :P) the medical research equipment less useful.

“The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” In this case I think that means every country on earth is going to have some brilliant innovators, and some skilled craftsmen. They’ll need both to stay rich.

dragonwriter9• 4 years ago

My understanding of this new college is that it's aimed at solving the perceived problem of four-year Catholic liberal arts schools, namely that they graduate a lot of young adults with the same (or roughly the same) degrees, but without an obvious career path laid out for them.

No, it's aimed at solving a perceived problem of the Catholic working class, that they aren't effectively equipped and harnessed as a political arm of the Church to shape civil society.

The people this is aimed to attract is not people who would otherwise go to traditional liberal arts colleges and universities, Catholic or otherwise.

IncRnd2• 4 years ago

My understanding of this new college is that it's aimed at solving the perceived problem of four-year Catholic liberal arts schools, namely that they graduate a lot of young adults with the same (or roughly the same) degrees, but without an obvious career path laid out for them.

The top of the home page states their aim, "Learn a trade,earn a degree, and graduate without crippling debt. The College of St. Joseph the Worker forms students into effective and committed members of their communities by teaching them the Catholic intellectual tradition while training them in skilled and dignified labor. We teach our students to think, but also to pray, to love, and to build."

tptacek12• 4 years ago

That's their stated goal, but their staffing suggests a truer revealed goal, which is political rather than practical: they aren't accredited to offer a degree, the degree they offer isn't valuable in the trades they hope to serve, they don't have instructors with credentials in the trades, and they cost more than a community college. What they do have is a founder and coterie of teaching fellows that share a peculiar ideology.

By way of example: "electrician" is one of their 5 trades, and they have no listed electrician faculty.

analog31• 4 years ago

>> People have been swearing up and down for over a decade that the US graduates far more people with bachelors degrees than we "need", and that more parents[0] should be encouraging their kids to learn a trade.

The trades are not without their issues, however. Many of them are physical jobs. The trades people who have come to work at my house, if they're my age (58) are hobbling and broken. Their hands look like hell. Many are sunburned. Many if not most of them work for tiny businesses that receive virtually no oversight.

Encouraging the trades might make sense in a country with a strong safety net, free health care, better labor laws, stronger unions. The American public figures who are promoting the trades also tend to be doing nothing about those things, or are even opposed to them. I've heard that the trades are a good option in Europe.

TimTheTinker• 4 years ago

Encouraging the trades might make sense in a country with a strong safety net, free health care, better labor laws, stronger unions.

This is just my own observation, but the tradesmen I've seen do OK in the US are those that own and run their own business -- even those that have just 1 tradesperson working. Think "Inland Plumbing LLC" run by a guy and his wife out of their house. Yes, many trades are back-breaking work. I have a relative who was a home inspector for years (crawling around in attics, crawl spaces, and roofs all day is exhausting), and he did struggle at times to pay to raise several kids.

Owner-operator electricians and plumbers in particular (and especially those rated for commercial work) can do very well.

worthless-trash2• 4 years ago

The local tradies in Australia, -definitely- do okay.

throwaway0a5e• 4 years ago

The biggest problem (and not everyone sees it as one) with the trades is that there's a lot less opportunities to coast through middle age without putting in effort ahead of time.

You only see the 58yo that comes to unclog your drain. You don't see the 58yo who's name is on the van. You don't see the one who has some comfy job as a building manager for some commercial facility.

protomyth• 4 years ago

In a weird way it reminds me of many of the TCUs (tribal colleges & universities) where trades / vocational degrees are taught along side "normal" college classes. Its actually a pretty good idea and if properly done can result in some really nice interaction.

