A Higher-Ed Experiment in the Desert

As America enters an era that will seemingly be dominated by artificial intelligence (AI), many question the value of a college education. John Adams College (JAC), a recently founded liberal-arts institution in Provo, Utah, answers the value question by specializing in teaching uniquely human qualities.

JAC, formerly Mount Liberty College, was founded in 2019 by professors who were discontented with the college status quo. Tired of college being treated as mere career training, they built a new institution from scratch, dedicated to “preparing men and women to enter the world defending liberty, standing in humility, and upholding virtue.” JAC offers two degrees: a BA and an MA in classical liberal arts.

The college emphasizes faith, virtue, and freedom, noting a desperate need for these goods amid the modern world’s torrent of information. JAC emphasizes learning “principles of faith, virtue, and freedom,” noting a desperate need for these goods amid the modern world’s torrent of information and confusion about right and wrong.

To accomplish this mission, JAC students encounter a classical liberal-arts curriculum centered around a robust Great Books program. From Plato and Aristotle to Dante and Milton to the Founders, a Great Books program like JAC’s introduces students to the people and ideas that formed Western civilization and what English critic and poet Matthew Arnold called “the best which has been thought and said.”

The result is an engaging part-debate, part-conversation, with professors and students dissecting a text and its ideas together. JAC’s curriculum includes timeless humanities subjects such as American history, communications, fine arts, government, political economy, speaking, and logic. Unlike the note-taking exercises typical of a college class, JAC’s assignments ask students to read primary sources beforehand and come to class prepared to discuss the text in a roundtable fashion. The result is an engaging part-debate, part-conversation, with professors and students dissecting a text and its ideas together to arrive at its principles. Students learn to defend their opinions on texts and interact with those of their cohort, building public-speaking skills by immersion. AI cannot replace the reasoning and critical-thinking skills that students gain from these discussions.

This Socratic seminar model works best with a small, tight-knit student body, and JAC’s intellectually mature group of scholars fits that description. The current cohort enjoys pursuing the academic life together, whether they are gathering at a professor’s house to share an end-of-term meal, hosting a poetry-reading night, or taking part in Book Day, browsing Provo’s used bookstores to see who can find the most interesting title. Students recently founded JAC’s refreshingly thoughtful student publication, the Rostra, as well as the school’s Turning Point USA and Intercollegiate Studies Institute chapters. They even staged their own production of the classic Greek tragedy Oedipus Rex.

They also started a school press dedicated to reprinting overlooked classics, such as Founding Father Elias Boudinot’s The Age of Revelation. JAC students help edit, annotate, and write introductions for these books, gaining graduate-level skills and experience. These students are eager to learn, truth-hungry, and intellectually rigorous beyond their years and are a testament to their institution.

JAC alumni have already found success beyond their own campus. One JAC alumna was accepted into Columbia University’s School of Journalism, and others are studying at Rutgers, Ashland, and Antioch College. Two others were accepted into Ralston College, one with a full-ride scholarship. Young America’s Foundation’s National Journalism Center hired one recent JAC graduate right out of college, as did the conservative New York City publisher Encounter Books.

JAC is a young college and is always seeking more students and funding, but the school has already delivered on its promise to educate future leaders.

As such, JAC deserves our full appreciation for its value-adding approach to higher education. The institution is forming virtuous, wise, well-spoken future leaders through the Great Books.

The key word here is “leaders.” Robots can’t lead. They can do only those tasks they are programmed to perform. Robots can’t head critical institutions, run for office, or start successful businesses. They cannot make original decisions, nor are they moral agents who can responsibly steward their country and its resources. Only wise and virtuous humans can. And JAC is cultivating wisdom and virtue in its students, which gives them advantages and leadership abilities that unthinking “artificial” intelligence can never possess.

As AI’s ubiquitous presence looms ever larger, higher-education leaders should pay attention to what JAC is doing: offering students wisdom that AI can never replace.

Keller Moore was a 2025 Carolina Cardinal fellow at the James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal.