This reminded me of another unconventional institution called St. John’s College, though it does offer a four-year degree.
Instead of offering a traditional undergraduate program that teaches largely from modern textbooks, students work through what the institution calls a “Great Books” curriculum of the “foundational texts of Western civilization” across a variety of subjects: https://www.sjc.edu/academic-programs/undergraduate/great-bo...
I have, however, read some accounts online that the program has flaws with the way it teaches mathematics, where some students claim that an approach through historical texts is less effective than one with more current books. In any case, I think it’s interesting that non-traditional institutions with largely respected reputations exist, like St. John’s and the colleges in the article and the discussion so far.
It depends on what you want from a mathematics education and what you want from your education at St. John's. It is not a vocational school, and the mathematics we do won't strictly be aligned with any particular career path. And the other advantage/disadvantage is that almost all of the math you have learned before you start is not helpful, at least for the first two years. Neither of those things mean that the math we do is any less serious or important than the math education most undergraduates will receive. [1]
Most people that are frustrated by one of the two things I mentioned above, either experience a shift in perspective, or do not complete their studies at St. John's.
Afaik they have been trying to fudge these numbers over the past few years because admin thinks it makes the school look bad, but fewer than 50% of freshman that enroll in the college will graduate. And at least a third of those that leave don't make it past the first semester.
[1] Just to paint a few broad strokes of the highlights of our math program: Freshman study Euclid's Elements and Optics, Archimedes, and Claudius Ptolemy's Almagest, Sophomores study Ptolemy, Copernicus, Kepler's Astronomia Nova, and Apollonius' Conics. Junior's study Newton, Maxwell, Oresme, Leibniz, Pascal, Descartes, and Dedekind. And Senior's work through Einstein, Lorentz, and Minkowski's relativity papers, before rounding the whole thing off with Lobochevsky, Bertrand Russell, and Gödel.
Instead of offering a traditional undergraduate program that teaches largely from modern textbooks, students work through what the institution calls a “Great Books” curriculum of the “foundational texts of Western civilization” across a variety of subjects: https://www.sjc.edu/academic-programs/undergraduate/great-bo...
I have, however, read some accounts online that the program has flaws with the way it teaches mathematics, where some students claim that an approach through historical texts is less effective than one with more current books. In any case, I think it’s interesting that non-traditional institutions with largely respected reputations exist, like St. John’s and the colleges in the article and the discussion so far.