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July 2010

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An Update on
George Wythe University

by Oliver DeMille
February 12, 2009

Dear Friends, Alumni, Parents and Students of George Wythe University,

First the bad news, then the good news. Or, if you’re tired of the negatives in the nightly news, skip down to the section titled “Good News” below.  This letter is a little long, but it introduces one of the most exciting things I think has happened in the history of freedom! Seriously. It’s worth the read!

The tuition bubble has hit across America.  The New York Times reported that the University of Florida eliminated 430 jobs last year and is cutting its budget by 10% more this year which will probably require more layoffs.[i]  The University of Arizona cut about 200 instructors,[ii] the Governor of California asked for over $100,000,000 in cuts to the University of California,[iii] and there are many similar layoffs, budget cuts and other economic challenges at schools across the country, including Boston University, Cornell, Brown, Tufts, the University of Massachusetts, and many others.[iv] 

The cause of this is the tuition bubble, which msnbc reported may be the next bubble after the real estate bubble and the banking crises.[v]  The tuition bubble is occurring because the economic crisis, layoffs, unemployment and the recession have drastically impacted students’ ability to pay tuition.[vi] Even Harvard has faced concerns, as the Times reported: “In a sign of the economic times, Harvard has sent a letter to its deans saying that the university’s $36.9 billion endowment fund lost 22 percent of its value in the last four months and could decline as much as 30 percent by the end of the fiscal year on June 30.”[vii]  The managers of Harvard’s endowment have cut 50 employees,[viii] and Harvard is selling off 38% of its private equity holdings.[ix] The tuition bubble has hit Harvard and almost every other institution of higher learning.[x]

Colleges and universities hit hardest have been those with traditional on-campus programs.[xi] For example, Antioch College in Ohio has suspended operations of their on-campus program, keeping just distance and adult enrichment programs.[xii] This is the worst economic challenge in Antioch’s 157-year history.[xiii] Many schools are raising tuition, and many are following Harvard’s lead and using up part of their endowment.[xiv] Brandeis University has angered donors and supporters by selling off 6000 pieces in its art museum in order to meet budget deficits. North American university endowments fell an average of 22.5% during the final months of 2008, and this higher education crash is expected to continue.[xv]

Most institutions of higher learning are scrambling to deal with this situation, and even Congressional proposals to increase Pell Grants aren’t nearly enough to solve the problem. As the New York Times printed: “‘Given the economic strain on state budgets, the pressure on state governments to shift the cost of education to students and families may prove irresistible,’ said Molly Corbett Broad, president of the American Council on Education, which represents 1,600 colleges and universities.”[xvi] 

In another article entitled “College May Become Unaffordable for Most in the U.S.,” the Times discussed the decreasing numbers of lower and middle class students who can afford higher education: “When we come out of the recession . . . we’re really going to be in jeopardy, because the educational gap between our work force and the rest of the world will make it very hard to be competitive. Already, we’re one of the few countries where 25- to 34-year-olds are less educated than older workers . . . . The middle class has been financing [college] through debt,” and between the crisis of credit, the rise in joblessness and the uncertain prospects for the future, this is no longer a viable option.[xvii]

If the recession is short, reports say, most schools expect to bounce back by raising tuition now and during a future economic recovery. But if the recession lasts more than a year (as all indications predict) schools, students and their families are in for a difficult time. The traditionally elite schools will likely raise tuition and weather the storm with affluent U.S. and international families affording these increases. But this will widen the class gap in America as the middle class shrinks and fewer and fewer students are able to afford college.  For example, a 2008 report showed that “the net cost of a 4-year public university amounted to 28 per cent of the median family income, while a 4-year private university cost 76 per cent  of the median family income.”[xviii]  The tuition bubble is real, and it has hit higher education around the nation.

The recession has impacted enrollment at George Wythe University as well. Our enrollment is half what it was one year ago. We have spoken with nearly every student who hasn’t returned, and over 95% of them cite economic issues as the reason. Our distance program is still in the black, as are the extension programs, seminars and the Monticello development project. All of these have helped provide income to help maintain our on-campus program; the Monticello project has especially helped our finances. Still, half enrollment has caused us to revisit our business model and consider what will work best in this new economic environment. We have been trying to offer an Ivy-type curriculum in the great books, with the focus being the on-campus program. This has driven our costs up for years, and in this recession we have had to make cuts, layoffs and really tighten our belts for the months ahead.

