ID manipulation to troll science forums

[vociferous]

I understand that, but the field here is Theology. Perhaps my understanding of theology is mistaken, but I thought it was the study of religions...not the preaching of a religion. There is a big difference, because studying a religion is simply an account of history. Am I mistaken?

To be honest, I am not certain. Universities that offer theological degrees may offer them in the secular study of religion (often called things like: Religious Studies, Christian studies, Jewish Studies, Islamic Studies, et cetera) or an actual degree that can be used to be certified as some kind of clergy (degree in divinity?)

I think from the regional accrediting standpoint, an institution that offers religious degrees is not going to be accredited if it does not meet the minimum standards that one would expect from a university granting that level of degree. For example, I doubt they would be accredited to offer a bachelor's degree unless the program of study included the minimum number of credit hours typically required of such a degree, along with a typical program of general education. If their degree included intelligent design or creationism, they might still be accredited but if the classes required to meet their general education science requirements did not minimally meet the standards one would expect from a university, they probably would not be.

I remember reading about some Christian university that was suing their regional accreditation agency because it refused to grant them accreditation if they did not substantially change their biology curriculum. I wish I could find the article.

I wonder what percentage of seminaries and religious universities are regionally accredited?

Take a look at Bob Jones for instance; you may notice that they are not regionally accredited (http://www.bju.edu/academics/accreditation.php). By contrast, most Jesuit universities, which typically offer theological degrees, will be.

 

[DaveC426913]

I am afraid that may make you a profit, not a biblical scholar.

Only if you'd placed a bet on yourself...

Or did you mean prophet?

 

[TheStatutoryApe]

My understanding is...

WASC is not very rigorous. I worked for a school that had its accreditation suspended by WASC. They then sent people to evaluate the school and judge whether or not they should receive their accreditation back, which they did. The school was utter crap. The vast majority of the students would likely never wind up in the sort of job they wanted and even though the school was accredited only a hand full of colleges in the country would accept credits from the school because their curriculum was so anemic. Of course the school did not have its accreditation suspended for the quality of education it provided, it was suspended because they cooked their books and lied about their statistics to the accreditation board.

 

[vociferous]

WASC is not very rigorous. I worked for a school that had its accreditation suspended by WASC. They then sent people to evaluate the school and judge whether or not they should receive their accreditation back, which they did. The school was utter crap. The vast majority of the students would likely never wind up in the sort of job they wanted and even though the school was accredited only a hand full of colleges in the country would accept credits from the school because their curriculum was so anemic. Of course the school did not have its accreditation suspended for the quality of education it provided, it was suspended because they cooked their books and lied about their statistics to the accreditation board.

Interesting; I always assumed that on the academic side of things, courses were expected to cover the same basic topics that a similar course at another institution would, but that was just supposition. We all assume that it is harder to pass a Calculus class at Stanford than at the Community College of Marin, but that the courses basically cover the same subject in the same detail.

Do you know at what point they would say that the academic rigor of a class is not meeting their standards? I am fairly certain that they would not accredit a college whose biology courses consisted solely of creationism and intelligent design.

 

[TheStatutoryApe]

Interesting; I always assumed that on the academic side of things, courses were expected to cover the same basic topics that a similar course at another institution would, but that was just supposition. We all assume that it is harder to pass a Calculus class at Stanford than at the Community College of Marin, but that the courses basically cover the same subject in the same detail.

Do you know at what point they would say that the academic rigor of a class is not meeting their standards? I am fairly certain that they would not accredit a college whose biology courses consisted solely of creationism and intelligent design.

The school I worked at was actually a private school, sort of a trade school if you consider fashion and graphic design to fit that category, so perhaps they have different standards for these types of schools. They had very little in the way of general education. I'm not sure about fashion and interior design but for graphic design you must have a minimum of a four year degree to get into the field. They only offered an AA and like I said their credits were more or less nontransferable. So their students were not at all getting what they needed to follow their career paths. When they reported their statistics for job placement from their career center they included getting people jobs at places like McDonalds. If the person was a fashion major they would count them as having been placed with a job in their preferred career path if they got them a job at a clothing store. All of this was apparently ok with WASC though. They only had a problem with them skewing their numbers by not counting students that failed, dropped out, or were unable to continue qualifying for financial aid (among other things).

 

[NeoDevin]

A Doctor of Divinity (DD)...

I'm all in favour of DD's!

 

[Pinu7]

Only if you'd placed a bet on yourself...

Or did you mean prophet?

Sorry, my native tongue is mathematics. I accidentally spoke in Economic Theory.