Last week, I referred to a local news program that falsely accused our organization of being in it for the money. In that same program, the reporter relished the fact that our institution of higher learning, Herbert W. Armstrong College, was “not accredited”—as if we somehow fell way short of the “standards” set by other accredited institutions.

What few people realize is how low the criterion is for more than 4,000 accredited universities and colleges in the United States. There is practically no oversight—at least not where it matters most. As Thomas Sowell points out here, accrediting agencies are concerned primarily with inputs—essentially spending—rather than tangible results.

The University of Colorado law school, for example, almost lost its accreditation in 2004 because it didn’t have enough minority and female professors and because its library was run-down. As one of the nation’s top-tier law schools, cu turned out graduates with a better chance of passing the bar exam on the first try than those coming out of Harvard and Yale.

But accrediting agencies have little time to measure and uphold such results-oriented output. “They measure how much money is spent on this or that,” Sowell wrote, “how many professors have tenure and other kinds of inputs.” What isn’t measured is the quality of education students end up with!

In my freshman Principles of Living class here at Armstrong College, we’ve been reviewing the late Allan Bloom’s classic text on education, The Closing of the American Mind. On page 340, Bloom commented on the great paradox that exists in higher education today (emphasis mine):

The so-called knowledge explosion and increasing specialization have not filled up the college years but emptied them. … These great universities—which can split the atom, find cures for the most terrible diseases, conduct surveys of whole populations and produce massive dictionaries of lost languages—cannot generate a modest program of general education for undergraduate students. This is a parable for our times.

In other words—as Herbert Armstrong foresaw even before Professor Bloom’s book came along—modern education has concentrated on developing the machine and teaching students how to make a living rather than educating them in the principles of how to live!

Today, nearly a full generation on from Bloom’s 1987 book, many now wonder if the university even prepares students to earn a living. According to a 2006 study by the American Institutes for Research, 50 percent of the students at four-year colleges and 75 percent of those at two-year colleges “do not score at the proficient level of literacy.”

One would think dumbing down the output of higher education would set off alarm bells inside accrediting agencies. Or, if not that, at least the staggering number of dropouts would. Forty-five percent of those who enroll in college never graduate.

In the real world, a manufacturing giant that produces defective or even inferior products would pay dearly in the marketplace for having such low standards.

But in the world of modern education, the already exorbitant tuition costs are skyrocketing faster than the rate of inflation. “Getting a college degree used to be like buying an expensive car,” the Weekly Standard wrote. “Now it’s like buying a house.” At present, here’s how the cost breaks down: $50,000 for a four-year degree at a public school and $120,000 if you attend a private school. According to the Standard, “The college board admonishes sticker-shocked parents (and students) to ‘consider college an investment’ and informs that the gap in earning potential between a high school diploma and a bachelor of arts degree is more than $1 million. Fair enough. Yet that doesn’t answer the question of why it is that college must cost so much” (May 12, 2004).

Thomas Sowell outlines two reasons for the outrageous cost of a college education. First, people are willing to pay the exorbitant fees. And second, there is little incentive for colleges to reduce their fees. “In any kind of economic transaction,” Sowell wrote earlier this year,

it seldom makes sense to charge prices so high that very few people can afford to pay them. But, with the government ready to step in and help whenever tuition is “unaffordable,” why not charge more than the traffic will bear and bring in Uncle Sam to make up the difference?The president of a small college once told me that, if he charged tuition that was affordable, even an institution the size of his would lose millions of dollars of government money every year.

The industry of higher learning is a multibillion-dollar business that’s funded by parents and taxpayers. As columnist Walter Williams recently noted, “Colleges make money whether students learn or not, whether they graduate or not, and whether they get a good job after graduating or not.” And, we should add, colleges make their billions whether students skip class or not, cheat on their exams or not, binge drink on the weekend or not, hook up for casual sex or not, and whether they contract a sexually transmitted disease or not.

But at least there’s an accrediting board that measures spending and enforces the rules of political correctness.

No Other College Like It

Herbert W. Armstrong College is different. For one, we are not in the college business. Student tuitions are partially subsidized by the generous donations of members and co-workers who voluntarily support the work of the Philadelphia Church of God.

For their part, students pay about $6,000 per year. They enroll with $4,000 up front, which offsets much of the cost for freshman year. Thereafter, all students pay for the rest of their room, board, supplies and tuition through a 20-hour-per-week student work program. About half of their student salary is withheld to pay for ongoing college expenses, enabling all of them to graduate from college debt-free.

Besides helping to pay off college fees, the student work program offers valuable on-the-job training that prepares students for their careers while simultaneously serving as a benefit to God’s work.

But Armstrong College offers much more than job training for our students—it teaches them how to live. At AC, life takes on new meaning! Here is where they learn about the real purpose for human life—where they learn true values.

We are accredited by the highest authority there is—Almighty God. God’s Word, as it is revealed in the foundation for all knowledge—the Holy Bible—serves as the overall guide that regulates the conduct for both students and faculty. The Armstrong College policy is the same as it was for the college Mr. Armstrong himself raised up in 1947. It is based, as Mr. Armstrong wrote, on the recognition that

true education is not of the intellect alone but of the whole personality—not alone of technologies, sciences and arts, but an understanding of the purpose of life, a knowledge of the spiritual laws which govern our lives, our God-relationship and human relationships; not a memorizing of knowledge alone but a thorough training in self-discipline, self-expression, cultural and character development; not book learning only, but broadening travel and experience; not only hearing and learning, but doing.

At Armstrong College, the emphasis is on character building, developing a sound mind, becoming emotionally mature and socially balanced, building a well-rounded, service-oriented personality and learning to appreciate the finer things in life.

There is no other college like Herbert W. Armstrong College—unaccredited by men and unshackled from the ever-tightening grip that is squeezing the life out of higher education: gross materialism, political correctness run amok and immoral, unregulated human behavior.

If you want to learn much more about the uniqueness of Armstrong College, read the booklet that’s named after our college motto: Education With Vision.