“Water, water, everywhere, nor any drop to drink.” This line from Coleridge’s “Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner” pretty much sums up our community’s educational dilemma. How ironic it is to live in America, surrounded by educational opportunities, yet be unwilling to drink of their parnassa-giving waters. There are good reasons, of course. Which parents do not worry about throwing their carefully sheltered children into the sea of alien values and behaviors that is today’s universities? Society has changed so much in the last 40 years that the “salt” content is simply too high for comfort.
Fortunately, our ever-creative community has devised solutions to this dilemma. It’s not a new problem – although, in the past, the main difficulty was how to reconcile a man’s unlimited mitzva of learning Torah with taking time to acquire secular training. The establishment of Yeshiva University, in the early twentieth century, offering Torah and secular studies under one roof, was one solution. So was going to yeshiva by day and Brooklyn College by night, as many Torah V’Daas bachurim did in the 1960s. Touro College is another answer, as is the concept of the BTL (bachelors of Talmudic law), at Ner Israel and other yeshivas, which has enabled innumerable young men to work toward a profession while continuing their yeshiva education.
With more and more women working outside the home – for both economic and ideological reasons – a new twist was added to an old problem. Many girls were looking to get a degree in a way that is compatible with their lifestyle. Enter Mrs. Judy Gross, the energetic Academic Coordinator of Secular Studies of Maalot Baltimore, who is the major player and pioneer of parnassa training for women in Baltimore. I first met Mrs. Gross 40 years ago, when we were in Stern College together. Confident and vivacious even then, she was a good student but never too busy to have a good time or share a laugh – especially share a laugh. She was Judy Singer at the time, a post-War baby who grew up in Baltimore and graduated from Bais Yaakov in a white dress she made herself in the required sewing class. Her father, Simcha Singer, had been a yeshiva bachur in Poland. After surviving the Holocaust, her parents married in Sweden and were among the first group of students that Ner Israel brought to the yeshiva after the War. In Baltimore, the Singers soon gave birth to baby Judy and three more daughters.
Judy married Aryeh Gross, and the young couple started life in New York. Mr. Gross is a prominent engineer, and active in community affairs. In 1975, the Grosses made aliya and helped build the Gush Ezion settlement of Moshav Elazar. They came back to Baltimore in 1979, after the petira of Rabbi Singer.
It was when their oldest daughter Tzippi and her friends came back from seminary that Mrs. Gross first saw the need for women’s higher education in a community framework. She started the Educational Training Center for Women (ETC) in 1988, offering training in office and computer skills to returning seminary girls.
A big breakthrough came when Mrs. Gross realized that the girls could easily amass the 60 credits needed for an AA degree by combining college courses taken at Bais Yaakov during twelfth grade, credits for seminary courses through Baltimore City Community College’s Israel program, and a few courses taken during the summers before and after seminary. She was soon giving the BCCC courses Introduction to Computers and Accounting, and as ETC took off, Mrs. Gross began summer courses in subjects like science and music to help the girls finish the requirements for their AA.
By this time, Mrs. Gross was so steeped in the world of credits, degrees, requirements, courses, and programs that Bais Yaakov hired her as their college advisor. At Bais Yaakov, Mrs. Gross’s encyclopedic knowledge was invaluable to many girls. She remained in that position until June 2009, when she retired from Bais Yaakov.
Meanwhile, ETC merged with Maalot seminary, in 1998. The core of the Maalot idea is to earn a degree by combining credits from numerous sources. The foundation credits come through seminary courses. Other secular credits may be earned through other colleges and/or the menu of secular courses Maalot has to offer. Maalot chooses its courses from a list of 165 ACE (American Council on Education) approved courses. In addition, Maalot has partnered with area community colleges to provide some very specific courses. It offers tracks in speech, special education, psychology, computer science, business, art, pre-occupational therapy, pre-nursing, and pre-sonography, in addition to its Judaic studies and teaching programs. Over the years, Mrs. Gross has added new areas of study, the latest of which are masters degrees in curriculum and instruction and in speech.
The BA degree that Maalot students receive is actually granted by Thomas Edison College or Excelsior College. Both are recognized by the Middle States Association of Schools and Colleges as degree-granting institutions and as alternatives education venues that service the adult learner. Both colleges have a formal articulation agreement with Maalot.
