2019 TEDxSalem

Michelle Jones thought traditional colleges were broken — so she started her own.

The U.S. high­er edu­ca­tion sys­tem has become a punch­ing bag in recent years — with tuition climb­ing, stu­dents tak­ing on enor­mous debt and grad­u­ates who still don’t know what to do with their lives. Prospec­tive stu­dents now judge col­leges not on what they will learn but on whether they will get a job.

Despite all the crit­i­cism, few are com­ing up with valid alter­na­tives, said Jones, a long­time pro­fes­sor and one of 12 fea­tured speak­ers at TEDxSalem VI Jan. 5.

“Most peo­ple in high­er edu­ca­tion agree that it’s bro­ken and we need oth­er options,” she says, “they just don’t know how to go about doing it.”

Jones describes the whole sys­tem — where stu­dents pick a col­lege, then choose a major, then fig­ure out what they’re going to do, then try it out — as “back­wards.” So, in 2016, she did some­thing extreme: she start­ed her own col­lege.

The result was Wayfind­ing Acad­e­my in Port­land, a two-year, non­prof­it, lib­er­al arts-focused col­lege where stu­dents can earn an asso­ciate of arts degree, sim­i­lar to a com­mu­ni­ty col­lege.

“We have fac­ul­ty, class­es, stu­dents, all those nor­mal things,” she says. “But none of it func­tions the way a tra­di­tion­al col­lege would func­tion.”

But let’s back up a bit. How does some­one even get the idea to start their own col­lege?

For Jones, it didn’t hap­pen until long after her own col­lege expe­ri­ence. After grad­u­at­ing high school, she did what every­one else did, she enrolled in a four-year col­lege. She earned a bachelor’s degree in two per­pet­u­al­ly pop­u­lar sub­jects, busi­ness and psy­chol­o­gy, at Trin­i­ty Uni­ver­si­ty in San Anto­nio, Texas.

Her men­tor intro­duced her to orga­ni­za­tion­al behav­ior, psy­chol­o­gy applied to the work­place set­ting. She became so inter­est­ed in the field that she went on to study it at Clare­mont Grad­u­ate Uni­ver­si­ty in South­ern Cal­i­for­nia, earn­ing a master’s and a PhD.

From there, she start­ed teach­ing, work­ing at about five uni­ver­si­ties before becom­ing a fac­ul­ty mem­ber at Prov­i­dence Col­lege in Prov­i­dence, R.I. There, she co-taught an elec­tive called “We Don’t Need No Edu­ca­tion” where she chal­lenged stu­dents to con­sid­er what they would do dif­fer­ent­ly if they designed their own col­lege. The idea of rev­o­lu­tion­iz­ing high­er edu­ca­tion nev­er left her, even when she moved to the North­west, where she ulti­mate­ly taught at Con­cor­dia Uni­ver­si­ty.

“I real­ized the whole sys­tem doesn’t real­ly work to the ben­e­fit of the stu­dent,” she says. “I would hear from many stu­dents who were angry, say­ing, ‘I’m in a lot of debt, I still don’t know what I want to do with my life, I’ve changed my major a bunch of times, and now it’s too late.’ The whole thing felt like a no-win sit­u­a­tion for them.”

Armed with her years of observ­ing col­leges from the inside, she gath­ered oth­er like-mind­ed pro­fes­sion­als who want­ed to change the sys­tem, set up a cam­pus and cur­ricu­lum, raised mon­ey, and made sure the school was an approved degree-grant­i­ng orga­ni­za­tion with Oregon’s High­er Edu­ca­tion Coor­di­nat­ing Com­mis­sion.

The acad­e­my grad­u­at­ed its first class in 2018. But what was so dif­fer­ent about their expe­ri­ence ver­sus a more tra­di­tion­al col­lege? And did their time at Wayfind­ing serve them well?

For those details, you’ll have to attend Jones’s talk. She promis­es a few sur­pris­es that might upend what you think is true about col­leges, and a thought-pro­vok­ing look at how serv­ing stu­dents bet­ter can impact our cul­ture and com­mu­ni­ties.

“Ore­gon has a long his­to­ry of being on the lead­ing edge of things — we had the first bot­tle bill, we were the first state to have vot­ing by mail, we were the first ‘death with dig­ni­ty’ state,” she says.

“We are now the first to cre­ate an alter­na­tive mod­el of high­er edu­ca­tion.”

TEDxSalem VI

TEDxSalem VI is an all-day event fea­tur­ing talks, per­for­mances, refresh­ments, lunch and a swag bag. It runs 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Sat­ur­day, Jan. 5 at the Salem Con­ven­tion Cen­ter. Tick­ets are on sale now for $55, $45 for stu­dents. Fol­low us on Face­book for the most up-to-date news from our com­mu­ni­ty, and check our web­site reg­u­lar­ly for new infor­ma­tion. You can also reach us at info@tedxsalem.com.