New Private Colleges Focus on the Liberal Arts, not A.I. 

Ask a bystander to describe the future of higher education and he’ll probably complain it involves gleaming glass towers full of students learning about artificial intelligence. No doubt he’ll grumble that it’s a waste of money; a better college would teach how to read and write, to do math, to interpret the Constitution, and to understand the west’s cultural heritage. 

Such sentiments abound and so it should not come as such a surprise that a new college offers not A.I. but a foundation in the liberal arts. John Adams College, founded only in 2019, moved into the historic Knight Block building in Provo, UT last summer. Freshmen take classes in history and philosophy, among other subjects, before continuing to Latin and political economy the following year. The college takes a Great Books approach, with students reading works by authors ranging from Euclid to Newton in math classes, Keynes to Hayek in economics, and Galen to Thomas Kuhn in science. 

Yet arguably the curriculum’s greatest strength lies in the political.  Sets of classes treat the history of the western political tradition, major political philosophers, the development of the American order, constitutionalism, and the aforementioned economists. These classes should give students not only an introduction but a deep grounding in how public life works, could otherwise work, and ought to work. That matters because young Americans appear frightfully ignorant about the country’s history and political system; a recent survey suggests most students could not identify the branch of government with the power to declare war! 

This problem is leading more colleges to reaffirm history and government as a fundamental part of undergraduate education, although few institutions require such a robust grounding as John Adams College. Indeed, the same could be said of the college’s entire core curriculum: While a majority of institutions require only English composition, math, and science, John Adams College has all students take classes in all seven core and five supplemental subject areas reviewed by ACTA’s What Will They Learn?® initiative. What Will They Learn?® grades colleges and universities based on whether they require all students to complete these fundamental courses. 

Given these high academic standards, it may surprise that John Adams College does not receive a grade from What Will They Learn?® The reason, however, is simple: What Will They Learn?® grades only accredited institutions, a standard that requires a university not only to undergo an administrative process but sometimes to comply with demands that critics consider politically biased. John Adams College says that it will not pursue accreditation for these reasons.  

Accreditors may need to take these concerns into account, especially because students frustrated by low academic standards are fueling other new institutions. The University of Austin welcomed its inaugural class in 2024, promising to save free inquiry from the illiberal culture of modern universities. Freshmen and sophomores pursue a curriculum similar to their counterparts’ at John Adams College; the university requires classes in math, science, the fine arts, writing, and political theory, among others. Likewise, although California’s Dharma Realm Buddhist University has operated since 1976, it only launched its current B.A. in Liberal Arts in 2013. The degree includes not only Buddhist texts but basic calculus, classical Chinese or Sanskrit, and monuments of the western tradition like Homer’s Iliad and Shakespeare’s King Lear. A parent frustrated by those gleaming towers full of A.I. towers would be happy to learn that America is building a better alternative.