Latest news with #BYU-PW
Yahoo
13-06-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
BYU system has added 100,000 students since 2000
This article was first published in the ChurchBeat newsletter. Sign up to receive the newsletter in your inbox each Wednesday night. WASHINGTON — Startling data about BYU and its sister schools jumped out Monday during a panel discussion at a convening of 52 presidents of the ACE Commission on Faith-based Colleges and Universities. The panel included the presidents of Notre Dame, Yeshiva, Taylor and Lipscomb and was led by Elder Clark G. Gilbert, church commissioner of education for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Elder Gilbert, who is also a General Authority Seventy, and others expressed frustration with journalists who write what two university presidents described as clickbait stories focused on the closures of small, underfunded faith-based colleges. 'Since 2000, the network of BYU schools has grown by almost 100,000 students,' Elder Gilbert said, 'and yet all I read is, 'Faith-based schools are closing.'' The point was that despite some closures of smaller, faith-based colleges and universities, enrollment in that sector isn't shrinking. Far from it. In fact, enrollment growth in the faith sector as a whole is outpacing enrollment growth nationally. The growth in Latter-day Saint education is not surprising. The Deseret News reported in a November article that the Church of Jesus Christ provided education for nearly 1 million students in 2024, including high school students in seminary programs and college students in institute programs. But 100,000 students in 20 years is a remarkable increase that comes with two important notes. First, BYU regularly reports its enrollment of daytime undergraduate students. Elder Gilbert's statement was for a larger group, an unduplicated headcount of matriculated students. That means they included all students accepted into degree programs, including those taking night classes or online courses at BYU, BYU-Idaho, BYU-Hawaii, Ensign College and BYU-PW. Second, most church members will correctly anticipate that the vast bulk of the enrollment growth comes from BYU-Pathway Worldwide, which didn't exist in 2000. BYU-PW has gone from 458 students in 2009 to more than 80,000 this year, according to a statement by BYU-PW President Brian Ashton in April. Still, BYU and every other school in the church network is serving significantly more students than they did in 2000. And in all, they served more than 147,000 students as of last fall, a major increase from more than 50,000 in 2000. School presidents celebrate the value of faith-based higher education (June 9) President Russell M. Nelson dedicated the Syracuse Utah Temple on Sunday, the second temple he has dedicated as a 100-year-old. He said, 'This is the Lord's house. It is filled with his power. Those who live his higher laws have access to his higher power. God's power helps us to grow from the trials of life, rather than be defeated by them. God's power also helps us to withstand temptations with joy in our hearts.' Read President Nelson's dedicatory prayer setting aside the temple as a place of peace and personal revelation here. Relief Society President Camille Johnson announced that the church added a $63.4 million donation to its Global Initiative to Improve the Well-being of Women and Children. Coupled with last year's initial announcement of $55.8 million, the church now has provided more than $119 million to the effort. President Elaine L. Jack, who served as the 12th general president of the Relief Society from 1990-97, died Tuesday, June 10, 2025. She was 97. Elder Gary E. Stevenson is on a ministry trip to Uruguay, Argentina and Chile. In Uruguay, he spoke to church members and met with Uruguay Vice President Carolina Cosse and Catholic Cardinal Daniel Sturla. Elder Stevenson also spoke to Latter-day Saint U.S. Air Force Academy graduates at a baccalaureate service on Memorial Day weekend. The Church News published a new story detailing Elder David A. Bednar's ministry trip in May to Australia, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu and Fiji. Sister Kristin M. Yee, second counselor in the Relief Society general presidency, and Sister Andrea M. Spannaus, second counselor in the Young Women general presidency, visited Brazil and met with church members and visited places that have received church humanitarian aid funds. Read about their 10-day ministry here. The Church News provided a new story this week about Primary General President Susan H. Porter's May trip to Cambodia, Thailand, Taiwan and Laos. There is also a new story about Elder Patrick Kearon's 10-day ministry trip to the Philippines, where he stopped in Caloocan, Manila, Davao and Cebu. Mobile temple recommends are now available worldwide. Learn how they work. The church released renderings for new temples in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and Chihuahua, Mexico. See them and read about the site location for one here. Read about the real surprise in the Supreme Court's approach to religious freedom. The BYU women's soccer team is in New Zealand to serve and build relationships for two weeks in Auckland, Hamilton and Wellington. The players kicked off their trip by visiting the Mangere Refugee Resettlement Center in Auckland, where they practiced dribbling, passing and other ball-handling skills with refugee youth. I've always loved the knuckleball. As a kid, I played baseball in the Wilbur Wood league in the Boston suburbs, named for a knuckleballer from the region. As a dad, I took my kids out to the bullpen in Anaheim, California, to marvel at Tim Wakefield's knuckleball when he warmed up to pitch for the Red Sox against the Angels. Well, now a new knuckleballer is knocking on the doors of the major leagues and he's thrown the fastest knuckleball in history.
