Where did you see that? I am in NC and not a High Point U or the Cult of Nido Quebain fan, but I have never heard anything about God in relation to High Point U — not to say it’s not there, I just haven’t heard about it.
The main thing I hear about High Point U is the “Premier Life Skills University” tag line and their fancy campus and amenities and their finishing school like approach to college.
Incidentally Nido Quebain has a new show on NC public television, which I found disappointing. Something about that guy just really rubs me the wrong way.
It’s on the tv commercial - parents love our value of god, family, and country.
They’re playing to push their kids there.
This is the ad running on cnbc - was easy to find so they probably have on their website, etc… I imagine they run it elsewhere too.
I guess this is just how they spend their marketing budget, etc. I just was - well you don’t see other schools doing this (or I don’t) - so a bit surprised.
I get stuff from High Point U as inserts in some professional journals I get, and we’re way over in California.
These are not one pagers or something small; instead, they are a full thick color magazine. It also comes about 3-4 times a year, but I’ve never read one.
Yes we’ve tried everything as far as unsubscribing/opting out of emails and such yet they keep on coming and so do the mailings. it’s actually feeling very over-the-top
I think a lot of the southern schools are more religious than people expect them to be. My daughter went to Florida Tech, a non-religious (was founded in 1958 to support NASA so never had a religious tie) school, but it is fairly religious. The teams often pray on the field before or after a game. There is a chapel on campus with a catholic priest to do services (all are welcome). There is a Newman dorm (a catholic dorm on school property but paid for by a religious group, and the room and board is collected by the school; many students pick it s a substance free/quite dorm). Not surprising, the past president and his wife (an engineering professor) gave half their estate to the school, and the other half of their estate to the catholic church. They were very religious and it came through to the school too.
Some of the schools in that conference are catholic or founded by other religions, and the praying at games was common. My daughter, who is not religious, just rolled with it.
But just in general, there seem to be more religious student groups in the south, more church activities on Sundays (Saturday is for football, the other religion in the south), more kids open about their religion.
Agreed, often in an inclusive way. My kid went to Hillel events with her Jewish friends, Catholic trips with her Catholic friends, some bible study with Protestants. All good.
I don’t think this is limited to universities. I’ve attended many graduations and award ceremonies with prayers at public schools, sometimes just at the beginning of the ceremony, other times at both the beginning and the end. The public sports rec league? Prayers at the end of every practice. And this is not in a rural, conservative area. This happens in major metro areas, the blue dots of red states.
ETA: Neglected to mentioned that all these ceremonies with prayers are taking place at PUBLIC schools.
The kids we know that go there tend to come from conservative families where the parents didn’t go to college but did very well financially in the trades. I think both the God, county, family and the country club/Disneyfied/movie version of college hits them in all the “feels”. Add in “life skills” so they feel like their kid won’t come out a “socialist” due to “liberal indoctrination at all of the universities” and you’ve closed the sale.
Let’s just say, they know who they are marketing to.
Not sure where you are going with this,
From 2020 Data HPU is 77% white, 8% Black or African American, 6% Hispanic or Latino, 2% Non Resident Alien, 5% 2 or more races, 3% Asian. From Graph cited
If you look at Full time, part time and Grad students the numbers are a little more diverse
The enrolled student population at High Point University is 74.9% White, 7.73% Black or African American, 6.07% Hispanic or Latino, 4.43% Two or More Races, 2.44% Asian, 0.303% American Indian or Alaska Native, and 0.0534% Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islanders. This includes both full-time and part-time students as well as graduate and undergraduates
Compared to average of all Baccalaureate Colleges
54.8% White, 13.8% Black or African American, and 13.4% Hispanic or Latino.
Here is another source on overall diversity trends in Higher Ed, comparing 1995-96 to 2015-2016
HPU has a poor reputation (at least on CC) and is often described as a resort. Not long after I joined CC, I asked users to list colleges that were all bling and no substance. HPU was the “winner.”
Barring a full ride scholarship, there is nothing that would persuade me to let my kids go there. Actually, scratch that. I wouldn’t let me kids go there under any circumstances.
I’d also argue that their outcomes are probably little better than those at Full Sail U, a for-profit college.
Pretty pathetic that the college has to appeal to parents to attract students. Every now and then, a parent asks me about HPU and I tell them exactly what I think. Plus the President of the college is VERY dubious.
The four year graduation rate of 64% is terrible for a private u, and the freshman retention rate of 82% is nothing to crow about either.
You need to look at the school’s website itself instead of third party data (which is older or directional). You could also look at a school’s common data set but there doesn’t appear to be one.
BTW, there will be data available, but there’s a good reason they don’t freely publish it or make it easy to find. That alone is a big red flag. You can probably request it, as I believe all not-for-profit higher ed institutions must collect that info. College Data will have some of it here: High Point University Overview | CollegeData
Their advertising slogan of “Parents Love Our College!” gives me the creeps. I admit I sometimes live vicariously through my kids, but that place takes it too far.
Compare and contrast with Elon, which is another private NC school just 35 miles away. Elon is a solid, respectable school, with a great reputation, that also markets itself to kids outside of NC (majority of students are OOS).
