Ecclesia College: Springdale, Arkansas: Ex-President Oren Paris III Interviewed On David Barton's WallBuilders' Program. Link To Podcast

Ecclesia College: Springdale, Arkansas: President Oren Paris III Interviewed On David Barton's WallBuilders' Program. Link To Podcast:ith two major issues on the program - Earn While You Learn - l

inked here on their website.

One concern is the secular content of higher education, which trains students apart from or against Biblical truths.

The Ecclesia College statement says:

We are called to study all disciplines in light of the Scriptures to “show ourselves approved unto God, workmen that need not be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth,” learning to think and walk honestly before Him in the light of His truth according to our ever-increasing frame of reference.

A second concern is the spiraling cost of a bachelor's degree and the burden of student loan debt at graduation.

President Paris noted that the average student loan debt is now $25,000, while the average at Ecclesia College is under $6,000 - lower than almost any other school. Ecclesia does not put a cap on parental earnings, so no student is rejected for having too much family income.

Ecclesia  a a work-college, often called a work-study college. The students are required to work 15 hours a week and learn good work habits. Paris said, "They are held accountable for their work, and learn good work habits."

More details are available from podcast audio file - Earn While You Learn.

Music and sports are important components of Ecclesia College's mission.

'via Blog this'

History of the Internet.PowerPoint Storyboard Converted to JPGs, Images Loaded on One Blog Page

Distance Education Depends on the Electronic Computer, Invented in My Hometown Area - The Quad-Cities

The Atanasoff-Berry Computer, known as the ABC, was invented in 1937 and ignored by Iowa State, Ames.
Few people realize John Vincent Atanasoff invented the electronic computer, because his plans were copied by another scientist and marketed eventually as the Eniac.

John V. Atanasoff was a remarkable scientist who did valuable work for the US during WWII.

As an applied physics professor at Ames, Iowa, he was looking for ways of doing math calculations, the most laborious part of his work. He kept thinking about it and trying various methods for years. Meanwhile, others were working on a calculating device.

One December day in 1937 he took off in his car and drove to relax and think about the solution. He crossed the Mississippi:

"I had reached the Mississippi River and was crossing into Illinois at a place where there are three cities...one of which is Rock Island. I drove into Illinois and turned off the highway into a little road, and went into a roadhouse, which had bright lights...I sat down and ordered a drink...As the delivery of the drink was made, I realized that I was no longer so nervous and my thoughts turned again to computing machines." Jane Smiley, The Man Who Invented the Computer, The Biography of John Atanasoff, Digital Pioneer, p. 2.

During this stop in Rock Island he thought of four basic concepts to make a computer work. He wrote down his ideas on a napkin, went back to Ames, and asked for funding for this project. He received $200 for parts and $450 to pay his assistant, an exceptionally able Clifford Berry.

The computer worked, so when John Mauchley found out about it, he visited Ames, stayed at the Atanasoff home, took copious notes, asked all about the machine, and stole the idea. Sperry Rand owned the patent rights, because Ames did not pursue the patent case as it should have. Also, Atanasoff seemed especially naive about Mauchley's early intentions. One reason was - everyone but Mauchley ignored him.

The apparent murder of Berry, never solved, made Atanaoff much more involved in the difficult case of overturning the patents owned by Sperry Rand. In 1973, the judge in the federal case gave the credit to Atanasoff and took away Sperry Rand's claims.

Others made significant contributions to the invention of the computer. One method was used to help crack Enigma during WWII, in England. Konrad Zuse, a German scientist, did astonishing work, but he was ignored by the Nazi military.

The first computers were destroyed. The original ABC was taken apart because it was using up valuable space at Ames. The future head of computer science at Ames took it apart. The ABC was later rebuilt for a small fortune!

The English computer was destroyed to hide the evidence about how they read the German Enigma messages in WWII.

Konrad Zuse had his early computers bombed by the Allies in WWII.

Atanasoff will never get a Nobel Prize, because he did not submit a paper for publication, a requirement of the committee. He died in 1995.

