Facts/FAQ

Founded
The College was established in 1994.

Type
Private, coeducational, Christian college offering associate’s, bachelor's and master's degrees.

Location
New Saint Andrews is located on Friendship Square and Main Street in the historic Skattaboe Block (1891) of downtown Moscow, Idaho. Moscow is nestled in the rolling hills of the Palouse region in Idaho's picturesque northern Panhandle, about 80 miles south of Spokane, WA, and Coeur d'Alene, ID, 300 miles north of Boise, ID, the state capital, and 300 miles east of Seattle. Moscow is a city of approximately 22,000 and is home to Logos School, two Confederation of Reformed Evangelical churches, Canon Press, Credenda Agenda magazine, and the University of Idaho. Washington State University is eight miles west in Pullman, WA. For more information about the region, contact the Moscow Chamber of Commerce.

Governance
Independent, non-profit educational trust, governed by a self-sustaining, seven-member Board of Trustees.

Accreditation
New Saint Andrews College is an accredited member of the Transnational Association of Christian Colleges and Schools (TRACS) [PO Box 328, Forest, VA 24551; Telephone: (434) 525-9539; e-mail: info@tracs.org]. TRACS is recognized by the United States Department of Education (USDE), the Council for Higher Education Accreditation (CHEA) and the International Network for Quality Assurance Agencies in Higher Education (INQAAHE). The College is also registered with the State of Idaho's State Board of Education.

Affiliations
The College is an independent, non-profit educational trust established by Christ Church, Moscow, a member of the Confederation of Reformed Evangelical Churches (CREC). The College's Trustees are all members of CREC churches. The College is a charter member of the Association of Classical & Christian Schools (ACCS) and a member of the Association of Reformed Institutions of Reformed Higher Education (ARIHE). The College is also part of the University and College Accountability Network (UCAN).

Theological Perspective
The College stands in the Reformed and Presbyterian tradition of protesting catholics and affirms the great creeds of the Christian church throughout the ages: the Apostles Creed, the Nicene Creed, and the Definition of Chalcedon. The College Board of Trustees, administration, and faculty all affirm the College's Statement of Faith, which offers a brief summary of the great reformational confessions of the 16th and 17th centuries, such as the Westminster Confession of Faith of 1646, the Belgic Confession, and the Canons of Dort, and Heidelberg Catechism. The College believes that these historic confessions fully and faithfully summarize the doctrine revealed in Scripture.

Faculty
The College is blessed with a strong Christian faculty that includes some of the leaders of the classical Christian education revival, such as Senior Fellows Doug Wilson (author of Recovering the Lost Tools of Learning, The Paideia of God, and The Case for Classical Christian Education), Dr. Peter Leithart (author of Heroes of the City of Man, Brightest Heaven of Invention, Ascent to Love, Miniatures and Morals, and more), Dr. Roy Atwood (The Quest for Authentic Higher Learning, with Douglas Wilson), and Christopher Schlect (contributor to Repairing the Ruins: The Classical and Christian Challenge to Modern Education).

Undergraduate Faculty
The undergraduate faculty includes 16 full- and part-time members, with six or 38 percent holding the Ph.D. or highest degree in their field, and four more in the process of completing their doctorates The College has six senior fellows (four or 66 percent with the Ph.D. or highest degree in their field), 9 fellows (two or 20 percent with Ph.D.s, and four completing their doctorates), and one visiting fellow.

Graduate Faculty
The graduate faculty includes 10 Senior Fellows or Fellows who hold the highest degree in their field or are completing the doctorate.

Students-Faculty Ratio
11:1

Undergraduate Degrees
Undergraduate programs include an Associate (2-year program) and Bachelor of Liberal Arts and Culture (4-year program).

Graduate Degrees
The College’s graduate programs include a Master of Arts in Trinitarian Theology & Culture (M.A.) and Master of Studies and Graduate Certificate in Classical Christian Studies (M.St. & Grad.Cert.).

Tuition
Undergraduate tuition is less than half the national average for private college. Plus, students have the opportunity to lock in their rate for four consecutive years. The graduate level programs are also competitively priced. For current tuition rates and fees see the Financial Matters section in the Admissions page of the website.

Room & Board
The College is a non-residential campus, meaning we provide no on-campus housing. Most students board with local Christian families or share apartments with other NSA students. The College expects its students to be mature enough to live independently. Students are responsible for their own housing arrangements. Costs for boarding with local Christian families vary considerably, depending on the living and meal arrangements.

