Family University Network: Separation of Institutional Higher Education

Why not build a Christian family foundation with the energy, financing and infrastructure that would build state or private educational institutions?

It is well known today that there are serious moral problems in families, churches, schools, colleges, businesses, and the political arena. These problems have academic, ethical, and philosophical roots that go back centuries, and have been reinforced by the systematic separation of knowledge from belief in God. The great amount of education required to provide people with the ability to discern the times and apply the Bible by faith in all areas of life requires diligence in all areas of learning and at all levels of education.

Secular universities are overtly hostile to the Christian worldview, and the best Christian colleges cannot replicate a family away from home. The Nehemiah Institute’s worldview assessment of 1,177 students at 18 Christian colleges over a 7-year period showed that Christian students graduate from Christian institutions with a secular, humanistic worldview, even when their professors have a biblical Theistic worldview. Even above-average Christian colleges are slightly better than their secular counterparts because curricula are developed according to the same institutional accreditation guidelines, the same textbooks are used, many faculty were trained in secular institutions, and the family learning context is ignored.

Even the best of distance Christian education does not intentionally involve the family in the learning process, does not couple individual family beliefs, does not use the family’s knowledge base, and does not earn the family income. It is time to decouple institutional higher education and bring higher education back home.

One solution is to create universities and family networks based on church fellowship. This can help individuals and families apply the Christian philosophy of education by developing their own family colleges and supplementary work as part of the Sovereign’s mandate (Psalm 8).
College education needs to be reinvented with biblical understanding to strengthen the family and the church. Christians can easily learn how Family University can uniquely offer a humble, relational, and spiritual biblical higher education for their youth to co-build a strong Christian family, church, and culture.

Evan Elish, a philosopher in the 1970s, made use of the learning network, speaking in favor of homeschooling. He stated, “If the networks I have described could arise, then each student’s educational path would be his own to follow, and only later would he take on the features of a recognizable program. The wise student would periodically seek professional advice: help in setting a new goal, insight into the difficulties encountered in choosing between possible methods. And yet most people would admit the important services rendered or rendered by their teachers in an educational encounter, or in such advice or advice given by their teachers in an opportunity. They would also come on their own, and would be able to Do what frustrated teachers pretend to do today.” Evan Elish, Education Society, 1970.

There is only one family college network in operation at this time, but the time has come for the concept and so this is likely just the beginning of the extension of home schooling to home college.