It all depends what career you are interested in. College is necessary for many professions, including medicine, law, and engineering. My husband’s first career was as a research scientist, and that required not only college but post-graduate study to develop the knowledge and expertise required for working as a researcher in the pharmaceutical industry.

Other careers clearly do not need college. Skilled trades such as plumbing, carpentry, welding, and others have specialized training but do not require a college degree. (That doesn’t mean that study of the subjects covered in college would not be beneficial to people working in skilled trades, but they would probably do at least as well to take classes at a community college as time and budget permit.)

For other careers it’s less clear. I work in business, and some jobs require a college degree while others only require a high school diploma. Some people currently in higher level positions started in positions that only required a high school diploma, and worked their way up. One manager in our IT department recently finished his bachelors degree, while others are working on their masters degrees.

I intend to advise my teenage son to take a year after high school to work, save money, and think about what he wants to do.

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I watch my kids go to college after we have established a belief system. Hopefully, by then, they have developed some discerning abilities. If they were to attend a secular college or any other college, they would run into the same problems with a different look.

Again, with six billion people on the planet, if five thousand choose this route, it is okay with me.

I don’t know you BGGJR, but I do know bitterness and I have experienced it myself and seen it in past PCC attenders. Do not let it grow in your life, it will not enhance your work as a pastor but will take over. I hope you are not suffering from it, but please, take this as a caution from a concerned sister who has been through bitterness. Let the Lord show you if it is there and flee from it.

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Secondly, there are work study programs, outside scholarship programs, etc, at nearly any public university. The thing is, you have to contact them earlier rather than later.

Another cost effective way is to begin at a community college, then transfer. If you stay “in-state” for university studies, your tuition is usually 50%-75% less than going to an out of state university.

Sometimes, the situation could warrant working part-time and navigating through the university process slowly. You can also go into the military and benefit from the GI Bill (unless you go to unaccredited schools like PCC, etc).

For grad school, if you apply early enough, you can get assistantships at public universities, even if you are an MA student. I am doing it right now and paying $0 for tuition.

One myth that our society has generated is that college degrees are required to be successful and that everyone should attend college. This is nonsense, there are people who should not be in college. I work in academic advising and encounter students who are forced by their parents to attend college, major in a discipline that does not suit their interests, gifts and abilities, or they have bought into the lie of the American dream and think the only way to attain it is to “go to college.” The bottom line is there are people who have no business in college. That sounds harsh, but in my experience, many public educated students are woefully unprepared for basic college math and English, not to mention history or other basic disciplines. This has led to the first two years of university basically being what high school used to be. It’s sad, but that’s how it is. “Higher” education is a business now.

Regarding the people who have talked about their kids at PCC, etc. Romans 13 isn’t talking about Xian institutions. Don’t take it out of context.
Additionally, I had two great jobs after graduating from PCC, but later decided to go to graduate school and my degree from there has been a problem. I never learned about postmodernism, American culture, historiography, and a host of other things that are basic in college education. I had so much extra catching up to do when I entered seminary because I was not taught basic philosophy, etc, that my classmates were well-versed in. Most of my classes were not taught by PhDs, even my upper division coursework. That is a HUGE problem. I was also told that I would have no problem with PCC’s lack of accreditation. I was a kid, it was the mid-1990s and the internet wasn’t in wide use or I could have benefited from better information. Sure PCC grads get good jobs, even the nursing majors, but talk to some who had great grades and were denied entry into graduate programs. Talk to PCC education grads who were denied certification to teach in public schools. Talk to PCC grads who were unable to get in the USAF officer program because of non-accreditation. PCC students are told that the institution will have to teach “worldly” materials because accreditation is a “government” program. That is simply untrue. There are hosts of great Christian colleges which are accredited and offer liberal arts education. You simply have to look.

Regarding the rules. If you think God wants His children that he loves to be subjected to unChristian, outward focused, works-based sanctification Christianity, I can’t help you.

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Wiglaf says: Economic studies deal in statistics and generalities. Most people are agreeing that each INDIVIDUAL assess their own reasons and goals for college instead of assuming that college is the only option. One reason those studies are true, are because smarter kids go to college. It’s cultural. It’s expected. Debt is assumed to be necessary in order to achieve one’s potential. What if those smart kids DON’T go to college or simply don’t go to a traditional college? You see often what happens when smart kids skip college or quit early. They buck the system and start their own successful businesses. So, I’d say intelligence causes higher wages; not college. Intelligence may mean business smarts and NOT the capability to get straight “A”s in school.

DC Lawyer says: “I strongly support efforts to limit college costs.”

Wiglaf says: People can start by getting nonprofessional degrees through nontraditional methods. A college education can be cheap if you know where to look. The internet provides new avenues and tools for finding and getting a college degree.