Student Body
The College has an estimated 165 full- and part-time students. The student body is fairly evenly divided between men and women who come from more than 35 states, Canada, England, France, Ivory Coast, and Korea. The students hail from more than 30 different Reformed, Presbyterian and evangelical denominations. The College limits its total enrollment to no more than 200 full-time equivalent (including both undergraduates and graduates, full-and part-timers). The College admits only a limited number of qualified applicants each year. The College's undergraduate enrollment target is approximately 55 new full-time matriculating students and a small number of part-time students each year. The College's annual graduate enrollment targets are 10 to 15 new M.A. students and 15-20 M.St. and Grad.Cert. low-residency students.

Admission Standards
The College seeks undergraduate and graduate applicants who are serious Christian students who are eager to pursue their studies in the context of a vibrant Christian community. They must be committed to sound doctrine, personal holiness, cultural reformation, and academic integrity. The Admissions Committees carefully evaluate an applicant's entire portfolio, weighing each element to understand the student as a whole person. The College seeks students who have a balanced life, combining academic interests, service to the others, involvement in their church and local communities, and appreciation of humor and the arts. Undergraduate applicants must have successfully completed their secondary education and received at least minimum ACT (20+) or SAT (1000+) scores. The 2008-2009 undergraduate applicant pool averaged 1220 on the SAT (high: 1480; low:910) and 28 on the ACT (high: 34; low-21). Graduate applicants must have successfully completed their undergraduate education and attained at least minimum GRE scores (1100+). The 2008-2009 graduate applicant pool averaged 1309 on the GRE (high: 1510; low:1040).

Alumni
In all, approximately 25 percent of our graduates are currently enrolled or have completed graduate study programs, ministerial training, or law school in the U.S. or abroad; 35 percent are teaching in Christian schools or tutorial programs; and 40 percent are pursuing various callings such as homemakers, businessmen, legal assistants, editors, interior designers, graphic artists, and military service. Learn more about our alumni on the Alumni page under the Community section of the web site.

Frequently Asked Questions

1. Why is New Saint Andrews so small?
The College is small by design so that students may enjoy the close personal attention of the senior scholars and experience Christian community in tangible ways. The College limits each entering class to about 50 new full-time students. New Saint Andrews employs a small-group tutorial system centered on discussions of readings of the great literature of Western civilization. The College is also small because its founders and Board of Trustees believe that quality, integrity, and faithfulness are better preserved by maintaining close personal familiarity and accountability between the church, faculty, students, and community, and by rejecting the secular models of growth and giantism that have stumbled and undermined many formerly Christian colleges.

 2. So many historically Christian colleges have been apostate longer than they were faithful, and more are faltering. How will New Saint Andrews maintain its faithfulness?
Unlike so many formerly or nominally Reformed and Presbyterian colleges today, New Saint Andrews refuses to bow the knee before the idols of our age: feminism, multiculturalism, liberalism, statism, giantism, and postmodernism. The College’s trustees, administrators, faculty, and staff have an unwavering commitment—pledged in writing annually—to the historic Reformed faith and biblical worldview. The College concentrates its attention and energies on faithful Christian scholarship and Christian enculturation, not on coveting the world’s respect or elevating athletics to a collegiate priority. The College refuses to build dormitories that encourage spiritual immaturity and remove students from familial accountability. Instead, the College encourages students to live with Christian families or to share rooms with other Christians in the local community under the spiritual oversight of the local church. The College accepts no state or federal funds because we refuse to compromise our Christian testimony or to waffle on biblical principles by receiving any state or federal government funding or benefits. That also helps keep our costs considerably lower than most private colleges.

3. Why should I attend a Christian college like New Saint Andrews if I've already had a good Christian high school education?
Education at any age is never religiously neutral. A Christian primary and secondary education provides a good foundation, but college is usually where you build (or not) on that foundation. College will help sharpen—for good or ill—your personal values and perspectives on the world that you'll have for the rest of your life. Of course, many Christians can "survive" the secularism of non-Christian universities, but mere survival is not the same as learning to live and to think like a mature Christian. New Saint Andrews will help you develop a deep, biblically grounded worldview for any calling and make it a delight in the process.

4. How many majors does New Saint Andrews College offer?
Actually, none. New Saint Andrews follows the classical Christian tradition on this important worldview point and refuses to dilute its liberal arts program by either bowing to the vocational-technical idols of pragmatism or confusing vocational specialization with education or wisdom. We believe vocational skills are too important to leave to the academy. We also believe that colleges should never confuse vocational training with a biblically grounded worldview education. New Saint Andrews therefore offers undergraduates a single, time-honored, integrated academic program in the classical liberal arts with two-year and four-year degree options. These two degrees, the Bachelor of Arts in Liberal Arts and Culture (the four-year degree) and the Associate of Arts in Liberal Arts and Culture (the two-year degree), emphasize the languages, literature, philosophy, history, and culture of Western civilization from a reformational Christian worldview.