Today, with all their children grown, the Grosses continue to be active in the community. They recently wrote a sefer Torah in honor of their fathers, a”h, and their mothers, shetichyu, and deposited it with Congregation Machzikei Torah. Mrs. Gross devotes her time to her ETC and Maalot girls, advising them on both the mechanics of getting a degree and the broader aspects of establishing personal priorities and planning for a successful life as a Jewish woman. She graciously spoke to the Where What When.
WWW: Mrs. Gross, Maalot has been a great solution for our community’s girls, enabling them to get a college degree without spending time on a college campus. In view of the changes in the job market/economic climate, is that model still working? Are the days of the shortcut degree over?
JG: No one said it is a shortcut! The girls are in class and they are learning. They are taking double credits. Since they also receive credits for their Jewish studies, they are getting the BA in a short amount of time; in that sense it is a shortcut. But the number of hours and credits are the same. And of course, a major benefit of the Maalot degree is that the nature of the material is different than what one would take on a college campus. There, liberal arts requirements would consist of learning philosophy, Shakespeare, and other kinds of literature. In Maalot, it’s Jewish philosophy, and biblical “literature” (Chumash, etc.).
WWW: Why are universities ready to give credit for Jewish learning? Don’t the students need a standard liberal arts cultural background?
JG: What is needed most in the workplace are analytical skills, communication skills, logic, and teamwork. At Maalot, analytical skills are addressed in math, science, and computers classes, as well as through research papers. Communication and teamwork are emphasized in the group projects and class presentations required by the course curriculum. Much of the Judaic studies courses also greatly tap into the development of analytical skills.
Employers recognize that a degree earned supports the skills needed in the workplace. Does the source of these skills matter? Whether it’s from the study of Shakespeare vs. Chumash or the study of Aristotle vs. the Rambam? Bottom line: The emphasis in education should be on the development of the mind (do we really need to know the exact date of the Gettysburg address?) to enable the mind to find information, analyze it, develop it, and utilize it.
WWW: Is getting a job harder when one does not have a degree from a standard university?
JG: Our students are getting jobs. Bottom line: In today’s job market, you really need a masters. You can get jobs with a bachelors, but if you want to get ahead in a professional field, you need a masters. Many of our students are completing masters programs and getting jobs from there.
WWW: Is it harder for Maalot students to get into graduate programs, now that older, experienced people are out of jobs and going back to school?
JG: The competition is fierce, but the girls are getting in. For example, the speech program at Towson has 40 seats. This year, ten percent of them are taken up by our students. That’s four girls, a tremendous percentage. And this is at a time when Towson had double the number of applicants. Last year, three girls were accepted.
WWW: What do the girls who don’t get into Towson do?
JG: Not all the girls apply to Towson. Of the ones who do, their admission depends on how they market themselves, on what they did with their lives. It’s their grades, the experiences and extracurricular activities they’ve had, the jobs, their essays, their recommendations, and their GREs. All these count in their acceptance.
In addition to the girls who go to Towson, are the ones who are getting into many types of graduate programs in many places. [see sidebar] When we recently surveyed those who are in graduate programs, they told they feel prepared and are doing well in their respective programs.
WWW: I heard you partnered with another institution for a masters in speech.
JG: We did. It’s exclusive to Maalot Baltimore. As a distance program, it is different than a typical online program in that it’s done with DVDs. The students use them to observe a classroom in action. They hear the teacher instructing. They see her writing on the board, and see and hear the students in the class. If they have a question, they can contact the teacher and ask her to explain.
WWW: Is this what’s called an online degree?
JG: No, there’s a difference between this distance program and online distance programs. Some, but not all, online programs are done in “real time,” but you have to do all the studies on your own. You are generally not given a lecture. You read the assignments, and then you discuss them with the teacher and the other people in the group. All your communication is done directly with a teacher and/or with classroom members by writing to each other. Everyone makes comments, the comments are put on the board, and you discuss them. Our DVD-based program may be done on the student’s own time, although there are defined deadlines for tests and papers.
WWW: Are distance and online degrees worth anything? If an employer has a choice between someone who graduated from a real school and someone who got an online or distance degree, wouldn’t they prefer the real school?