I really wish that someone will mix a vocational robotics certificate with an actual robotic engineering degree. I just want to see the interaction. I dearly wish the result of the technicians having to build something designed by the engineering degree.

robg• 4 years ago

For $15k a year, couldn’t someone just apprentice in a trade and get paid?

astura4• 4 years ago

You're assuming apprenticeships are available. Friend of mine ended up going to community college because the apprenticeship he wanted had a waiting list that was several years long.

quickthrowman• 4 years ago

Yes, the locals (union) my shop hires from offers classes to apprentices at the hiring hall these days, no trade school required. Multiple construction trades offer these programs, including the well-paid ones like electricians, pipefitters, ironworkers, and sheet metal workers. There are a ton of experienced tradespeople retiring and not enough younger workers entering the trades to replace them.

shp0ngle• 4 years ago

"Catholic" and "Masonry" on the same page?

https://www.collegeofstjoseph.com/trades/masonry

Thorrez2• 4 years ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masonry

not

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freemasonry

joemazerino• 4 years ago

I got the joke -- take my upvote

microtherion• 4 years ago

No need for an upvote — a fancy handshake should do.

elcritch2• 4 years ago

It’s ok because the masonry isn’t free. ;)

pyuser5835• 4 years ago

This seems like an interesting idea. You can object to the religious element. But a low cost liberal arts college that also teaches a trade sounds like a really, really good idea.

tptacek12• 4 years ago

It's an idea that every community college in the country has already had, isn't it?

pyuser5835• 4 years ago

No. I went to community college before “real college” - and it tried to be all things to all people.

“Want to transfer to the local land grant college? Get your credits here!”

“Want to earn a certificate IT security? Take your courses here!

“Want to earn your GED? Take the courses and the test here!

Honestly, now that I think of it, the reason this college appeals to me is because of how focused they are. They have a very specific goal.

“A very specific goal” is something most colleges lack, so it’s not fair to pick in community colleges.

JackFr• 4 years ago

a low cost liberal arts college that also teaches a trade sounds like a really, really good idea

It sounds a little like 1930 New York City high school. My grandfather taught Latin and Greek in the HS in New York, retiring in the early 60’s. That might have been the golden age of NYC public schools, but they seemingly were able to teach practical things like typing, bookkeeping and some industrial arts as well as a lot of history, literature and culture.

Animats• 4 years ago

This is the Catholic Church returning to its roots - ensuring the aristocracy a supply of diligent, compliant workers.

mieses• 4 years ago

Good. It's a more satisfying life for the Last Man than to be an intellectually neutered, woke, and subordinate dependent.

silent_cal4• 4 years ago

Don't you know that a liberal arts degree has the exact opposite aim? And the Catholic Church has always supported them. On the other hand the modern university sees STEM as the only thing worthwhile because it's "useful" and liberal arts as worthless because they're "useless". Even today in countries with a Catholic heritage the work culture still places a high value on leisure.

Imnimo2• 4 years ago

Do you really need to pay $15k a year to learn HVAC from guys with PhDs in Theology?

throwoutway• 4 years ago

Do you really need to pay $15k a year to learn HVAC from guys with PhDs in Theology?

An incredibly ignorant and uneducated comment that’s unnecessarily dismissive.

It took two seconds to confirm on their website that your comment is wrong. Not all their faculty is theology

morelisp2• 4 years ago

It is still significantly more expensive than existing Salesian programs. There’s definitely an ideological component here they expect someone will pay for.

Imnimo2• 4 years ago

Yes, it's only half theology degrees - there's also a philosophy and a history degree. The only ones actually related to the trades are two guys with no listed degree. One says "Math and Engineering", and other just says the single word "carpentry".

Sounds like exactly the qualifications I'd want for an expensive HVAC certification...

tptacek12• 4 years ago

I think you're wrong about this, and the parent comment makes a valid point about the credentials of the instructors at this organization, which appears to have as much a political mission as it does an educational mission. It's also priced higher than a community college, but lacks accreditation or, presumably, the facilities of a typical CC.

smkellat2• 4 years ago

I’m very curious how they’re getting around section 1713.02 of the Ohio Revised Code as seen at https://codes.ohio.gov/ohio-revised-code/section-1713.02

They’re not on the Ohio Department of Higher Education’s authorized list. They make no mention on their website of even seeking authorization. They’re not clearly identifying themselves as a “Bible College” to take advantage of that loophole.

tptacek12• 4 years ago

This institution doesn't appear to be affiliated with any US diocese or Catholic order, and the founder and several of the "teaching fellows" are fairly political; you can read a bunch of their stuff on https://newpolity.com/. This is a somewhat weird species of "Catholic" philosophy that departs in a bunch of ways from Catholicism as practiced at parishes around, say, Chicago.

