Covington Seminaries M.Div Program

Good counsel, my brother.

 

My advice to you here, just like in the other thread you started on Andersonville, is to sign up at Liberty Baptist Theological Seminary and earn your MAR via distance learning. Then if you wish to get a MDiv sign up with Luther Rice, transfer in your Liberty degree so you will get credit for the work you have already done, and finish your MDiv with Luther Rice. That way you have two Master degrees (MA and MDiv). You would be doing the same amount of work as you would for one MDiv, but just dividing it up.

Or you could just earn your MDiv through Luther Rice.

Either way, don't spend your time, and money, on schools that don't hold offical accreditation. You may later regret it if you do.

 

M.S. does not mean more of the same

You seemed impressed by the time and amount of work involved in the degree requirements. However, this is only one factor that is involved in a credible degree program. What is the level of rigor? That, IMHO, is just as important as the quantity and time. Proscribing the length of a dissertation does not insure the quality and it does not necessarily merit degree recognition. Some very significant scientific papers, for example, are quite short and are extremely important in the advancement of the field. On the other hand, a long, rambling compilation of other people’s work in a poorly written style is of no worth.

Substituting quantity for quality is one earmark of degree mills and “less than wonderful” schools. It is not just more of the same—the level of cognitive functioning increases in difficulty and intellectual processing at each higher level. They seem to think a dissertation is just a very long term paper. Whether this is done by ignorance or to deceive, I do not know. After all, the operators of “less than wonderful schools” do not have the academic background and knowledge to judge the requirements of a genuine degree program because most of them have never completed a real advanced degree. Furthermore, the faculty for the most part cannot assess the quality of the dissertation for the same reason. It is rather like trusting someone who has read a few medical textbooks and watched a PBS special (Oh, it’s not that hard!) to do brain surgery on you rather than the medical school trained neurosurgeon.

 

Paidagagos, well said. I wish more guys who are considering those types of schools would consider that. When I think about it, do I want someone who cannot even read Greek to read my dissertation. How can they begin to do disciplined exegesis.