JG: Online education is the latest mode and is becoming more and more acceptable. I’m very picky about the programs. In something like speech, I feel more comfortable with the in-class experience that our DVD distance program provides. This particular university’s speech program is excellent, and even though the girls are not actually in the classroom, they can see and hear everything that goes on there. A degree from this school’s program is valuable.
WWW: Have you had a problem with other institutions respecting the Thomas Edison or Excelsior degree? For instance, I heard that Bar Ilan, in Israel, doesn’t accept Thomas Edison.
JG: You can’t make a blanket statement. Laniado nursing school in Netanya did accept the Thomas Edison degree. The problem really lies with the Misrad Hachinuch, the Ministry of Education in Israel. For jobs in the education realm, they have a problem with the Thomas Edison degree, because they think it is done online. They require 80 percent of the education to be done in a classroom. When they look at the transcript, if at least 80 percent of the degree credits was done at an accredited institution as classroom experiences, a Thomas Edison degree would be acceptable. If a girl’s intention is to go to Israel, I tell her this.
The problem with the Thomas Edison degree is that a lot of schools and employers do not like to accept a degree that is based on testing. But let’s say you took most of your coursework at Harvard or Yale and then transferred those credits to Thomas Edison, then it would be okay. The key is what courses are contained in the transcript. For example, Yeshiva University’s Wurtzweiler School of Social Work was not accepting the Thomas Edison degree, because they thought it was all online or based on testing. I met with the president and explained to him that, no, in Maalot the girls are in class, and it is an in-class experience. He said, “I have to tell my admissions director this; we did not know.” We have since had a student accepted there. The other problem with Wurzweiler was the age of the applicants. They do not accept anyone under the age of 21.
WWW: But a lot of girls do take CLEP tests for credit.
JG: So, 20 percent of the transcript can be CLEPs.
WWW: Do the students get as quality an education when they use CLEPs. Don’t they miss a lot by not interacting with the teacher and other students?
JG: It depends on the field. In psychology, for example, you really need the give-and-take of the classroom and the input from the teacher. In addition, a graduate program in psychology is going to assess the application based on largely on your grades in the psych prerequisites. CLEPS are pass or fail, and don’t give you an upper edge. So we advise these students, if they are going to CLEP, they should do it for other courses, not those in their field of study.
WWW: Are there other disadvantages to getting an accelerated college degree? For instance, how can the students know if they like a profession or if they are suited to it?
JG: We have a vocational survey that we do with the girls if they ask for it. But, in general, we tell them, go for a degree in whatever they think they are interested in, and maybe something will spark their interest; this happens all the time. In the worst case scenario, should they choose to continue on a graduate level in another area, they may have to take another prerequisite or two, but at least they have the basic degree.
WWW: Let’s say a girl doesn’t want to go to graduate school. What can she do with the undergraduate degree?
JG: There are so many jobs out there that only require a BA. Employers want to see that you are educated, that you can think, that you completed something. A degree, to them says I have completed four years of education.
One student came to me and asked, what do I do to become a buyer? I didn’t know, but I knew someone who is a buyer, and she put me in touch with her boss. I asked this executive from J.C. Penney’s, what education is needed to become a buyer? He said, “We want to see a person who is responsible and can think for himself. Therefore, we’re only looking for a BA. We like to do our own training.”
WWW: Are these jobs really available? Aren’t people with masters and above applying for them?
JG: Maybe in tough times, like now, but hopefully things will get better. What you’re really asking is does a college education work, in general? The answer is yes, it works. In tough times, even Ph.D.s are out of work. And if both are applying for the same job, obviously, the Ph.D.s are more qualified. Sometimes, however, they’re overqualified, and the employers would rather hire the BA and get cheap labor and do their own training.
WWW: In addition to the buyer, did any other Maalot girls go into unusual fields?
JG: We had two students who became personal trainers. (Of course, you don’t need a BA for that.) One student wanted to be a cosmetician, but she said, if I’m going to go into business, I need to know what I’m doing. She finished her BA in the business track, and she’s successful.
One girl is going into library science. We had one girl who got her bachelors from us and then went to Berkeley for a master’s level certificate in music; she now runs the Ratzon group. We have people who went into writing. One of our students studied social work at Gallaudet University for the deaf. She had to learn sign language in order to get into the program. She graduated and is a social worker for the deaf.
