Founders College: a new development in higher education?

Parents Forum
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<p>Founders College is a new college in Virginia, founded by a Duke University administrator and instructor partnering with a wealthy entrepreneur. They have a “bold new vision” for a different sort of college.</p>

<p>The sticker price is $30K (including tuition, room, & board) but reading the fine print carefully suggests that all students who enter in the first four years will get scholarships that brings the net price down to more like $25K or even less in some cases. There is also $3 million set aside for a variety of other scholarships, apparently all based on factors other than need (geographic location, the ever popular “leadership,” essays, etc.)</p>

<p>The campus is a converted historic plantation. All students get private rooms, which look like rooms in a fancy country inn (four poster “Italian handcrafted” beds with canopies, antiques and reproductions.) </p>

<p><a href=“http://www.founderscollege.com/campuslife/lodging.html[/url]”>http://www.founderscollege.com/campuslife/lodging.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>Their photo gallery shows a lavish student bedroom on the bottom row:</p>

<p><a href=“http://picasaweb.google.com/FoundersCollege/Founders_College_Campus[/url]”>http://picasaweb.google.com/FoundersCollege/Founders_College_Campus&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>Every student gets a private bathroom as well. The photo tour shows a snazzily appointed student bathroom with gleaming gold-plated fixture.</p>

<p>There’s a gourmet chef on hand and very snazzy dining hall options that look more like elegant and opulent restaurants than college dining halls. They’ve clearly spared no expense on interior designers!</p>

<p>Other features of campus life: their website brags they have a spa on campus! You can see the spa, the opulent dining facilities, and the spiffy private bathrooms in the slides on the virtual tour below:</p>

<p><a href=“http://www.founderscollege.com/campuslife/tourintro.html[/url]”>http://www.founderscollege.com/campuslife/tourintro.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>They’re a bit sketchy on minor details like who the faculty will be–they don’t actually list any faculty, and it seems they’re still hiring them. They do boast about the special teacher training they will provide to their professors. The first class will enroll in September. </p>

<p>There are a number of other notable omissions: no details about campus religious life, no chaplains, etc. No information about a college health service of any sort. </p>

<p>They also don’t mention it on the website, but they are actually a proprietary school, not a non-profit–there are investors who apparently expect to make money from this place eventually.</p>

<p>They are saving money in a variety of ways:</p>

<p>1) all students take a common liberal arts curriculum for the first two years of college, with no choice at all, apparently. </p>

<p>2) after that, there are a limited number of majors:<br>
* Economics
* Philosophy
* History
* Liberal Arts
* Business
* Art and Literature</p>

<p>A major requires only seven one-semester courses, which can include some of the core courses taken in the first two years. Although they don’t publish their listings for the final two years, it sounds like there aren’t going to be a huge number of courses to choose from, which again will save money.</p>

<p>There’s no evidence they plan to teach foreign languages (and certainly I wouldn’t expect them to offer the full array of foreign languages available even at many small liberal arts colleges.) </p>

<p>It doesn’t look like they plan to “waste” any money on science labs either. The majors seem to all be based on “chalk & talk” subjects. There is a general science class as part of the two year core, but absolutely no suggestion that the college will have any science labs. </p>

<p>There is no suggestion that they will offer students the opportunity to do mentored research. Indeed, the website makes clear that they expect faculty to focus on teaching and not spend time doing research themselves</p>

<p>The description of the library suggests they are planning to have a minimal set of actual books and will largely be a cyber-library. </p>

<p>They will also apparently save money by not having any sports teams, though they will offer students a wonderful array of recreational facilities (beautiful indoor pool, tennis courts, basketball courts, mountain bikes to borrow to explore the beautiful surrounding countryside, fitness machines, etc.)</p>

<p>Another way they’ll save money: faculty will not have tenure, so they won’t have to pay faculty who lose their effectiveness as teachers (or, perhaps, whose health insurance costs become too high as they grow older!)</p>

<p>The overall impression at first was a country-club model of college (with a little education thrown in for good measure–there seemed to be much more information about the lavish student housing than the details of the courses or who will teach them.)</p>