DC Lawyer says: “But there is simply no basis for the idea that college isn’t the better course.”

Wiglaf says: There is also no basis for saying college is the ONLY course or that college is ALWAYS the best course. Don’t limit others or yourself. I’m sure Einstein or Bill Gates had no problem saying college wasn’t the only course.

Regarding Joel Mark’s list, I think there are good things to thing about there, but it all depends on what one wishes to accomplish with a higher education.

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I’ve had my own experience with PCC, and I doubt that I’d be welcome there for a number of reasons. (A student with a grudge against me threatened to tamper with my highschool records, because most of the Academy correspondence positions are staffed by students with access to the highschool grading system, but that’s another story.)

I’m not going to split hairs over Dispensationalism, or KJV onlyism, nor am I going to debate the notion of “eye babies,” but I always thought it was funny that a group of students had taken to praying for my salvation because someone so carnal as to listen to Steve Taylor could never be “saved.”

Somehow my issues with how things were run (I think I compared floor leaders to the Gestapo, at some point during a conversation with a student) got back to staff, and I stopped receiving (once daily) advertisements for PCC. Of course, it’s not my job (or my intention) to bash the place, or anyone who goes there. I did enough of that when I was younger, and realize that burning bridges like I did probably wasn’t the wisest thing to do. I was just curious.

PCC is good if you want to be a nurse and appreciate a very regulated environment, but I don’t see much else there unless you want to go into some kind of ministry. (And likely an Independent Baptist one at that) There’s nothing wrong with that, but most people are going to be very off-put by their rules, and view them as extremely legalistic. I know I did.

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Yes indeed. PCC and as of daughter finishing last spring with a nursing degree, it was 6,000 per year including room and board. Because of PCC’s reputation, the hospital where she is working flew her out for an interview her last spring break and gave her the job immediately.

BGGJR,

As mentioned, it is not for everybody. People either like it very much or hate it. Son had friends who hated it. They are still hanging around in below par jobs many years later. I suspect their attitudes played a part in the dislike. He had a tendency to think it a bad place but can not complain as he had a job in his field immediately on graduation. He also wrote on a blog somewhere in mild dislike of the place and was removed from the mailing list. He also saw that the faculty was there to help and interested in the students actually learning what was presented.

Daughter saw it as a place where the faculty was very available to the students and very interested in helping them. (Not the case for our students in another big name, high cost center of “education”). She understood that they were KJV only and she is not. She understood that they had rules she did not understand or agree with but she did see that she had put herself under their authority for a season and was willing to work for her wages: a degree in her field of choice.

When another son transferred from there to the other center of “education”, the gaining school assured him that PCC’s credits were most acceptable and would get him a scholarship. Halfway through the first semester, he learned otherwise and so began his descent into debt. He ended up dropping out and is repaying tremendous school debt for a degree he did not receive while working as an enlisted man in the AF.

No school is perfect. What my kids gained from there was the reinforcement that they needed to be involved and active in whatever job they took. They learned that they need to take what they hear and compare it with Scripture. And they learned that we are in a world surrounded by humans and humans tend to act like humans.

None of the three felt they were living in a climate of fear. Romans 13 comes into play here.

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I have other friends who have experienced this as well. And the funny thing about my near dismissal last semester is the fact that I have a 4.0 in their graduate program. There was no way in the world I could have ever earned a 4.0 in seminary.

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I finished a Bachelor of Science in Business from there and never took a science course. The history courses I took were extremely revisionist to the “right” and rarely spoke well of minorities in the 20th century. You are not exposed to any newer music forms of the 20th century. You are taught that the KJV is God’s true word in English. People are expelled based upon hearsay and second hand information. It is truly a climate of fear and not liberty.

A few years after graduating, I went to an accredited seminary and graduated with really good grades. I moved on to graduate school at a public university to pursue further studies in History. In the middle of my first semester this past fall, I was nearly dismissed from the public university because of my unaccredited bachelor’s degree from PCC. In fact, my M.Div from a certain seminary where Anthony Bradley teaches, is listed as my “bachelor’s equivalent” on my student records.
Long story short, I will probably have an extremely tough time getting into a PhD program now at other public universities and am currently seeking to complete a BA degree while earning a second graduate degree.

The Chronicle of Higher Education ran an article about PCC in the past 18 months, and I assure you, less and less universities in the US will accept their students for graduate work. Additionally, I was removed from the alumni list and the College stopped sending me their magazine because I (a Calvinist) wrote a letter which suggested they endorse a different anti-Calvinist book than Dave Hunt’s What Love Is This.

I can go on and on, but I prefer not to waste my time and cannot stand speaking of that place.

And for the record, I am in pastoral ministry (Presbyterian Church in America), so this isn’t some “flaming liberal” with an anti-Christian agenda writing.

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