CV NEWS FEED // In an interview with CatholicVote, the founder of the College of St. Joseph the Worker discussed the “why” behind establishing a school that graduates students with a trade certification, a Catholic Studies degree, and low student debt.
“Many people make a distinction between those meant for the trades and those meant for [higher education],” Jacob Imam, the school’s founder, told CatholicVote:
But the very life of Jesus reveals this to be a false dichotomy: the Word became flesh and spent most of the years of his life at a carpenter’s bench. The College of St Joseph the Worker recognizes this by availing itself to those who want a demanding academic education. We don’t just offer a trade, and not just a degree, but a fully integral education of the head and the hands.
Imam, a Catholic convert from Islam and a graduate of Oxford University, will serve as the school’s Vice President of Finance.
Watch: Jacob Imam’s Radical Solution to College Debt: The College of St. Joseph the Worker
Fighting Student Debt
The college, set to open for its first year in the fall of 2024, is located in Steubenville, Ohio. In December of 2023, the college announced that it received state approval and officially opened for applications.
Over a six-year period, the school will offer formation in the lay vocation through spiritual and classical resources, as well as hands-on learning experience in a trade such as carpentry, electrical, or plumbing.
For the first three years, the cost of tuition is $15,000 per year. In the fourth and fifth years, when the students return to their respective home states, the cost lowers to $5,000 per year for the online classes. All students will graduate with a degree in Catholic Studies, as well as a trade certification.
A top priority for Imam has been ensuring that St. Joseph’s is affordable. Having a large amount of college student debt “has almost become a right of passage in our society,” he said, which often “frightens people from marriage, from starting a family—from doing things that lead to human flourishing.”
High college debt “also leads further into a state of economic dependence. A person with $80,000 of student loans is not as eager to start a business, to obtain productive property, to form their own venture,” Imam continued:
…This is far from the traditional American way. In America there is a deep tradition of respecting the independent citizen worker. Jefferson talked about the yeoman farmer. In the 20th century, we talked about small business owners. The idea, though, is the same. People who work for themselves or at least at trades that require that they have a wide view of the mechanisms of society are people who cultivate independent minds and who tend to have independent means.
Imam added that those who work for themselves, or in trades, also “tend to have a local focus, with real concern for their communities.”
“This is in stark contrast to those who have been trained to… take their place as cogs in vast mechanisms of state and economy that they cannot understand, let alone control,” Imam said.
The Liberal Arts
In many universities, the curriculum and teaching styles have shifted from more traditional approaches, and now, Imam argued, “the existence of knowledge itself is held suspect.”
Additionally, many “universities have forgotten entirely that the cultivation of the mind cannot be divorced from the cultivation of the soul,” Imam said. “Knowledge without virtue is a trap leading to conflict and unhappiness.”
“The university system was founded by the Catholic Church as a place of reading and of disputation, indeed, though only insofar as these activities led ultimately to the contemplation of the Triune God. God, however, has been banished,” Imam continued. “This does not mean that we should throw away higher education—we need to reclaim it.”
Founding the College of St. Joseph the Worker is a way of working towards this goal, Imam explained.
Noting the value of teaching the humanities in higher education, Imam stressed that colleges should also form students in technical knowledge to prepare them for jobs post-graduation.
The trades “also enable one to work on their own home and buildings—instead of paying others to do it. These skills are assets, not liabilities,” Imam said.
Working on physical projects is also encouraging because the fruits of the tradesmen’s labor are visible and tangible. “At the end of every day, the tradesman gets to step back from his work and see an actual, physical difference in the world as a result of his work,” Imam said:
Additionally, understanding our increasingly complicated technological world is more possible through the eyes of those in the trades. Few of us understand how our homes, buildings, and electronics work. With the trades, that anxiety is also alleviated insofar as you begin to understand how the world around us functions.
The College’s Core Curriculum
The college’s president Mike Sullivan, and the construction consultant Dan Hassett both built the core curriculum, which all students will be required to study. The core focuses on training all students in carpentry, HVAC, electrical, masonry, and plumbing.
With this focus, students will be able to “truly understand the complete anatomy of a home—and not just one aspect of it,” Imam said. “By understanding the total logic of a building, our students will have a heightened ability to troubleshoot and problem solve on job sites.”
Imam and Professor Andrew Willard Jones helped design the theology curriculum, which roots itself in Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition, and focuses on economics, family, and politics.
A Catholic Environment in the City
The physical environment of the school, which is located in downtown Steubenville, “is specifically designed for the layman,” Imam explained. Students at St. Joseph’s will have opportunities for volunteer work, participating in sports leagues in the city, and living in close proximity to hiking trails.
Students will also have access to spiritual resources such as Mass and the sacraments. A Catholic Church is within 5 minutes of walking distance from the College headquarters, and offers daily Mass, perpetual adoration, and multiple confession times. The college will have priests available weekly for additional confession times and spiritual direction.
The history of the town of Steubenville also is interwoven with the local Catholic community. The town, which was known in the twentieth century for its milling and mining productions, suffered major economic difficulties that resulted in a mass exodus of town residents.
Imam praised the neighboring Franciscan University of Steubenville for its presence, which “organically brought and kept Catholics in the area” around this time of exodus.
“With the inspiration of Catholic social teaching, these citizens slowly began revitalizing their dilapidated Rustbelt town. They became the actual leaven of a depressed city,” Imam said:
We want our students to be inspired by this vision of revitalization and enter into it—a revitalization that is not focused on the economy as an end in itself, but as a genuine attempt to ward off destitution while maintaining the evangelical counsel of poverty as rungs of a ladder leading to heaven.
“As the laity is set in the middle of the world to be divine leaven to the social order, so our students are placed in the middle of our city,” Imam said. “Rather than sequestered from the world, we are incorporated into it. Meditatio is spiritual perfection—the end we all seek to achieve—and we want to bring that holiness in the world.”
