Sattler College Turmoil

[Josh]

Benefiting from student loans, an extremely predatory product, and charging usury is unconscionable to me.

[Soloist]

I have many objections to Sattler college but the financial burden to students isn’t one of them.
If you chose to go to a school styling itself as an elite Christian college with unique educational elements lost to the modern world in a big city with expensive costs… then you kind of are asking for it.

[mike]

I have many objections to Sattler college but the financial burden to students isn’t one of them.
If you chose to go to a school styling itself as an elite Christian college with unique educational elements lost to the modern world in a big city with expensive costs… then you kind of are asking for it.

I would agree with that. I don't have a problem with the cost. Why do we want something that costs a lot of money for free? My questions about Sattler have more to do with whether the cost is really worth it, especially if the ideology isn't really something that aligns with conservative Anabaptist values. I don't necessarily have a problem with going to a college that doesn't share my values, but I can do that closer to home if I want to. And if the school is primarily about worldview education I am definitely going to pick something closer to what I believe such as Faith Builders. If it's about studying biology or physics or medicine, that can be done at a community college while living in one's home community.

That said, if I were young and looking to go to college, I might be adventurous enough to want the experience of living in Boston and studying in that environment. I probably couldn't have afforded it though.

[Ken]

I have many objections to Sattler college but the financial burden to students isn’t one of them.
If you chose to go to a school styling itself as an elite Christian college with unique educational elements lost to the modern world in a big city with expensive costs… then you kind of are asking for it.

Yes, college is a free market. There are nearly 4,000 degree-granting colleges and universities in the US. You have plenty of choices. The question is always going to be: "Is this the best available option for the money". Because it is a lot of money.

Sattler is basically trying to do two separate things: Provide higher-education training to students, and evangelize to and provide religious instruction to those same students.

Regarding the first objective. They have only five majors: Religion studies, Business, Computer Science, History, and Human Biology. I can't speak to how well they teach the first four subjects. But I'm skeptical about the Biology. According to the course catalog the Biology and Chemistry lab courses are taught at the Massachusetts College of Pharmacy, through the Harvard Extension School, or at other "to be approved" colleges around Boston. And the senior research project is arranged at an off-campus facility as well. So really all they do at Sattler is the book learning stuff (readings, PowerPoint lectures, etc.) and all the actual hands-on science is farmed out to other local institutions. All of the chemistry is through Harvard Extension School since they don't have their own Chemistry professor. Harvard Extension School is not Harvard, it is just an open-enrollment online learning web site with the Harvard name on it. If the focus is on human biology with an eye towards future health care careers then it should be a chemistry and biochemistry heavy curriculum and they have no chemistry professors.

Regarding the second objective. Typically faith-based colleges are operated by specific denominations to add the "finishing touches" to the education children who grew up in that faith. Catholics send their kids to Catholic universities, Baptists send their kids to Baptist universities, and so forth. Sattler doesn't seem to fit in well with that model. FOTW is far too small of a group to produce their own college students so they have to largely (or entirely) recruit from outside their group. But since they adhere to some fairly strict conservative tenants they are unlikely to attract many (if any) students from the general population. And instead seem to focus on recruiting from other Anabaptist groups with the apparent objective of somehow using the young to convert those groups into FOTW in some way. If you are a Conservative Anabaptist parent, I would think that would be cause for some second thoughts.

Personally I have to wonder if the old model of denominational colleges and universities is somewhat obsolete in the 21st century. I attended one but so far my children have not. Most small denominational colleges seem to either be struggling today, have become so generically ecumenical as to be largely indistinguishable except in very broad terms such as "evangelical, or have evolved into generic regional colleges. Perhaps a better model is to separate those two objectives and treat college as simply advanced training for specific careers and faith building and religious instruction as something you do through other avenues. Like, for example, how Muslims do it in the US. I'm not aware of any Muslim universities in the US. There are various Muslim religious institutes where you can go to study Islam. But there is no Muslim Baylor or Notre Dame where you study a wide variety of topics through a Muslim filter. Instead, Muslims invest in Islamic student centers at all major universities around the country and put a lot of effort into supporting Muslim students who attend public universities. I have no idea how successful they are in keeping their young people within the faith as they pass through university training. But it is certainly a different model than that taken by most conservative Christian denominations.

