COLTON>> For students nowadays, attending college seems to be an uphill battle upon applying, due to high tuition rates, student loans, books, etc. Operating from available space provided throughout the week by the Centerpoint Church in Colton, a private, small, Christian college is currently providing an alternative option for prospective college students.
Oak Valley College began its full operation of classes in September of 2016 with nine students, all full time. This upcoming fall of 2017, the attendance is increasing to a total of 15 students enrolled in classes at Oak Valley College. The college operates on a semester track and the total cost of the three year degree is $12,160 or $380 per month. Oak Valley College offers only one major and students enrolled currently all take the same classes together. Only one degree is offered, a Bachelor of Arts in Business with the entire program consisting of only 32 courses. The college is also currently undergoing the process of accreditation.
President of Oak Valley College, Eric Blum, explained that Oak Valley College functions as a cohort program. “They go through the exact same courses all together, so they’re all joined at the hip basically.” Blum said.
Costs are kept low through keeping the focus on solely the attainment of the degree. No electives or prerequisite classes are offered; the primary focus is the necessary classes for the degree. Blum explains “It’s pretty simple and straightforward. We hire faculty, we don’t have a whole lot of overhead for administration, there’s four of us that run the administration of the college.”
“It’s just really efficient when you offer one degree and you offer one cohort.” Blum said.
When asked about why Oak Valley College offers such an affordable education, Blum mentions the difficulties students faced during his extensive time in higher education, working for schools such as UCLA, UCR, and the University of Redlands.
“I just saw students graduating $100,000 more in debt, I just thought there was another way to do things.” Blum said.
“The simple reason is because we can.” Blum said.
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Blum also mentioned that the process of setting up Oak Valley College took about ten years due to having to figure out the model of how to run the school, in the way it is currently ran and attain the approval from the state of California.