“Actually Thomas Aquinas College makes Hillsdale and Grove City College look like really good high schools.”
Not too sure about that one.
Exclusively, Hillsdale and Grove City are the only colleges in the United States to reject federal funds.
Hillsdale is home to the Russell Kirk American Studies program, Ludwig von Mises’ personal library, and is the repository for the collected writings and works of William F. Buckley.
Hillsdale is an intellectual powerhouse compared to Thomas Aquinas - an exceptional school - but not close to the academic caliber of Grove City or Hillsdale.
You wrote:
“Exclusively, Hillsdale and Grove City are the only colleges in the United States to reject federal funds.”
Which in no way matters to the quality of the school one way or the other.
“Hillsdale is home to the Russell Kirk American Studies program, Ludwig von Mises’ personal library, and is the repository for the collected writings and works of William F. Buckley.”
All of which is irrelevant to the real worth of the college or university for most undergraduates. Take Ludwig von Mises’ personal library, for instance. How many undergraduates will use it? Probably none. Perhaps a tiny few. Many of the books will be in languages they can’t read. I’m not kidding. I taught at a university with an excellent special collections library. We had the personal libraries of a number of scholars. Undergraduates - even from our scholars’ program - never used them. The archivists had a fit when I sent undergraduates there to read centuries old English mss. They never heard of such a thing! Undergraduates doing graduate level work in an archives library? Unthinkable! (Or so they said).
“Hillsdale is an intellectual powerhouse compared to Thomas Aquinas - an exceptional school - but not close to the academic caliber of Grove City or Hillsdale.”
Sorry, but I think Aquinas leaves Hillsdale in the dust. And remember, Aquinas is less than 40 years old, and about one-fifth the size of Hillsdale if I recall correctly. Also, Aquinas is truly the intellectual powerhouse in that it relies entirely on a unified and fully integrated Great Books program.