John Vincent Atanasoff
Let's quote the Iowa State University Associate Professor of Physics John Hauptman opinion about Atanasoff:
"I came here from Berkeley," Hauptman said. "You know Berkeley must have 20 Nobel prizes and they are proud of them; poets, physicists, chemists... When I found out Atanasoff's story and read his paper... It occurred to me that if Atanasoff had been at Berkeley in 1939 (with the Atanasoff-Berry Computer) he would have gotten a Nobel prize right away. Berkeley would not have waited a minute before going after a Nobel Prize and becoming known as the birthplace of the electronic digital computer. Here at Iowa State, it was just dropped."

Cool Things about an Online Education

Know where you are going and count the cost first.

I teach at two online schools. Students sometimes get alarmed that they are not at the right school.

I tell them about being at Yale and hearing students concerned about not being at Harvard. I said, "Yale has fairly good reputation, too."

Some people knock online schools, but all the universities are online now. The Ivy League also has online classes. In many cases, more can be accomplished online than in person. Even the traditional classroom has gone online, a hybrid, because content is delivered and papers are submitted through the Internet. Paper is over-rated. I would rather grade a Word file and use all the nifty tools available for editing and adding comments.

Here are some cool things about an online education:

1. An infinite amount of material can be made available to students. For instance, I provide lengthy posts about academic success and how to find a job.

2. Participation is required and enjoyable. Traditional classrooms limit the participation due to time. Some students participate, but the shy ones do not. Online students participate as much as they want. I post extra material, so I get a lot more participation and the students enjoy the higher energy level.

3. Online research is so vast, people need to learn how to do it properly. This is the Information Age, based on the vastly expanding Internet. Everyone needs to learn computer technology, how to tame it and make it work for them.

4. All jobs require confidence and efficiency with computers. An online education gives each student a chance to learn computer applications and see their potential.
5. Teams are part of all work assignments, and many of them are multi-national. Online students learn how to work with team members they may never meet face-to-face.

6. Online students are often disabled, but no one knows it. No matter what they claim, a traditional campus has trouble with quadriplegic students or those with noisy, cumbersome equipment. Online education levels the field and makes everyone with a keyboard equal.

7. Online teachers have to do their jobs. Almost no one has tenure. If they do not show up or grade papers, they stop working. Tenure, unfortunately, makes professors take their positions for granted.

8. Pretty pictures, videos, and sound aside, online education comes down to reading and writing. The Information Age requires a greater volume of reading than ever before and clear, articulate writers.

9. Parents of young children benefit from the freedom of doing their work once the children are in bed. I am proud of the many young parents who have been my students. Several Axia students have given birth during the course and still finished with great grades.

10. Many crises hit a large population: medical emergencies in the family, the death of a family member, and eviction. I can be flexible with students.

11. Students come from all over the world and all cultures.

12. Best of all, our military people can complete a degree while serving our country. I have had students in Iraq and on an aircraft carrier. Some have silence imposed on them due to their duties, and the school works around that.


Students have to count the cost of an education. A degree in art history may be fun but the job market is not crying for that diploma. A school may brag about its job placement, but most of that result belongs to the drive of the student and the health of the economy.

I finished six computer certifications, just in time for the dot.com fever to turn frosty. I had one technical writing job after that and became a teacher at my community college. Teaching computer science led me into online education.

The person who got me started at the University of Phoenix said, "I would like to be like you, Greg, working only from home." One of my students said the same thing. At home, rush hour means my wife and I are headed to the coffee maker at the same time.

The economy is moving toward more people working from home. Outside my window, blue jays are feeding their babies. I will watch them for a little while.

PS - Anyone can quote from my posts.

What PBS Does Not Know about Higher Education Would Fill an Hour's Program

"From 1983 to 1987, Mr. Mueller was a professor
at Concordia University.
Mr. Mueller earned his Master of Arts in Education degree
and his Bachelor of Arts degree in Education from Concordia University."

One evil genius behind for-profit education
saved Grand Canyon University from insolvency.
Find him. Stop him from doing it again.

PBS, heavily subsidized by taxpayer grants, could not exist on its own. Neither could any institution of higher education, whether it is non-profit or for-profit.

