New College Set To Welcome Home-Schooled Students in the Fall

By Julie Blair

Purcellville, Va.

Michael P. Farris plods in his cowboy boots through the sticky yellow mud, picks his way up a bald hill, and enters the skeleton of a building that will soon be the center of Patrick Henry College, the nation's first institution devoted to providing higher education to students home-schooled in grades K-12.

The home school movement has grown up, and Mr. Farris, the college's president, is providing a place where such students, many of whom come from religious conservative backgrounds, can continue their educations within an evangelical Christian context. Next fall, some 70 students are expected to enroll as government majors—the first and only major offered by the college in 2000-01—at what he promises will be one of the most rigorous college programs in the United States.

"Our mission is to train leaders in areas of impact [such as lawmaking, business, and journalism] in a Christian worldview," said Mr. Farris, who is also the founder and president of the Home School Legal Defense Association here in Purcellville, Va., the leading advocacy organization for home schooling....