ACCREDITED?

West Coast Bible College in Lancaster Calif is not accredited, and I don't believe that Dr Chappell feels a strong urge to get it. And you would get the best Bible education ever.

Debbie C

 

Well, I don’t like compulsory accreditation either. IMHO, it should be a voluntary choice. Furthermore, I do not like the a priori assumption that unaccredited necessarily means poor or substandard. BJU, IHMO, is all we need to establish this is untrue. However, accreditation is good when it is properly and rightfully used. I am against all the little bogus accreditors that have sprung up with the proliferation of the degree mills. All the degree mill operators can claim accreditation even though their brother-in-law runs the accreditor.

I do support accredtitation as a voluntary process. (BTW, I am presently serving on an accreditation committee.) On the other hand, we cannot accept accreditation as the final word in academic quality control. There are weaknesses and drawbacks. We must see accreditation for what it is and not assume that it is the panacea for all our academic issues. Here are some faults:
1. We tend to trust accreditation too much. There are some poor accredited schools. caveat emptor
2. There are politics in accreditation. Money and prestige count here too.
3. The accreditation process is lacking in real ability to measure quality. Accreditation is more about things accompanying quality than the direct measurement of quality.
4. Accreditation can be limiting on innovation and creativity. It is slow to change although it does change over a period of time (e.g. distance ed).
5. Accreditation can be prejudicial toward certain viewpoints (e.g. creationism).
6. Accreditation can be used to force one’s own agenda upon another (e.g. Semex).

 

How very well put.Kudos Paidagogos for clarity,forthrightness, and just plain old intetinal fortitude.

 

Here's the "s" for intestinal.

 

Personal observation:
There appears to be an inbred bias, with some reason, against accreditation within certain Christian circles, especially Fundamentalism. There were several cases in the last century when a Christian school tried to fire liberal, unbelieving, or heretical instructors. If the instructor cried foul and took his case to the accreditor citing violation of academic freedom, the accreditor generally sided with academic freedom over doctrinal purity. Secular accrediting agencies have no feel for doctrinal matters. Accreditation was seen as the harbinger of liberalism. Therefore, the Fundamentalists, who value doctrinal purity over all else, reasoned that it was easier not to seek accreditation. Other arguments and justifications grew up around this.

One of the initial reasons that Bob Jones College gave for not seeking accreditation was that SACS would require them to have smoking lounges for their students. Dr. Bob, Sr. repeatedly said that they would be happy to seek accreditation if it was based on their results. (BTW, BJU with others did try to start their own accrediting agency but they couldn't get DoE approval.) What they did not want to sacrifice was autonomy over their procedures. After all, accreditation is a trade-off: you give up something to get something.

Today, the Fundamentalist’s case against accreditation is not as strong due to changing circumstances (i.e. new accreditors, new attitudes toward academic freedom and employment, etc.) although I will staunchly defend the right of any school, religious or secular, to forego accreditation for whatever reason. This is my concept of academic freedom—anyone is free to start their own school teaching whatever doctrine but they are not free to do it in my school.

 

Many Fundamentalist schools still view accreditation as control over a religious entity by a secular body. Fundamentalists see the church and school in the same light--both are under God's control. Like the autonomy of the local Baptist church, they wish to preserve the autonomy of the Christian school whether day school, college, or seminary.

 

That's because you're a Southerner, dude!

 

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What is your evidence of that?

 

It's okay. I sensed nothing sinister. And I think that your views are well founded and sensible.

 

Thanks Pipedude. BTW are you a smoker or a plumber?

 

Yeah, there is a little bit of an enigma with TRACS. They accept a lot of unaccredited degrees. Mind you, I am not saying degree mill, just unaccredited. Take BJU for instance. They have a high percentage of guys with terminal degrees from BJU. Prior to TRACS candidacy, they were unaccredited. Check out some of the other colleges accredited by TRACS with faculty sporting unaccredited doctorates from none other than unaccredited BJU. Some of these small college faculties are depending on these BJU doctors for their academic rigor.

Since it takes a doctor to make a doctor, the question is whether an unaccredited doctorate can make an accredited doctorate? I posed this question years ago about accredited Union Institute that offered a doctorate in psychotherapy. Their only doctorate on faculty in psychotherapy was an individual with a doctorate from HEED, an unaccredited external degree school. Can an unaccredited doctor make an accredited doctor?

Does anyone care to tackle this one?

 

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What is your evidence of that? [/QB]</font>[/QUOTE]By the volume of missionaries and young preachers that are coming out of that school with very good knowledge of the King James Bible.
I went with our youth group to a youth conference there lasy Spring and saw the music program, met and listened to the teaching staff, and saw a church that had grown from 5 people to well over 5,000. (Lancaster Baptist Church)

Check out the school's website.

West Coast Baptist College

 

Since when does God need a secular state institution to accredit His workers. If
Christians want to have Christian acceditng associations thats fine. answer me this who accredited, Jesus, and the Apostles, and Church Fathers?
Listen to my sermons at:
http://www.sermonaudio.com/phm

 

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I'm not inspired like Jesus and His apostles so I wish to get a good education like the church fathers had.

 

By the volume of missionaries and young preachers that are coming out of that school with very good knowledge of the King James Bible.

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Thanks for responding. To follow-up:

1)Does that school put out more missionaries and pastors than does, say, Multnomah?

2)Why is a knowledge of the KJV THE criterion for "the best Bible education" when many other very fine, Christian schools do not make that translation any part of a measure for determining quality in Bible knowledge ?

 

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Did Jesus and the apostles record their sermons and advertize them on the net

 

The "pipe" actually refers to a bubble pipe, so I'd best be described as a blowhard.