Nevertheless, PBS broadcast a heavy-breathing episode called "Colllege, Inc," calling on for-profit schools to be tethered by even more government regulation. I have studied at a wide variety of schools and taught at three - a community college and two for-profits (Grand Canyon University and the University of Phoenix). I found most of the episode to be an excellent satire about what journalism could be, if reporters only had some integrity.

The journalistic technique used for this show is called the focus feature, which begins with one person, zooms out for the big picture, and concludes with a follow-up about that individual.

In this show, the focus is on Michael Clifford, an Evangelical with no college training but a knack for turning small colleges into profitable online schools. The prime example shown is Grand Canyon University, which became insolvent when its funds were lost to the biggest charitable scandal in history - the Arizona Baptist Foundation, a ponzi scheme promising investors a 15% return on their savings. They lost 90% instead.

GCU was going to close, so one man bought it for a group of investors. The transformed a bankrupt Baptist school of 3,000 students into a profitable online school of 40,000 students. They have spent millions on the local campus in Phoenix.

My former boss at UOP, Brian Mueller, is my current boss at GCU. He comes originally from a Missouri Synod school.

GCU has retained its Christian identity without having a religious requirement. I have an atheist in one class, but most denominations are represented. A university is quite different from a denominational school. A denomination's seminary teaches people to be loyal to the organization and to play the political game. A university emphasizes academic merit and allows freedom of expression.

GCU is well run, its biggest problems coming from expansion. The TV show failed to explain that exponential growth is full of growing pains, such as having servers shut down from rush hour demands.

The students and staff at GCU are thoughtful, considerate, and appreciative. I teach Old Testament, New Testament, church history, Christian world view, and communication. Many of my professors were world famous scholars, so the students are getting their money's worth. Online schools want PhDs, while denominational schools get those who play the political game and have the right last names.

Community Colleges
I learned computers at Glendale Community College and taught there as well. Community college tuition is heavily subsidized by taxpayers and by adjunct faculty working at low wages. Very few faculty at GCC are tenured, so the majority of teaching is done by adjuncts who make about 25% of a full-time salary, without any benefits. Therefore, when the PBS journalist seethed that an online school charges five times what a community college does, he was missing the facts by a wide margin. A community college is a valuable addition to any town, but the system has limits, such as offering only an associate's degree. No one will get a bachelor's degree or a master's from a community college, and any graduate program is more expensive than an associate's program, for obvious reasons.

University of Phoenix
I earned a master's degree in education, online, from UOP, after earning a PhD from Notre Dame and a master's from Yale, so I can do some comparisons.

An online education consists of discussions and weekly assignments, including work with learning teams. I found the MA program challenging, and it led to more work in online education.

I normally teach graduate courses in education year around. My students have often been employees and managers at UOP/Axia, so I know how their system works from that perspective. They want to do a good job because so much time and money is wasted if the wrong people start the program and drop out.

UOP has about 450,000 students, according to the program. The school had only about 150,000 when I began teaching there in 2002, but I do not take all the credit for its enrollment growth.

UOP is an opportunity school (like community colleges and the famous City College of New York, now CUNY). Everyone is accepted but not all graduate. My boss at Glendale Community advised bearing down on the class from day one and getting rid of the 2/3rds who did not belong. Nevertheless, the day one enrollment kept the school afloat.

UOP grew because traditional universities run their programs for the benefit of tenured faculty. Full-time working adults could not complete a degree program at the state or private schools in California, so John Sperling devised a way to make an alternative work for them. He was so successful that the education establishment took away his accreditation. He moved to Phoenix and obtained accreditation from a different regional commission and became a billionaire. He wrote an autobiography, but I heard no references to it on the PBS show. Rebel with a Cause.

Some Glaring Problems with College Inc
All online schools were treated alike, and they were discussed as if they are exactly the same. Not all community colleges are the same. Mine, GCC, was especially good in computer science. I understand it was better than the others in Phoenix.

Contacting prospects and asking them to enroll was considered a horrible sin, yet non-profit colleges hire people full-time to do that. Non-profits also arrange student loans and hire people to move the applications forward. All schools need educational loans because few students have the funds to pay tuition.

Making a profit was the dark theme of the show. Non-profits depend on large endowments, alumni giving, and taxpayer funds.

