August Newsletter Yorktown University

Summer Time and “Livin Ain’t Easy”

Though summer, according to George Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess, is a time when “the livin is easy,” Yorktown University has been hard at work credentialing Yorktown University to provide education benefits for U.S. military personnel. 

U.S. Veterans Administration Site Visit

On Monday, August 4, Yorktown University successfully completed a Site Visit by Mike Harris, a representative of the U.S. Veterans Administration.  Our next newsletter will summarize the progress that Yorktown University has made to make education benefits available to U.S. military personnel, their dependents, and service veterans.

Dr. William Allen Publishes Two Books

Yorktown University Faculty member Dr. William Allen informs us that he has published two books. 

The Personal and the Political is a translation of three fables by the French political theorist Baron de La Brede et de Montesquieu. 

Dr. Allen maintains that “Montesquieu's fables demonstrate the continuing relevance of the issue of philosophical morality, and offer a reconciliation of the tension between philosophical morality and political morality.”  Click here to learn more about this important publication.

In George Washington: America’s First Progressive, Dr. Allen argues that Washington’s political philosophy—radical for his time—was a commitment to the belief that law can never make just what is in its nature unjust. Before the close of the Revolutionary War, he had conceived of a union based on the progressive principle that the American people would qualify for self-government in the sense of free institutions in proportion to their moral capacity to govern themselves by the light of reason. Washington managed the conflicts over the spoils of victory that threatened to fracture the union. Containing this discord ‘within the walls of the Constitution’ may be considered his single greatest achievement.”  You may learn more about this important study of the political philosophy of George Washington by clicking here.

DETC Accredits Yorktown University

Our June Newsletter announced that the Accrediting Commission of the Distance Education and Training Council awarded institutional accreditation to Yorktown University.  The Distance Education and Training Council accredits institutions that offer courses and degree programs for academic credit “at a distance.”  DETC was the first accrediting association to accredit an Internet institution and is the accrediting association with the most experience in evaluating institutions for accreditation that utilize the Web for educational purposes.  DETC is chartered by the U.S. Department of Education.  You may learn more about DETC by clicking here.

Dr. Michael Sanera Joins Yorktown University

Dr. Michael Sanera, developer of a new course in public administration, was a tenured associate professor of political science and public administration at Northern Arizona University (NAU) where he served for seventeen years. He was the founding director of NAU’s Master In Public Administration (MPA) program and developed an innovative weekend seminar program (before Internet learning) for working public managers in Northern Arizona.  This program served the diverse community of public administrators in Northern Arizona including city and county managers, federal park service and forest service managers, state fish and game and land management managers and tribal managers from the Navajo and Hopi nations. 

In the early 1980s, Dr. Sanera served as a political appointee in the Reagan administration.  He was the Assistant Director for Policy and Evaluation at the Office of Personnel Management, the “personnel office” for three million federal civilian workers.  In this position he evaluated all proposed changes in federal personnel policy including examinations, hiring, retirement, pay, health care, and discipline.  In addition, he served as a consultant at the U.S. Department of Education reviewing the department’s grant programs.  His recommendations for tightening controls saved federal taxpayers millions of dollars.

In the mid 1980s, Dr. Sanera developed and implemented the Executive Development Program for The Heritage Foundation.  This program conducted educational seminars designed to increase the policy-making effectiveness of senior political managers in the Reagan Administration. 

Dr. Sanera contributed chapters on managing the federal bureaucracy in the Heritage Foundation’s Mandate for Leadership II.  Portions of those chapters will be required reading in Dr. Sanera’s Public Administration course at Yorktown University.

At this same time, he was also a frequent speaker at the U.S. Office of Personnel Management’s Executive Development Seminar program in Denver that provided senior level career employees with advanced public management skills.  Dr. Sanera’s presentation focused on the special (sometimes conflicting) relationship between political and career executives in the executive branch.

Dr. Sanera’s New Course Description

Public Administration is a new graduate level course that equips middle- and senior-level public executives and military personnel with an understanding of the fundamental differences between the administration of the public’s business that responds to political signals and private sector management that responds to markets.   These differences are rooted in the nature of the American political system. Public managers at all levels are not only responsible for carrying out the desires of democratically elected officials; they are a part of the political decision-making process.  As such, they bear special ethical responsibilities that are often forgotten by many public administrators. Internally, agency personnel respond to an incentive structure that, at times, produces perverse effects.  Knowledge of this incentive structure is an essential ingredient for a successful public manager.

Dr. Bishirjian Moderates a Capitol Hill Briefing

On July 18, Yorktown University’s president, Dr. Richard Bishirjian, moderated a briefing in the U.S. Capitol Building about U.S. Department of Education efforts to federalize higher education. Diane Auer Jones, Dr. Peter Wood and Dr. William Sloane presented arguments for defending Liberal Arts colleges from new proposals by the U.S. Department of Education.

Diane Auer Jones resigned from her appointment as Assistant Secretary for Postsecondary Education at the U.S. Department of Education.  Peter Wood is executive director of the National Association of Scholars and William Sloane is adjunct professor of law at Widener University.

InsideHigherEd.com wrote that “Jones came to the Education Department at a time of significant tension between the department’s top officials and many college leaders over the department’s aggressive efforts to implement the recommendations of Education Secretary Margaret Spellings’ Commission on the Future of Higher Education.”  Click here to read Dr. Bishirjian report on these initiatives published in Clarion Call, a newsletter of the Pope Center for Higher Education Policy. 

Denver Post Reports on Yorktown University and Bob Schaffer

Mike Riley at the Denver Post took notice of former Congressman Bob Schaffer resignation as Trustee of Yorktown University.  Click here to read that news story. 

Bob Schaffer contacted us last week to ask that we share with our friends and colleagues a YouTube video that compares American students with foreign college students.  Click here to view this YouTube video.

The Denver Post story by Mike Riley and the YouTube video tell an important story about higher education and the reason why there is a Yorktown University and why we went to great lengths to attain academic accreditation.

Yorktown University’s Rationale

It’s clear to all of us associated with Yorktown University that American higher education took a wrong turn in the late-1960s and early 1970s when most colleges and universities dropped their Core Curriculum requirements.

Most of us who attended a Liberal Arts college or a research university before 1968 were required to take courses in American government, history, economics, and other subjects considered necessary to be truly educated.  Required courses were replaced by cafeteria style education that gave limitless freedom to choose whatever courses and academic subjects are of interest to students, but no guaranteed foundation in courses that root us in our country, its history and the civilization and culture of the West.

A sense of loss of community resulted that has yet to be recovered even today and critical skills learned from reading literature, studying philosophy, and learning about American history and the history of Western Civilization are no longer guaranteed by a college “education.”

That’s why one Yorktown University student returned to college to earn another undergraduate degree at Yorktown University and why a graduate student at Yorktown University is earning the MA in Government even though she previously earned the MBA.

At Yorktown University we’re trying to change course and move in the direction of foundational studies that educate our students in the American Founding, Constitutional law, classical economics, literature, history and political philosophy. 

What’s the value of all this?

We remind ourselves that decades before the American revolution the Founders of our country took time from their commercial pursuits and careers to steep themselves in the history of ancient Rome and Greece, the political philosophy of Greek and Roman philosophers, and the works that gave them the temerity and moral courage to tell the world that America was and will be a separate and independent nation.  At Yorktown University our students learn what the Founders intended and why they were willing to sacrifice their lives and their sacred honor so that we might live as free men and women.