WWW: College is a big investment for a family. Is it worthwhile financially, if you’re not sure of getting a job?
JG: You can’t look at today. You have to look at what do I need for me. Today, the economy is terrible. Tomorrow it might be great. The year my husband graduated in engineering, the construction industry collapsed. No one could get a job. He was one of the lucky ones. He got a job drafting, way below his skills and training. A friend of his got a job soldering two wires together. His boss asked him, what’s the use of your 4.0 grade-point average if you can’t solder two wires together? The word got out, don’t go for engineering. Four years down the line, there weren’t enough engineers, so the engineers could call the shots and name their price.
Two years ago, many years after the collapse of the computer industry, one of the students said, “I’m not going into computers because of past unemployment rates.” I said, excuse me, and I pulled out statistics about the 10 hot jobs. Four of them were in the computer industry. The world cannot exist without computers, and the computer field had to open up. So you can’t base all your moves on what’s happening today. Today’s climate is a temporary situation, not a permanent one. You have to go into what you love. If your field is not hiring but then the market opens up, you’ll be there; you can name your price. If the market doesn’t open up, you can switch course, but you have your basic degree.
WWW: Our students tend to go into certain fields, like occupational therapy, speech therapy, reading, and special ed. Do you think that is a good idea?
JG: That’s true, and they’re flooding out certain fields in certain areas. For example, there is still a great need for speech therapists, but go to Lakewood, and you can’t find a single speech job. They are filled with all the young frum women. So it depends where. You have to be willing to relocate. How many people want to go into chinuch, and they go to the middle of nowhere, because you can’t get a job in the big cities, at least to start. The chinuch path means hopping from city to city until you build a reputation. That’s the way it is.
You can’t decide your life based on the latest trend. It’s going to change. There was a time when the trend was to go into nursing, OT, or sonography. That year, Hillary Clinton came up with a health plan, which was going to constrict insurance coverage, and would impact the employment of nurses and OTs. Many places fired their nursing people and OTs. When the health plan did not go through, the health-based job market opened up again. It depends on the economy.
WWW: If not the economics of it, on what should their choice of a profession be based?
JG: I tell the girls, run after your love. Pursue it. You will be putting a good part of your day at a job, and you have to love what you’re doing. It doesn’t mean that you’re stuck with it. Tons of people switch afterwards. And that’s okay. But you need a springboard, and the springboard is the BA. Money can be a motivator, but it can’t be the only thing. My first job was as a statistician at the New York Board of Education, and I hated it. If I was going to get an ulcer working there, it wasn’t worth it.
WWW: When a girl is interested in an impractical or highly demanding field, do you discourage her?
JG: I discuss it with her. I ask, what is your priority in life? Is it a career? Or is it having a family? Many times students say to me, “I want the best job, with the highest prestige, and the best pay. I say, do you realize that when you define yourself in that category you are accepting a 60-hour week? Where does family come into the picture? You can go to any university, get a job in your field of interest, and still keep your life in the proper perspective.
WWW: Is there formal guidance, like group discussions on balancing work and parenting, or is it mostly individual?
JG: It’s mostly individual. We will have a symposium soon – similar to the workplace symposium last year – but this year it will be more hands-on, more practical. We will run workshops on resume writing, interview skills, exploring interests, and also how to plan the day. This one will not be open to the public.
WWW: Some Where What When writers have stressed the importance of work experience during the high school and college years, both to get that first job and to discover a vocational direction. Yet our kids don’t work in the broader community, for the most part.
JG: Our kids tend to have mostly camp-job experience. A lot of them are not prepared for the outside world, and a lot of them box themselves in. You have to understand that our girls graduate at 19 or 20. They’re young, and they’ve never been exposed to the outside world. They’re not ready. Exposure to the outside world is a culture shock.
WWW: How can we change that?
JG: First we have to ask, do we want to? When I started ETC, in 1988. the whole idea came about because my daughter and her friends were home from seminary and were sitting around the table talking about what they’re going to do. They didn’t have a clue. At the time, I was in the middle of writing a paper for a course I was taking in Towson on adult education. The topic was what’s out there in adult education. And I thought, whoa, why don’t we start something for these girls?