In truth, we should have seen this coming. We’ve been teaching about the Fourth Turning for years now, and telling people to prepare for a major downturn. Still, we hoped it would hold off long enough for us to build an endowment. It didn’t. The tuition bubble is hitting now. And a tuition increase is not the answer; many of our students come from large families who live on one income so mom can be highly involved with the education of their children. We have no endowment to turn to for help, and as tragic as this is, even schools that are relying on endowments are being hit hard—perhaps even harder because of the huge cost of maintaining their infrastructure. That’s the bad news.

The Good News

The Tuition Bubble has helped us step back and look at the real needs in the future, and redefine how George Wythe University can deliver its unique mission in a way that is both affordable and offers the highest quality of leadership education. If The Fourth Turning[xix] is accurate (and so far it has been right on) we are in for a real depression or at least a deeper recession. In such times, when statesmanship and leadership education are critical, the George Wythe University mission is more important than ever! But how can we make this affordable for our students and their families? The Ivy-League model of classics and mentors with the huge cost of bricks and mortar is becoming less and less affordable for more and more people, and we have decided to stop focusing primarily on this model. With even Harvard scrambling to meet budget deficits, the old model is struggling.

History teaches us that in such times of challenge, new models inevitably emerge. George Wythe University is uniquely and ideally positioned to capitalize on the new momentum. The things which meant credibility and viability in the old model created huge infrastructures, obligations and liabilities, which make it difficult for old institutions to respond to the new realities. Also, the cutting-edge technology which is creating an emerging model of Information Age education that didn’t exist even five years ago.

Traditionally, the Ivy-type campus model was the only way to get truly high-quality leadership mentoring in the great classics and to train leaders for a society that desperately needed them. In that era, distance programs were simply inferior—they provided little face-to-face instruction from great mentors, little one-on-one feedback, hardly any group discussion with mentors or peers, and the in-class transformational impact on students was low.  Schools like the University of Phoenix provided more affordable and accessible training, but little leadership education in the classics or liberal arts occurred except in Ivy-League campuses and schools that copied the campus model.

Technology today has changed all of that.  Numerous software platforms allow a mentor to hold a class in real time with students from around the world. Classes can run several times a week like the old campus model, and students hear lectures, ask questions and receive immediate mentor feedback, discuss openly with everyone else in the class, work in breakout session, engage in group study and interact with their mentor in one-on-one meetings—all from their own home or laptop! 

With GWU mentors and our leadership curriculum, the quality of the learning is much better through this medium than it is in most on-site college and university classes, and in fact it can come very close to the quality of the George Wythe campus courses once these technologies are fully implemented.  This model cuts a student’s costs in half immediately, by removing away-from-home housing, meals, travel and other living expenses.  It also allows George Wythe to significantly reduce tuition for students while empowering them to get a superb, quality George Wythe education with attentive and qualified GWU mentors.

Our plan is to keep the Cedar City on-campus component for students who want an on-site experience for any or all of their college years, and to build a small but excellent campus in Monticello that will grow beyond this recession and provide leadership education far into the future. As we grow this, we plan to supplement the online courses with classes and seminars in metropolitan centers like the University of Phoenix has done. Our vision is of a program that is the “accessibility of University of Phoenix meets Ivy-League curriculum meets the Teaching Company lectures meets George Wythe mentoring”—all available in an affordable, personal, virtual format, with small on-campus options for those who can afford them. We are working out many of the details right now, but this vision is powerful and we feel that it will become the norm of quality education in the emerging Information Age.

These changes naturally improve GWU in a number of arenas where we have historically been weak. For example, this will almost surely bring an immediate increase in the diversity of our students, since participation in our current off-campus programs is already much more diverse than on-campus. We expect diversity to increase even more as international students attend classes with us. Also, this new model immediately hurdles the problem we have faced with international student visas, where some of our best applicants were unable to attend on campus and receive George Wythe mentoring because they weren’t U.S. citizens.  This new structure also speaks the language of the younger generation, the bulk of our students, who learn well and even engage in healthy social interactions using online formats.

Of course, none of these benefits alone would justify making the change if the quality of teaching and mentoring were significantly lower in the online format. Personally, I have been skeptical of distance programs and a strong believer that campus learning is much better than distance.  I grew up during a time when this was unequivocally true.  However, and I challenge anyone who is old-school like me to test this, I have been surprised by the high-quality education that occurs using the technologies created in the past few years.  They have revolutionized education, even though most educators and institutions haven’t yet adapted.

