Description

Christopher Perrin welcomes Dr. Matthew J. Smith, founder of Hildegard College, to discuss why he left a tenure-track literature career to build a deliberately small, relationship-centered “micro college” in Southern California. Smith describes modern higher education as expensive, bureaucratically bloated, and often unable to offer a unified vision of learning—especially when general education becomes a “Wild West” and majors drift toward professional specialization rather than formation. Hildegard’s alternative model centers on a common great-books curriculum organized around six foundational questions, paired with “entrepreneurial arts” that train students to design and launch real ventures rooted in meaningful work. The conversation explores why generalist formation matters in an AI-saturated economy, and why polymathy may be a more realistic pathway to flourishing than narrow specialization. Perrin and Smith then turn to Smith’s forthcoming book The Lost Tradition of Beauty, arguing that modern education has lost beauty as an intellectually serious category—reducing it to ornament or aesthetics rather than a transcendent that illuminates truth and shapes goodness. They close by discussing what it would mean for schools to recover beauty not merely in décor, but in the lived environment of learning: sound, space, attention, and shared life that draws students out of themselves and toward the whole.

Episode Outline

• Smith’s academic journey: graduate school motivations, love of the liberal arts, and entering college teaching
• The problem in contemporary higher education: cost, debt, bureaucracy, specialization, and lack of a unified vision
• Discovering the “alternative college” movement and visiting models (great-books and classical micro colleges)
• Why relationship matters: mentorship, friendship, shared curriculum, and non-anonymous learning
• Hildegard College’s distinctives: one degree, one major, one shared curriculum
• The six foundational questions that organize Hildegard’s great-books “Foundations of Thought” sequence
• Liberal arts + entrepreneurial arts: “creative action” as redemptive work and practical formation
• Why “Hildegard”: Hildegard of Bingen as a model polymath and cultural contributor
• Student and faculty profiles: internships, civic partners, and bivocational teachers
• Liberal education in an AI economy: generalists, adaptability, and meaningful work
• The Lost Tradition of Beauty: why beauty is intellectually muscular, objective, and formative
• Beauty in schooling: beyond ornament to vocabulary, participation, attention, soundscape, and lived wholeness
• How to learn more: admissions, preview weeks, and online “redemptive entrepreneurship” courses

Key Topics & Takeaways

• Higher education often lacks a unified telos. A “comprehensive university” can produce radically different educational experiences across majors, without shared formation. 
• Cost and debt intensify the crisis. Smith describes the economic burden alongside a weak “return” in both formation and earnings.
• Micro colleges can rebuild the human scale of learning. Smallness protects against anonymity and makes mentorship and accountability unavoidable. 
• A common curriculum can generate a true academic fellowship. Shared books and shared questions create shared rites of passage and shared intellectual language.
• Polymathy is increasingly practical. As AI changes entry-level work, broad formation and transferable habits may matter more than narrow competencies. 
• Entrepreneurship can be “creative action,” not mere profit-seeking. Hildegard frames entrepreneurship as participation in God’s redemptive work through building and service. 
• Beauty is not optional decoration. Smith argues beauty is objective, rationally discussable, and essential to moral and intellectual renewal. 
• Recovering beauty begins with recovering vocabulary. Schools cannot pursue what they cannot name, describe, and practice.

Questions & Discussion

• What is the “accidental shape” of higher education you’ve experienced—and what does it do to formation?
  What would a “unified vision for learning” look like in one concrete institutional decision?
• Why does relationship matter so much for transformational learning?
  Describe a time your learning changed because of mentorship or friendship rather than content alone. 
• What are the strengths and limits of a single, common curriculum?
  What do students gain when everyone reads the same books and wrestles with the same questions?
• Are “polymaths” a luxury—or a necessity in an AI-shaped economy?
  How could schools cultivate breadth without becoming shallow (depth-through-few, long apprenticeships, layered skills)?
• What do you think of pairing great books with “entrepreneurial arts”?
  If students must build real things, what guardrails ensure the building remains ordered toward the good?

Suggested Reading & Resources

• The Lost Tradition of Beauty by Dr. Matthew J. Smith (forthcoming, InterVarsity Press) 
• Hildegard College
• Dr. Matthew J. Smith’s substack
• ClassicalU
• The Ethics of Beauty by Timothy Patitsas
• Phaedrus by Plato
• Symposium by Plato
• Confessions by Augustine
• On Order by Augustine
• Range: Why Generalists Triumph in Specialized World by David Epstein
• “Why Poetry Matters” by Dana Gioia
•  “Beauty”, The Art of the Lathe by B. H. Fairchild
• Redemptive Entrepreneurship
• ClassicalU Course: Theology of Beauty and the Imagination: A Guide to Wonder
• ClassicalU Course: Teaching the Great Books
• ClassicalU Course: The Scholé Way
• ClassicalU Course: The Art of Poetry
• ClassicalU Course: Introduction to Classical Education