First, I counseled with the rabbanim. I told them, these girls are coming back from seminary, and they don’t have a direction, they don’t have skills, they don’t have anything. I wanted to do computer and office skills to start with, but I wasn’t sure if it was a proper thing. The answer came back, yes. Rabbi Naftoli Neuberger pressed that I need to do this immediately. I knew I had to start slowly and build up from there. It would take time for the public to get used to the idea. Then I asked him, what about sending our girls out to work? And he said, nonetheless, there’s a tremendous need; you’ve got to do it.
I sent out a survey and got a tremendous response, so I started running the first classes. First we were in Sternhell’s shul, then in Etz Chaim. Twelve years ago, I joined with Maalot.
WWW: What bothered you about the girls working?
JG: It bothered me tremendously that I was starting a program encouraging girls to go out into the outside world. Even if they’re working in a frum environment, they’re out of their houses. They should be in their homes raising their kids. What was I doing? What was I introducing? Even though the rabbanim gave their approval, it bothered me.
Then I heard something that clinched it for me: There was a public school system – I think it was in Monroe – that was all frum. They had a special-needs class in the preschool, and they hired a non-Jew, because they couldn’t find one of ours who was qualified to teach in the public school. So this non-Jew had to learn Yiddish to communicate with the kids. I asked myself, shouldn’t we be servicing our own people? We need to educate our community to serve as educators, psychologists, social workers. In Israel, the frum community realized that they had to have social workers and psychologists treat the frum population; it just doesn’t work otherwise. So they made an agreement with Bar Ilan to deliver a social work education program, so that the frum can service the frum.
WWW: When you look at families now, the picture is so different from what it was 20 years ago.
JG: Yes, and I still don’t know if we should be sending the women out to the work world. [I deleted the sentence, The families are being destroyed] The men are out learning, and the women are working. Who’s raising the kids?
WWW: How does the Ner Israel college program compare to Maalot. Is it the same idea?
JG: Basically. They get their BTL (bachelors of Talmudic law) from the Yeshiva and take their prerequisites for graduate school at various colleges, and then they go on to get their masters. There’s one problem that I see with the BTL. The boys are very much lacking in English skills. They make the best lawyers, the best accountants, and the best programmers, because their minds are so sharp. But they can’t write.
WWW: Whatever happened to engineering? Quite a few men who are now in their fifties and sixties became engineers. It’s such a good field for frum men, and it is paid quite well. Why don’t the men do that today?
JG: It’s a long program of study, four or five years, with a lot of math prerequisites.
WWW: Is college better than a vocational program?
JG: It’s not necessarily college that’s essential; it’s training for a parnassa. When I started ETC, it was a training center for computer and office skills. In New York, Agudah has COPE; Bobov also has training programs. Rutgers just started a non-degree business certificate program for Lakewood boys. There should be vocational programs, and there is recognition of the need. It’s just that everyone looks down at these boys. If you’re not in yeshiva, you’re looked down on. That’s a culture thing and a very touchy situation.
WWW: Which skills should everyone have?
JG: Computer skills and writing skills. You need these wherever you go. In Maalot, we teach both.
WWW: What is your own background? How did you end up at Maalot?
JG: Well, I was never going to go into education! I tell the girls: Never say never, because you never know where you’ll end up. I did end up in education. No, I didn’t do it for the money. Everyone knows there’s no money in education. It fell in my lap – and I ran with it because I love it.
WWW: Tell us the story.
JG: I was looking for a math-oriented field. I discovered applied math and wanted to go into experimental psychology using mathematical models. I was offered such a job but I couldn’t take it at the time. Then I was offered a job as a statistician for the New York Board of Education. I hated it and wanted to get out. But I was stuck; I needed a job. So, they said, why don’t you teach math? I really didn’t want to go into education, but I took the test for licensure, and I passed. I started subbing in the public schools, and then I fell into adult education. I became an adult educator in New York. When we came to Baltimore, I continued with adult education. I came across some bumps in class and was insecure as to how I was handling them. I decided to take a course in adult education at Towson. That was my first course, which is what started the idea of ETC. I eventually got a masters in administration and supervision of adult education. So it was mazal. It fell into it ..
WWW: And then you got enthusiastic about it! Thank you for a fascinating interview.