I'd be a little wary.

katamarimambo• 4 years ago

The "Minimalism and the non-binary body" is an example of how a text can be written with eloquence but be just as demented as GG Allin lyric.

silent_cal4• 4 years ago

Why do you think the parishes around Chicago are normative for Catholicism? The impression I get when I hear about it is that things are pretty bad there. On the other hand, a lot of young Catholics that I know listen to shows like New Polity.

tptacek12• 4 years ago

Bad where? I bring up Chicago because (a) I live here, (b) grew up Catholic here (c) am now Catholic here, (d) it's one of the largest cities in the country, and (e) it's famously a bastion of US Catholicism.

russellbeattie• 4 years ago

Wow. I happened to go to the College of St. Joseph [1] for my first semester of college, so you can imagine my surprise at this link. Apparently the college I went to closed in 2019. That's sad, it was very good to me. I guess that's why this new org added "the worker" to their name.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/College_of_St._Joseph

motohagiography3• 4 years ago

This emphasis on developing physical competence in a trade as part of a moral education is very Aristotelian (techne) and by extension, Aquinian, for what I vaguely remember as being the St. Thomas Aquinas and after him the Jesuits effectively reconciling Catholicism with "Hellenist" ideas, which were the classical philosphers. That's literally my depth on it though, like a bit of trivia. I spent a little time with some Jesuits and was surprised at how closely their ideas resembled classical thinking, and was completely unlike the evangelicals and secular teachers I had known. However, the school sounds pretty amazing. Outside STEM, undergrad programs seem to be producing ideologues and not builders and this college seems like an antidote to that.

tptacek12• 4 years ago

Does it sound amazing? The 5 trades this school claims to serve are carpentry, plumbing, masonry, electical, and HVAC. Of 8 listed faculty, just 1 claims expertise in any of these trades --- carpentry. That instructor operates an inn in Ohio and blogs about politics. The school doesn't offer trade certifications at all, but rather a degree in Catholic studies.

By comparison, Triton College, my nearest community college, offers certifications in 3 of the 5 trades on this list. City Colleges of Chicago offer all 5. For each trade, their certification is recognized, and each trade program has a listed catalog of required and optional courses, with faculty.

Triton costs $11k (~$5k after aid). This "Catholic" college (it is unaffiliated with the church) costs $15k --- and doesn't issue a certification in 1 or 2 years (I don't think it offers one at all; you get a "Catholic studies" degree, which I doubt many plumbing companies are looking for).

This doesn't sound like an amazing deal to me. It sounds like something else.

motohagiography3• 4 years ago

The amazing part to me was using physical trade competence for a philosophical foundation. Is their program ideological? Absolutely, and they are pretty forthright about it. It reminded me a lot of Matthew B. Crawford's "shopclass as soulcraft," book, which riffed on the same themes of the intrinsically moral quality of competence. That's the root idea in their ideology right there, I think.

On the scam side, their church affiliation only needs approval at a fairly low level, as the Church isn't really that monolithic, it's very much a federation in which things as different as liberation theology, jesuitism, cults of saints, and even opus dei can co-exist under the same umbrella. If the objection were that this school is mainly a conservative ideological training ground, I would agree that's an accurate assessment, but I didn't get the impression that was hidden from sight, so I didn't think we needed to be oblique about characterizing it.

They don't say, "welcome to our unaccredited reactionary conservative stochastic terror indoctrination centre" because they don't define themselves in terms from critical theories that originate from (to them) an alien worldivew. I'd agree it's the something-else you are referring to, but that's what makes it interesting.

A new trade and liberal arts school: “College of St. Joseph the Worker”

Related Stories