Give me Patrick Henry

National | New Christian college targets the Beltway | Lynn Vincent

America's newest evangelical Christian college will offer students a classical liberal arts education, a biblical emphasis, and just one major: government—and lots of it. So much, that half of junior- and senior-year credits racked up by students at Patrick Henry College will be earned not in the school's Purcellville, Va., classrooms, but in doing public-policy work for legislators.

Classes will commence on Oct. 2 at Patrick Henry, whose Williamsburg-style main buildings are still under construction. The new institution, planted among 44 acres of Northern Virginia pines, has so far accepted 80 students. More than a quarter of them hail from California and Virginia; all but two students were homeschoolers who were actively recruited by the college. While a report released this year by the National Center for Home Education shows that a majority of colleges—68 percent—have admissions policies favorable to homeschoolers, Patrick Henry is the nation's first post-secondary institution specifically to target them.