5. If New Saint Andrews was established in 1994, how can its curriculum be "time-honored?"
The College’s curriculum has its roots in the Middle Ages and the earliest universities established in the Christian tradition. The system of offering multiple majors at the undergraduate level didn’t begin until late in the 19th century when the Industrial Revolution’s demand for well trained, but not necessarily well educated workers encouraged universities to become extensions of the factory. The first "major" was not offered in the United States until 1878 and it really wasn't until the turn of the 20th century when undergraduate specialization began to displace the classical liberal arts education that had been synonymous with higher education from the beginning. The great Christian universities of Europe and the United States were established with classical curricula to educate the whole person and to enrich the spirit in the pursuit of biblical truth, beauty, and goodness. When we developed our classical liberal arts curriculum, we looked for inspiration from those great institutions including Puritan Harvard. It included subjects like: Theology, Rhetoric, Natural Philosophy, Classical Languages and Math/Science. Sound familiar?

6. Why should I pursue a classical education at the collegiate level after having a classical education at the high school level?
The same reason Christians have done so for hundreds of years—because we know only a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of all there is to know about Western civilization and the world God created. A classical Christian education is still the best, history-tested preparation for better understanding God's Word and the world in which He placed us. Many may be more highly trained, but few are better educated than those who are classically and Christianly educated.

7. Wouldn't I have more career options at a college with more specialized programs and majors?
Maybe. That's often the claim, but today most careers demand more than just an undergraduate degree in a specialized field. In fact, more and more employers recognize that narrowly trained specialists are less adaptable to change and less likely to advance later into positions of leadership and management. The best place to specialize is at the advanced or graduate level, not the undergraduate level. Getting a classical Christian education at the undergraduate level is one of the best ways to prepare yourself intellectually and spiritually to pursue advanced studies and specialized training in particular fields or careers.

8. What use is a liberal arts, classical education? Or, how will I get a job with a classics background from New Saint Andrews?
No undergraduate degree comes with a "union card" guarantee to a job. And even if it did, there’s no guarantee that the job will still be there in two-to-five years. Only those who are broadly and deeply educated will be able to adapt well to changing circumstances and job markets. Liberal arts graduates are blessed with rewarding work every year, because employers in all fields know the long-term value of having well rounded, clear-thinking employees. By worldly pragmatic standards, though, a liberal arts education is pretty useless. As useless as a flower bouquet or a beautiful song. As useless as the humanities and arts that enrich our lives and add beauty and biblical wisdom to our fallen world.

9. Does New Saint Andrews offer a distance education program?
We don't. A quality college education depends on the personal interaction between teacher-mentor and student within an academic and church community with a shared Christian worldview, high intellectual standards, moral integrity, biblical wisdom, and spiritual maturity. New Saint Andrews seeks to provide such a personally nurturing and spiritually encouraging environment for its Christian scholars. While distance education programs may provide an efficient transfer of information between teachers and students, they cannot, by their very nature, provide the close personal and covenantal setting that makes the New Saint Andrews experience what it is. At the graduate level, however, the College does offer a low-residency Classical Christian Studies masters degree.

10. How does New Saint Andrews’s tuition compare to other private colleges?
The College’s tuition rate is among the lowest of any Christian college in the country, and with our optional tuition lock deposit that rate can remain fixed for four consecutive years from the date of first enrollment. In a day when private college tuition averages about $25,000 per year nationally, New Saint Andrews charges less than half that, or what many government subsidized universities now charge. Not only is our tuition very affordable, but it is that way without compromising our Christian mission and vision by being dependent on government support. We refuse, on principle, to accept any government funding or "aid." Basically, our tuition rate provides the equivalent of a $15,000 scholarship (not a federally financed student loan) for every four-year student, compared to the average private college tuition rate. Bottom line: New Saint Andrews offers a quality undergraduate education at very competitive rates, which makes it easier for you not to become a slave to debt and to graduate better prepared academically, spiritually, and financially to serve only one Master.

NEW SAINT ANDREWS COLLEGE
Friendship Square and Main Street
P.O. Box 9025
Moscow, ID 83843
Phone: 208-882-1566, Fax: 208-882-4293
Email: info@nsa.edu