Students in our new online programs (to be rolled out this summer) will attend class and listen to lectures, ask questions and discuss ideas with their mentors, get personalized mentor help and instruction, and do everything their peers who attend class in Cedar City will do—at a much more affordable rate.  They can supplement their classes by attending webinars on their own computer, extension courses in many cities, and online discussions for those in specific areas of learning.  For graduate students, this will make everything easier and more directly applicable to career and family—minus the travel times and greater expense.

But that’s just the technical part. Here’s the really exciting thing.  I am convinced that this economic crisis—and the tuition bubble pain it caused—is a blessing.  George Wythe University has the opportunity to help lead out in this emerging educational model, and to literally be an Oxford or Harvard of the new Information Age university structure. Most important to me is that this model will allow us to take leadership education to many, many people who just couldn’t afford the time or money to do on-site programs or even the inferior distance studies of the past.  We can take great, quality leadership mentoring in the classics to almost anyone—at a fee structure the lower and middle classes can afford.

In addition, I am more excited about the impact we can have on freedom than ever before! At first I was shocked by the economic crisis and stressed about its negative impact on tuition; I was concerned, worried, and even angry. But as our team has worked through this, asked the hard questions, brainstormed the real needs of the world, and realized that a new type of education is emerging in this new Information Age, and that George Wythe is ready to make this shift quickly and effectively while solving a number of our biggest challenges in the process, I have thanked heaven that we have this opportunity at this time in history.

This has given me more optimism about the future of freedom than anything I’ve read, studied, witnessed in world events or seen since we founded George Wythe College many years ago.  If this comes across too gushingly positive, it is only because I am sincerely excited.  Forget education for a minute, and forget George Wythe University and any other school or organization—I am so energized right now by the potential I see for this new type of learning to impact freedom. I am not exaggerating when I say that this may be as big for freedom as the invention of the printing press. Imagine what will happen to the world if nearly every family can afford elite-quality education for its children. Not just in the U.S. middle class, but in Africa, the Middle East, and places all around this world of ours. And although computers aren’t as widespread in some places as others, imagine the impact on freedom if not just internet information but actual mentored leadership education is available to anyone with a computer! I have said for years that freedom is losing ground, and that it will take a miracle for true freedom to make a comeback in our world. I believe the miracle is here.

For those of us who work with George Wythe University, the economic crisis and onset of the recession has been like the “fleas” in Corrie Ten Boom’s book The Hiding Place. Locked away in a Nazi prison camp, Corrie was housed in barracks full of fleas. Everybody complained about the bites, the itches, and all the problems fleas caused. Then one day the prison guards raided the camp, taking away precious personal possessions. But the guards refused to go into Corrie’s barracks, because they didn’t want to get fleas. This allowed Corrie and her companions to keep their most prized possession: a worn copy of the Bible which brought them a ray of comfort in the darkest of places.  While we haven’t experienced anything like that, I have been inspired by watching our team go from being stressed by the economic downturn, to working hard on solutions, to being incredibly excited about what we all realized: the future of freedom has never been brighter, and we are in a place to make a huge difference in that.

Since I was in college and got married in 1989, I have never believed in the chances for real freedom as much as I do now. Everyone who knows me well knows that I am an optimist, and that I’ve always felt that freedom would win out in the end. But today, knowing what a miracle great, mentored education will be for freedom (not just from George Wythe University but from many others), I am more sure of the cause of liberty than I have ever been. Freedom will win. All we have to do is inspire the greatness in others. A new type of schooling is emerging—some see it and some don’t. But it will revolutionize the world, because it will take the greatest ideas from the greatest books and greatest mentors to the masses of the world! This will do more than the printing press; it will free the leadership potential and gifts of millions, maybe billions, who before this would never have had an education or any influence.

Thank you for reading my long letter. I just had to share with you these thoughts, and especially this incredibly exciting news. Thank you for all you do to move the cause of liberty—in your family, community, work and life. The leaders of the future, a future of freedom, live in your homes. Thank you for giving us at George Wythe University the opportunity to help you educate them for leadership. We are going on a journey to take leadership education to all socio-economic classes of the world, in a way that affordably educates leaders and changes the future of freedom. The new schooling models of the Information Age will change everything, and we are so excited to be one of those making it happen. The smaller but highly intensive campus programs will become support hubs and mentor training programs to help take great mentoring to those in the world hungry for education, opportunity and freedom. Thank you for your help in this mission. More details will be announced on our website in the months ahead.

Sincerely,

Oliver DeMille

Chancellor

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