[mike]

Regarding the first objective. They have only five majors: Religion studies, Business, Computer Science, History, and Human Biology. I can't speak to how well they teach the first four subjects. But I'm skeptical about the Biology. According to the course catalog the Biology and Chemistry lab courses are taught at the Massachusetts College of Pharmacy, through the Harvard Extension School, or at other "to be approved" colleges around Boston. And the senior research project is arranged at an off-campus facility as well. So really all they do at Sattler is the book learning stuff (readings, PowerPoint lectures, etc.) and all the actual hands-on science is farmed out to other local institutions. All of the chemistry is through Harvard Extension School since they don't have their own Chemistry professor. Harvard Extension School is not Harvard, it is just an open-enrollment online learning web site with the Harvard name on it. If the focus is on human biology with an eye towards future health care careers then it should be a chemistry and biochemistry heavy curriculum and they have no chemistry professors.

I see they also have a dual degree program with Indiana Wesleyan University which offers BS degrees in:

Social Work*

Early Childhood Education*

Addictions Counseling

Accounting

Healthcare Administration

Human Resource Management

Information Technology Management

Cybersecurity

Communication

Since the university is located in Indiana, it's obviously online work.

[Soloist]

That practically makes it sound like they farm out the actual college aspects

[Ken]

Regarding the first objective. They have only five majors: Religion studies, Business, Computer Science, History, and Human Biology. I can't speak to how well they teach the first four subjects. But I'm skeptical about the Biology. According to the course catalog the Biology and Chemistry lab courses are taught at the Massachusetts College of Pharmacy, through the Harvard Extension School, or at other "to be approved" colleges around Boston. And the senior research project is arranged at an off-campus facility as well. So really all they do at Sattler is the book learning stuff (readings, PowerPoint lectures, etc.) and all the actual hands-on science is farmed out to other local institutions. All of the chemistry is through Harvard Extension School since they don't have their own Chemistry professor. Harvard Extension School is not Harvard, it is just an open-enrollment online learning web site with the Harvard name on it. If the focus is on human biology with an eye towards future health care careers then it should be a chemistry and biochemistry heavy curriculum and they have no chemistry professors.

I see they also have a dual degree program with Indiana Wesleyan University which offers BS degrees in:

Social Work*

Early Childhood Education*

Addictions Counseling

Accounting

Healthcare Administration

Human Resource Management

Information Technology Management

Cybersecurity

Communication

Since the university is located in Indiana, it's obviously online work.

Yeah, it's online.

Typically dual-degree programs aren't online. You actually attend both colleges. They used to be called 3-2 programs where you attend your home college for the first three years, take two additional years of some advanced training at another college, and then graduate with a both a bachelors from your original college and then a masters or some technical degree like engineering from the second university in one year less time than it would have taken to do them both separately.

What Sattler is describing above looks more like a double major which students commonly do at larger schools. Two bachelor's degrees is kind of a meh. If you are going to do a second degree it makes more sense to make it a Masters or professional degree.

But I don't see how one gets a degree in social work or early childhood education without doing field internships or student teaching and the like. Typically a part of getting such degrees is actually getting real experience in the field under the supervision of your advisors or mentors.

[ohio jones]

But since they adhere to some fairly strict conservative tenants they are unlikely to attract many (if any) students from the general population.

Conservative tenants can be difficult to find, and it's often illegal (and/or impractical) to discriminate. That's one of the reasons I'm not a landlord.

Most likely the word you wanted it "tenets."

[mike]

But since they adhere to some fairly strict conservative tenants they are unlikely to attract many (if any) students from the general population.

Conservative tenants can be difficult to find, and it's often illegal (and/or impractical) to discriminate. That's one of the reasons I'm not a landlord.

Most likely the word you wanted it "tenets."

Most likely the word you wanted was is.

[ohio jones]

Most likely the word you wanted was is.

Ah yes, Muphry's Law.