Yahoo
11-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Notre Dame professor: BYU-Pathway Worldwide may become Latter-day Saints' ‘biggest gift to the world'
BYU-Pathway Worldwide is on pace to see a 40% surge in students this year as a major piece of the way The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints approaches inequities across the globe, humanitarian experts and church leaders said this week at BYU. 'BYU-Pathway Worldwide, this investment of your church to bring quality online education at a low cost to the world, to me is extraordinary,' said Viva Bartkus, business professor emerita at Notre Dame and an expert on how businesses can help impoverished communities. 'I've been on Catholic Relief Services' board. I've worked with World Vision. I've worked with Aga Khan. I am telling you, BYU-Pathway may end up becoming your church's biggest gift to the world, hands down,' she said. BYU-PW now serves 80,000 students in over 80 countries, BYU-PW President Brian Ashton said during a panel discussion immediately after Bartkus made her presentation. 'I believe we will reach 100,000 this year,' Ashton predicted at the 35th Annual International Society Conference at BYU's Hinckley Center. The conference theme was 'Becoming One: Addressing Global Disparity.' BYU-PW is a vital way the Church of Jesus Christ confronts global disparities, said Ashton and Elder Edward Dube, a member of the church's Presidency of the Seventy and its Welfare and Self-Reliance Committee. 'The Lord Jesus Christ, whispering to our prophets, seers and revelators, made this BYU-Pathway Worldwide,' Elder Dube said. He spoke about being raised in Zimbabwe in a hut with a mud-and-grass-thatched roof and a floor covered with dried cow dung. He said he and his sister walked 12.5 miles each way to school. When they got stomach aches, their mother healed them by feeding them ants. He said Jesus Christ's intercessory prayer (John 17:21-22) encourages all people to address the root causes of global disparity. 'We must confront the dark realities of these stark disparities,' he said. Concerns about inequities — Bartkus referred to being born in America as winning the lottery — are as old as humanity, said the BYU School of Medicine's inaugural dean, Dr. Mark Ott. They also are referenced in scripture. Ashton quoted a Book of Mormon prophecy that after Christ's church would be restored, those who gathered in it would remain in their homelands, where they 'shall be established' (2 Nephi 9:1-2 and Doctrine and Covenants 78:6). 'Many members do not have this,' the BYU-PW president said. 'They are not established.' Ashton said BYU-Pathway is now designed to be both an education institution and an economic engine for its students who live in underdeveloped economies. On one hand, BYU-PW offers PathwayConnect, a confidence-building on-ramp into higher education, certificates, and associate and bachelor degrees at reduced costs. On the other end, it provides work study, skill development, internships and career opportunities. For example, a student might work in a basic accounting entry job in the first year after learning how to enter receipts into a computer program, Ashton said. When the student completes a certificate, she can become a bookkeeper. With advanced skills, she can be an accounting clerk and then an accountant. This is what drew Bartkus to BYU-PW. The Notre Dame professor developed a system that has launched 90 projects in more than 20 countries based on accompaniment, a Catholic social work model in which the teacher walks alongside the learner. She said the teachers must practice humility and first learn from the learner to understand the problem and the possibilities. The teacher must never do for the student. 'Walk alongside people as they're building their lives,' she said. Bartkus is the author of 'Business on the Edge: How to Turn a Profit and Improve Lives in the World's Toughest Places.' She developed a model, Business on the Frontlines, that Forbes named one of the 10 most innovative MBA courses in the country. It is a road map for how businesses can promote peace and reduce poverty while growing and making money in challenging environments. 'One of the ways of closing global disparities is to never underestimate the sheer human dignity of a good day's work,' Bartkus said. 'What's really, really unique about BYU-Pathway,' she said, 'is it is the only organization that I know of that essentially, under the same umbrella, is both an academic institution and an economic development engine.' Most universities see education as an end in itself. 'In these places that I've described to you, education is not an end in itself, it's a means towards an end, which is a job, a better job, a way of looking after your family, your community, serving in your faith,' Bartkus said. 'What is extraordinary about BYU-Pathway is that you provide the opportunity for education, and then BYU-Pathway Worldwide helps with the initial jobs, helps with the initial employment, so that people can get on their feet. That is an extraordinary contribution.' Like the man who liked a shaver so much he bought the company, Bartkus liked BYU-PW so much she joined on as a consultant. For BYU-Pathway to use the lessons she's learned on the frontlines, she said it must not say it is there to help. 'Don't help. You can serve. You can learn, or you can create the conditions so that people can work really, really hard to lift themselves out of poverty. You can't give them that. They have to do that themselves,' she said. Bartkus quoted Latter-day Saint scripture to the mostly Latter-day Saint audience at the conference. 'And when the priests left their labor to impart the word of God unto the people, the people also left their labors to hear the word of God. And when the priest had imparted unto them the word of God they all returned again diligently unto their labors' (Alma 1:26). 'I find it an extremely exciting gift that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is giving to the rest of the world,' she said.