For-profits are just as regulated as the non-profits. In fact, the loyalist alumni of traditional schools are quick to point out any flaws they find in a competing school. Many of my online students have wasted their time at a state university known for being a party school. As the student said in "Animal House," seven years of my life down the drain.

Students at for-profit schools are serious about getting an education, and there are many free services available to help them get through the program. No one wants them to fail, so software is used to track lazy instructors and inactive students.

ASU versus a For-Profit
I wanted to get credits in writing or literature, because that was hampering my ability to get writing classes to teach. I contacted Arizona State on their website and gave them all my contact information. I never heard from them. When I contacted a for-profit school, they worked with me immediately and I eventually earned 20 credits in journalism. So the taxpayers supported a staff that did not respond at ASU, while a for-profit school responded with their own staff time, their own money.

PBS is a socialist operation, so no one should be shocked that they hate a profitable enterprise. Regulation is seen the answer to everything, but no school escapes the reach of the higher education commission. I heard many discussions about why a program was offered or not offered, based upon accrediting groups and individual state requirements. Some states have fought to keep for-profit schools from competing with their own home-grown institutions.

If regulation of for-profit schools were the answer, then Detroit would be a boom town, run on solar powered yogurt, manufacturing cars that converted easily into compost. Instead, MoTown is no town to live in, only to escape from.

Main campus, UOP, Phoenix.

Profits and the need to advertise led UOP
to buy naming rights for the Cardinals' new stadium.
UOP subsidized a tax-payer project.
The horror! The horror!

Door Openings - Now They Make Sense

Where are you going?

I was taking some computer courses at Glendale Community College when an offer came up. Could I edit a series of books on Unix for an attractive hourly wage? My son was already involved in Unix/Linux, so I knew the name of the operating system but little else. I was asked because of my writing and editing experience, but I decided it would be good to learn Unix/Linux too.

I signed up for six credits in Unix and Linux. The professor mentioned the University of Phoenix in class, so I asked him about teaching there myself. He thought they would be very interested in me because of my academic degrees. When I wrote to JS at UOP, she replied within five minutes.

I decided to get the Linux+ certification at the same time. I applied to UOP and was accepted for teaching. The first course I taught in was Linux/Unix for that instructor. I switched into my main fields of writing and religion.

UOP led me into online teaching. JS - my first contact on the UOP staff - just wrote to me, "I wish I had your freedom to work from home."

UOP led me into teaching at Grand Canyon University, because I heard in the washroom at UOP that "someone bought GCU and wanted to turn it into a Christian UOP."

The computer background got me into teaching the first education classes, and I enjoyed them. The students encouraged me to earn the MA degree in education, and that got me teaching a steady stream of education students, mostly UOP staff.

The point of this story is this, as Aesop would say - I did not know that the book idea, which never developed, would lead to teaching at two online universities. The book idea pushed me into the training that opened the door to teaching. Now it all makes sense.

One of my favorite students of all time recently said to me, "I want to be like you. I want your freedom to teach online." That is a great compliment, and I enjoy seeing his success, which combined his insightful work with a formal education.

The Value of an MA in Education

One of my undergraduate students was finishing his degree in the capstone class. He already worked for an online university, so I encouraged him to get an MA in adult education, which focused on distance education.

I said, "Right now you are just a high school student." I said that to raise his hackles and it worked. Until someone is formally cleared to graduate, he is just a high school graduate or perhaps a GED, with some college. No one recognizes a degree until it is done.

I pointed out what was obvious to me. A previous student in the same position saw her income triple while the school paid all her costs to finish college and earn a master's degree in education.

All academic institutions love degrees, and they love education degrees most of all. It is like an automotive engineering degree where they manufacture cars. Universities manufacture graduates and they want people who know the theories behind that effort.

Also, every university wants to have credibility with its staff having advanced degrees. At the very least it shows they believe in the service they represent.

Soon enough, my former undergraduate student was in my adult education class. A few months later he completed his MA in adult education. He has been promoted and rewarded for his work and his academic achievements.

He said, "The MA gave me confidence, above all, in presenting myself."

We do not know the doors we are opening with a degree until that degree is earned. Often a different path is taken just because of that training. The post above explains how that worked for me.