Home School U? More Students Being Home Schooled through College Years

A growing number of parents are home schooling their elementary and high school-aged children. But college students? Experts say that so-called "higher ed at home" will be the next trend to reshape postsecondary education, but skeptics ask what's next: home work?

By Cole Walters

CAHOKIA, IL—Brandon Hamer is a typical college student. His days are crammed full of classes in English, algebra and biology, and at night he has just enough time to grab a quick bite before it's back to his room to study some more. But unlike his contemporaries, Brandon doesn't go to parties or even to a campus. In fact, he rarely leaves his house. This college freshman is being home schooled.

Home School U
While an estimated 1.1 million students were home schooled last year, no one knows precisely how many of them are remaining at home all the way through college, even graduate school. But experts and advocates of the stay-at-home movement are already predicting that higher education at home is shaping up to be the biggest trend since distance learning.

"This is an area that has potential for enormous growth," says Ray Strickland of the National Center for Home Education. "Parents who worry about the information and ideas that their kids are being exposed to in elementary and high schools, have much more to worry about once those kids have left home."

Professor dad
That's precisely what Earle Hamer was thinking when Brandon began to consider applying for college last year. "We took a look at some of the things being taught on these campuses and we said 'whoa.' Queer studies, gender studies, film studies. There was no way we were going to subject Brandon to that," says Hamer.

So instead of sending their son off to school, the Hamers turned their home into a university. Earle Hamer quit his job as an electrical contractor in St. Louis to serve as his son’s on-site professor. While he schools his son in science, math and engineering—Brandon hopes to be a structural engineer—Joyce Hamer handles the liberal arts. Today, the family depends on Brandon’s Pell Grant, and on the income Mrs. Hamer brings in as a nurse’s aid. But any sacrifice is well worth it, she says. "In college we wouldn’t have had any control over what Brandon was reading. This way we can approve a curriculum as a family."

To make the at-home college experience feel more real, the Hamer's even helped Brandon create a dorm room. They stripped his existing bedroom of everything but a bed and desk, then gave him $100 to furnish the space as he chose. "It's pretty cool," says Brandon, sitting on his bed beneath an enormous poster of tennis player Anna Kournikova. "It's just like a real dorm room."

After graduation, questions
But once Brandon and other graduates of home school universities matriculate, they may face questionable futures. While the vast majority of public and private schools are accredited, meaning that they meet standards set by the Commission on Institutions of Higher Education, home colleges are unaccredited. That means that when 'Home U' grads enter an already tough job market, prospective employers may refuse to recognize their degrees, leaving them at a distinct disadvantage.

Advocates of home schooling say that the hurdle of accreditation could be overcome, however, if the movement in favor of home colleges becomes big enough—and strong enough—to demand it. Gail Hernstrom, author of "The Home Schooled Hero and Other Revolutionary Ideas," predicts that in coming years, living room learning will become an accepted practice for all sorts of professional training, from law school to pharmacology, even gynecology. "These post-institutional students are going to help us prove that we don't need bureaucratic standards governing what it takes to be a professional in America," says Hernstrom.

A minor in social awkwardness?
The most potent criticism of the home college movement isn't about what they're learning but how they spend their time out of the classroom. Critics say that by preventing students like Brandon Hamer from interacting with people his own age, home university proponents may be doing the cloistered class of '08 the greatest disservice of all.

But Brandon has an easy answer for such skeptics. He and three other home "freshmen" recently established an online fraternity house called ΟΊΚΟΣ ΣΧΟΛΕΊΟ, the Greek words for 'home' and 'school.' On weekend nights, the young men log-on to their virtual hangout spot and kick back, chatting about music, movies, video games and anything else that interests them. "One of these days we're going to have a dance," says Brandon. "If we can find some girls."

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Comments

[Kels!]

This is retated kids should be abel to pick what kind of school they want to go to and if the parents want to set guide lines in friends and what they should be abel to wear and stuff then thats all fine and dandy BUT!!!!! They need to let their kids have some freedom and make the choices they knwow they should make... that is what builds character!!

[Luke Rook]

Once upon a time before public education when a private education was most often unavailable or unaffordable for most young adults, there was apprenticeship. Christian author and former Magdalen College professor C.S. Lewis, who used to be an atheist and became a Christian late in life before he died, was educated in this fashion. The wealth of information that he learned in this way was indeed impressive.

Me being one who definitely desired independence from his parents' house when he was Brandon's age, moving out at nineteen, would have eagerly jumped at an apprenticeship opportunity. Unfortunately, internship is NOT the same thing, and college has never impressed me as anything other than an expensive, time-consuming, patronizing extension of the four years one had to tolerate in high school. People are starting to take things back into their own hands, no longer able to rely on education as a public service, and I think maybe we will see apprenticeship return again. Apprenticeship is more realistic than expecting everyone to be schooled by a parent at home.

[no joke]

This shit is no joke, I gotta degre in Enlgish from my momma while I was homie schooled in da hood.

My momma not never graduated from Jr High, but shes smart. She tought me everything I know. Now I have a degre and it was mad cheap and mad phat. I'd ave hoes all o'er my home and my momma didn't mind. Best four years ever.

I applied for a job at Walmart and nobody questioned my degre!

[laurie]

We choose to homeschool our son when, at three, he would exclaim things like, "mom, now I know how odysseus felt when he finally woke up on ithaca." i couldn't see how abcs and 123s two years later would be of much use or interest and frankly, remembering how above average students were treated when i went to school, felt that there would be pressure for him to not be true to his own interests.

A big point and benefit of homeschooling, however, is that you do retain the ability to structure your child's environment when they are still too young to have firm values and opinions. If you can't let your 18 year old, always homeschooled child, attend any university, you obviously haven't raised your child to be strong in his own values and beliefs. (And of course they haven't, because they've raised him to parrot theirs and their church's.)

We wouldn't mind at all if our son took classes that mentioned and valued gays - he knows members of our extended family are gay and he knows about the right wing attack on the rights of gays. Neither would we be afraid to let him know fundamentalists, because we know he is his own person with a strong foundation in love, values, and thinking. As an obvious liberal, (right-wing homeschoolers have something like gaydar, where they can spot a liberal from the moment she opens the door to her (other) son's gymnastics class), I have been shunned and had my children ignored by these 'people of faith.' A friend of mine was actually told, "we homeschool to keep our kids away from people like you."

Fortunately, many liberals also homeschool and our kids are out in the real world, mixing with all kinds of people in real world situations. While many homeschoolers disdain, or affect disdain, for mainstream ideas about achievement, most still hope their efforts and sacrifices have prepared their children for admission to those left-wing venerated universities.

I think the christian right in this country is getting sicker and sicker and sicker. Because they only speak to each other and allow no information or fresh air into their circles, mass psychoses seems to be arising.

but we all knew that anyway....

[stef]

C'mon, it has got to scare you!

[Mark Schambach]

I think you got me. This article was a joke, right?

[Mark Schambach]

I have a 12 year old who will probably taking community college courses beginning in 2 years...providing that in my opinion his maturity level is sufficient by then. I do plan on having him living indepenently by age 18...perhaps in grad school. While I am not opposed to homeschool for college, I think by the age of 18 a young person should be making the break for independence from in full time at home living.

[T.L. Brink]

I agree that for most people, the concept of moving away from home at age 18 to live in a dormitory in order to get a BA is archaic.

However, staying at home to do college does not require establishing a "home school university."

Most people can live at home and attend a local community college or nearby state university. Another option would be an online degree from a public university or quality non-profit university.