<p>The school is proprietary (i.e., for profit), though the website doesn’t state this explicitly. Apparently, the founders are entrepreneurs who are libertarians and admirers of Ayn Rand, which could explain why there is absolutely no reference to any sort of religious or spiritual life on campus. </p>

<p>They make a special pitch to homeschoolers of the unschooling variety–the home page for the college has a link to a lengthy and glowing endorsement by longtime unschooling advocate Pat Farenga:</p>

<p><a href=“http://www.founderscollege.com/HomeSchool/[/url]”>http://www.founderscollege.com/HomeSchool/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>and there is also a page showing an enthusiastic former unschooler who apparently plans to enroll (along with her horse, shown in the photo!):</p>

<p><a href=“http://www.founderscollege.com/HomeSchool/JadeFogg.html[/url]”>http://www.founderscollege.com/HomeSchool/JadeFogg.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>I’ll be interested to hear mini’s take on this place! </p>

<p>By the way, they have a special scholarship for up to 20 students who spent at least two of their high school years homeschooling.</p>

<p>For anyone interested in joining the class of 2011: they are still taking applications and will waive application fees for those who apply before April 15.</p>

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<p>I thought we had a thread on this already–but I don’t think it went far.</p>

<p>I thought it was going to be near Bedford, but the site says South Boston.</p>

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<p>Duke - Part Deux! Now, we’ll have “The Plantation” in two southern states. </p>

<p>/waves at Mr. Gus!</p>

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<p>Dang it! Seven years of college paid for, one to go, and now I find this out.</p>

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<p>“I’ll be interested to hear mini’s take on this place!”</p>

<p>All I say is let a million blossoms bloom. I’m no great fan of “canon” core curricula (I taught in Chicago’s, and think Scripps’ non-canon core approach is far superior); most of the things usually covered in the canon core my older d. did in “high school”, and my younger d. wouldn’t get within a million miles of. </p>

<p>Older d. had no difficulty leasing her services to the prestige institutions, chose one without a core, and which has paid her to spend a year in Italy, a summer in Cambodia, India, and Thailand, and has awarded her a two-year paid research assistantship designed for her (and which will likely result in a major publication), and a senior colloquium fellowship. Younger one would look at it and say, “where is the gymnastics? where is Arabic? where is international business/accounting? where is music? where is diversity in the student body?”</p>

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<p>The zoning issues precluded using the first site. S. Boston welcomed the project as an economic aid to the area.</p>

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<p>As recently as last June, the Founders’ founders were seriously considering locations in Maine and North Carolina:</p>

<p><a href=“http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2006/06/09/founders[/url]”>http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2006/06/09/founders&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

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<p>Indeed, it would be a great economic boost to many economically depressed but scenic areas to attract a small but thriving college.</p>

<p>It seems that the primary industries in much of rural upstate NY are state prisons and colleges, though casinos are also emerging in economic importance.</p>

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<p>There sure is a lot of focus on how country-clubby it is and less on the academics. I know I definitely wouldn’t go there. It would be a nice boarding school, though :).</p>

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<p>I just stumbled onto this and clicked on the room photos. S. said it must be an April Fool’s joke, and made sure I checked the date on the post. Guess it’s not?</p>

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<p>These people have no clue. Three traits AND a Why Founders? in 500 words?</p>

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<p>Do enrollees care if they are at an accredited college? Glad to hear your take on Chicago’s core curriculum, mini. I dislike what I hear about such cores- I’m too modern/liberal, I guess.</p>

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<p>Founders College was founded by Gary Hull, a “follower” of Ayn Rand.</p>

<p>They claim the school will have not connection, but we shall see.</p>

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<p>I just love how they down play the whole annoying slave aspect of the plantation…calling the owner a “planter and enterprenour”</p>

<p>please</p>

<p>and this is from the Ayn Rand sites who are thrilled, and are excited about an Objectionist College, though that is denied, to a degree by the founders</p>

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<p>CGM, I think you meant “objectivist college” but perhaps “objectionist” is somehow appropriate.</p>