What exactly is the role of St Marys College? What careers can one pursue with a degree there? Is that place really all they say it is?  

 :dancing-banana:If you think you've found the perfect chapel, don't move there!  You'll ruin it!

To answer a PM, I'd like to elaborate further:

Some people get their hopes up that it's going to be a utopia, after they hear how many Trads live there, how many Masses there are each Sunday, and how many Banns of Marriage are announced per week.

But there's more to the story than that.

For one thing, there's the issue of employment. Unless you have a job lined up, don't expect to find something that pays a living wage there. Your best bet would be to move there IF you have some kind of self-employment (online means of revenue) like a professional (i.e., you can earn a living from it) game developer, author, blogger, etc. Something you could do from anywhere, in other words.

I've heard many cases of families moving there, only to find out the man can't find work. That's kind of imprudent. Actually, that isn't my opinion. That's the opinion of an SSPX priest who was stationed there for a while. He really beat into the seminarians how foolish that line of behavior is. I'm sure he saw plenty of cases like that. "No, Father, I'm still looking for work. It's sure great here, though! Hey, you haven't by any chance heard about any job openings have you?"

Don't discount the area you are in right now. Every chapel needs some good role models -- everyone in the country can't just retreat to the inner Keep of the Castle that is St. Mary's and let the rest of the USA go to Hell. If you look up "Bunker mentality" in the dictionary, you'll find a picture of St. Mary's, KS.

I think the biggest problem with St. Mary's is the fact that you *do* have a parish, you *do* have a Trad Catholic K-12 school plus a college, so you pretty much have what APPEARS TO BE a 1950's utopia/time capsule full-fledged Parish, where the Crisis in the Church is non-existent. Send the soldiers home! Put away your weapons! Crisis over! That is the message you receive every day you leave your house and walk to Daily Mass.

So it's not so much a bunker mentality, as it is a collective head-in-the-sand mass-pretending game. It's a Catholic Disneyland.

Nevermind the fact that the World is just as insidious, just as powerful, just as evil as it is for the rest of us out here. St. Mary's residents have the same Internet as the rest of us. They have the same movies to choose from. And so forth.

But they aren't as used to "fighting the world" as the rest of us, since they live among so many fellow Trads. So I think it actually hurts their chances to live as they do.

I wouldn't say the college is run like a seminary, since the members aren't on average quite as serious or mature, nor are they pursuing a higher spiritual life. In fact, if you are used to the Seminary you will find most of them quite "worldly". There isn't any modernism in the various classes, and that's good, but I don't know that I'd compare it to the seminary. It's more like a classical Liberal Arts education (history, philosophy, music, etc.) but it's not a degree that's likely to set your career on fire.

Is St Mary's College accredited?

It's not. A lot of small, religious colleges like St. Mary's aren't, probably because of the very select audiences that go there.