To say that times have changed for college students in the 21st century is a little like saying that computers have made information retrieval a little easier for researchers: One doesn't consider that previous incarnations of reality could have been possible. But technology is not the only thing to have transformed the realities of higher education. Today, the difference between having a college and not having one can affect the entire course of one's life.
Whatever else is true about achieving a truly livable life in modern America, it is also true that having strong credentials for employment is also quite necessary. The accessibility of Davenport University to people who may not ordinarily consider themselves full-time students but who because of family obligations must consider themselves full-time employees is therefore extraordinarily important. The stereotyped image of a college experience--football games, adolescent love affairs, and the vicissitudes of campus politics--recedes into the background as inconsequential when measured against the prospect of profiting from the advantages associated with an advanced educational. For Davenport students, academic effort is not an afterthought of the transition from adolescence to young adulthood. For Davenport students, a college education involves serious academic and professional purpose. They do not just have a "major" but realize that their education is part of being a student of life itself.
Davenport University is uniquely suited to the task of fulfilling the long-term purpose of higher education, which for the individual extends beyond personal fulfillment to the task of becoming a productive, informed, and useful--not simply vocal--member of the body politic. To be sure, the social "experience" of "college" may be of utmost importance to an adolescent high-school graduate. For a post-adolescent who has any meaningful perception of life at all, however, the effectiveness ...