BYU-Pathway Worldwide is on pace to see a 40% surge in students this year as a major piece of the way The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints approaches inequities across the globe, humanitarian experts and church leaders said this week at BYU.
“BYU-Pathway Worldwide, this investment of your church to bring quality online education at a low cost to the world, to me is extraordinary,” said Viva Bartkus, business professor emerita at Notre Dame and an expert on how businesses can help impoverished communities.
“I’ve been on Catholic Relief Services’ board. I’ve worked with World Vision. I’ve worked with Aga Khan. I am telling you, BYU-Pathway may end up becoming your church’s biggest gift to the world, hands down,” she said.
BYU-PW now serves 80,000 students in over 180 countries, BYU-PW President Brian Ashton said during a panel discussion immediately after Bartkus made her presentation.
“I believe we will reach 100,000 this year,” Ashton predicted at the 35th Annual International Society Conference at BYU’s Hinckley Center. The conference theme was “Becoming One: Addressing Global Disparity.”
How the Church of Jesus Christ addresses economic inequity
BYU-PW is a vital way the Church of Jesus Christ confronts global disparities, said Ashton and Elder Edward Dube, a member of the church’s Presidency of the Seventy and its Welfare and Self-Reliance Committee.
“The Lord Jesus Christ, whispering to our prophets, seers and revelators, made this BYU-Pathway Worldwide,” Elder Dube said.
He spoke about being raised in Zimbabwe in a hut with a mud-and-grass-thatched roof and a floor covered with dried cow dung. He said he and his sister walked 12.5 miles each way to school. When they got stomach aches, their mother healed them by feeding them ants.
He said Jesus Christ’s intercessory prayer (John 17:21-22) encourages all people to address the root causes of global disparity.
“We must confront the dark realities of these stark disparities,” he said.
Concerns about inequities — Bartkus referred to being born in America as winning the lottery — are as old as humanity, said the BYU School of Medicine’s inaugural dean, Dr. Mark Ott.
They also are referenced in scripture. Ashton quoted a Book of Mormon prophecy that after Christ’s church would be restored, those who gathered in it would remain in their homelands, where they “shall be established” (2 Nephi 9:1-2 and Doctrine and Covenants 78:6).
“Many members do not have this,” the BYU-PW president said. “They are not established.”
BYU-Pathway Worldwide’s economic engine models researcher’s findings
Ashton said BYU-Pathway is now designed to be both an education institution and an economic engine for its students who live in underdeveloped economies.
On one hand, BYU-PW offers PathwayConnect, a confidence-building on-ramp into higher education, certificates, and associate and bachelor degrees at reduced costs.
On the other end, it provides work study, skill development, internships and career opportunities. For example, a student might work in a basic accounting entry job in the first year after learning how to enter receipts into a computer program, Ashton said. When the student completes a certificate, she can become a bookkeeper. With advanced skills, she can be an accounting clerk and then an accountant.
This is what drew Bartkus to BYU-PW. The Notre Dame professor developed a system that has launched 90 projects in more than 20 countries based on accompaniment, a Catholic social work model in which the teacher walks alongside the learner. She said the teachers must practice humility and first learn from the learner to understand the problem and the possibilities. The teacher must never do for the student.
“Walk alongside people as they’re building their lives,” she said.
Bartkus is the author of “Business on the Edge: How to Turn a Profit and Improve Lives in the World’s Toughest Places.” She developed a model, Business on the Frontlines, that Forbes named one of the 10 most innovative MBA courses in the country. It is a road map for how businesses can promote peace and reduce poverty while growing and making money in challenging environments.
“One of the ways of closing global disparities is to never underestimate the sheer human dignity of a good day’s work,” Bartkus said.
“What’s really, really unique about BYU-Pathway,” she said, “is it is the only organization that I know of that essentially, under the same umbrella, is both an academic institution and an economic development engine.”
Most universities see education as an end in itself.
“In these places that I’ve described to you, education is not an end in itself, it’s a means towards an end, which is a job, a better job, a way of looking after your family, your community, serving in your faith,” Bartkus said. “What is extraordinary about BYU-Pathway is that you provide the opportunity for education, and then BYU-Pathway Worldwide helps with the initial jobs, helps with the initial employment, so that people can get on their feet. That is an extraordinary contribution.”
Like the man who liked a shaver so much he bought the company, Bartkus liked BYU-PW so much she joined on as a consultant.
For BYU-Pathway to use the lessons she’s learned on the frontlines, she said it must not say it is there to help.
“Don’t help. You can serve. You can learn, or you can create the conditions so that people can work really, really hard to lift themselves out of poverty. You can’t give them that. They have to do that themselves,” she said.
Bartkus quoted Latter-day Saint scripture to the mostly Latter-day Saint audience at the conference.
“And when the priests left their labor to impart the word of God unto the people, the people also left their labors to hear the word of God. And when the priest had imparted unto them the word of God they all returned again diligently unto their labors” (Alma 1:26).
“I find it an extremely exciting gift that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is giving to the rest of the world,” she said.
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