Sunday, July 28, 2013

Writing a book does not qualify an author for college instruction!


NOT QUALIFIED TO TEACH Coming out of the theological closet, no. 3

College and universities and their programs that merit the tuition paid are accredited generally in two basic ways, either by fields of study through national organizations or by one of the seven regional associations. We cannot categorize all accrediting bodies as being equal since some of the national organizations have such low standards that accreditation by these would be  meaningless for determining the value of programs offered.

 What is the role of the accrediting agency?
The goal of accreditation is to ensure that education provided by institutions of higher education meets acceptable levels of quality. Accrediting agencies, which are private educational associations of regional or national scope, develop evaluation criteria and conduct peer evaluations to assess whether or not those criteria are met. Institutions and/or programs that request an agency's evaluation and that meet an agency's criteria are then "accredited" by that agency. (http://ope.ed.gov/accreditation/)

A quick reference page to investigate accreditation is http://www.chea.org/

A page that lists organizations that accredit programs is http://www.chea.org/pdf/CHEA_USDE_AllAccred.pdf

A page to investigate and confirm the accreditation status of an institution is http://www.chea.org/search/default.asp

After agreeing to the terms of use, in the page that opens you can enter your search criteria.

If you research the status of Ken Ham’s Sponsor Schools at his “creation colleges” web site you will be surprised to discover how so few have regional accreditation and that most cannot even produce results at the CHEA site.

Those accredited by Transnational Association of Christian Colleges and Schools.

Pensacola Christian College
Bob Jones University

Not searchable at the CHEA site
Crown College of the Bible
Dayspring Bible College & Seminary
Verity Institute
Northland International University
Liberty Baptist Theological Seminary and Graduate School while Liberty University is regional
The Master’s Seminary
Jackson Hole Bible College

A few have Regional accreditation, Warner University among them.

Ohio Christian University also Association for Biblical Higher Education
Appalachian Bible College also Association for Biblical Higher Education

The Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges is the regional body that accredits Warner University. The educational programs at WU must bear up under the scrutiny of SACS-COC and its peer institutions to remain in good standing.

I have introduced this brief review of accreditation to raise a crucial question. To be certified to teach a course at any SACS-COC school a specific faculty member must be qualified, that is credentialed with genuine transcripts that confirm studies at the Masters Level (18 hours of graduate study in field) to meet the minimum standards for undergraduate instruction. So here is my concern. Neither Ken Ham nor Greg Hall possesses the required credentials to teach the content that they so eagerly discuss in Already Compromised. Since Ken Ham has no graduate studies in Biology how is he competent to address college biology instruction? Ham could not even be assigned freshmen BIO. Greg Hall earned Educational degrees only (M.Ed., Ed. D.). According to the COC he is NOT qualified to teach Bible or Theology. Once when riding back from the Orlando airport our SACS consultant raised this point exactly. She said something like, why is Greg Hall teaching TST 4095? His credentials do not support this. (I now suspect this is the real reason behind changing the prefix from TST to WU.) Then credentials become irrelevant. The changes called for by these authors of Already Compromised and being forced on WU faculty go far beyond COC competence to teach a course. They go to the foundation of higher education itself, not limited to but including: censoring class content, cancelling and deleting expected courses, and dismissing credentialed instructors. How could this ever be judged legitimate?

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