A Critique of Walston on Bethany of Dothan: More Whining!

These observations are based on Walston's Guide to Christian Distance Learning (1999) and my copy of the Bethany Catalogue (1999-2000). I think Walston here speaks a bit too generously.

On p 106 Walston describes Bethany as a "good school." He says people he knows testify that the "programs carry a heavy workload." Walston says "no easy degrees here." The following is not a general criticism of Bethany but is focused on one of its offerings.

As I have never taken a course at Bethany I can but evaluate one of its doctoral programs by the description on pages 35 and 36. Here the "Seminary Division" description of the "Doctor of Theological Studies" program is outlined in three steps. First, one completes the Bachelor of Divinity by doing 32 semester hours (past a BA). Then one does the Master of Theological Studies which is another 32 hours. Then one does the Doctor of Theological Studies which is another 32 hours. The last degree requires a thesis of at least 20,000 words. No languages required...not even Hebrew or Greek. (To be fair,the Bethany catalogue requires more hours for the PhD though the 20, 000 word dissertation and no language requirements apply even to that doctorate.) So one then could acquire a doctorate in theological studies from this school so praised by Walston through an investment of 96 hours!

Dr Walston is, of course, entitled to his opinion, and perhaps I'm overlooking a money making opportunity here! I should station myself in front of one of those seminaries which demand 120 units just for its "master of theological studies" , replete with Hebrew and Greek, and hawk on commission to those weary students who drag their feet out of Hebrew exegesis class and shuffle on to 'Ante Nicene Christology' class, the Bethany program which requires a mere 96 hours, no languages, and a term paper length dissertation for the *entire* doctorate. Oh boy, I'd make a 'killing.'

But perhaps the Bethany rigor is actually 1 1/2 times that of its RA sister institutions and so it makes up by much difficulty and sweat what is much lacking in duration and substance in this particular degree?

The issues raised here are that the disparity between requisites for theological degrees is great even confining the sample to the USA , and that opinions may vary as to the excellence of individual, or the equality between various, programs. I , for one, wish that more uniformity did exist among the several levels of theological degrees wherever such qualifications are awarded.

 

One thing you neglect to mention; - in fact, one thing Walston himself usually neglects to mention: He holds his own doctorate from Bethany. Rick simply forgets to list it among his accomplishments in most sources. He has always, for some reason, downplayed his Bethany doctorate in favor of his doctorates from Greenwich and, later, Northwest.

As Dana Carvey said, "How conveeeeeeenient."

Of course, Rick did list his Bethany doctorate at one time . . . until I started calling Bethany a degree mill.

 

Chapter one of Walston's booh is entitled "About the author." He begins, "My educational background includes both traditional and distance learning through these various schools:"

{one might assume from the above introductory sentence that the author will follow with a complete list of his attainments, that all degrees would be listed, but the one from Bethany is not}

Rather Walston mentions these schools: Christ for the Nations Institute, Warner Pacific,Greenwich, Northwest graduate, Potchefstroom.

One can elicit an interesting hypothesis from what goes purposely (assuming he did not forget one of his doctorates) unmentioned by Rick and perhaps from that be cautioned.

 

This has always been the case. Rick's doctorate from Bethany is an S.T.D. (Doctor of Sacred Tehology). He listed it in his early writings, but dropped it when he first released his guide.

Rick is a hoot - on the web site for his own degree mill, Columbia Evangelical Seminary (originally called Faraston Theological Seminary before he changed it to a name suspiciously similar to that of an accredited school), he actually includes copies of his own diplomas. You'll find them at this link.

As for Columbia Seminary itself? A hole in the wall. You'll find pictures of its alleged campus at this link.

In short, Rick is a living example of conflict of interest: A guy with more than one degree mill credential himself, who purports to be a distance education expert (and is an author in the field), but who also runs his own degree mill. Go figure . . .

By the way, here's what I wrote about Rick's little endeavor when it was known as Faraston:

 

There's a university about seven miles south of me. I have an old 1990 catalog of theirs which reads, under "general regulations" (p. 17):

Candidates for the Ph.D. degree must satisfactorily complete a three year program of study that includes 72 units of graduate course work and research done at (name deleted) and nine full tuition quarters of residency.

This school is talking about students who enter immediately after earning a bachelors degree, and the units referred to are quarter units. In other words, the minimum unit requirement for a Ph.D. at this university is the equivalent of 48 semester units, including masters level work.

So we seem to have a choice to make. Either this anonymous university that I'm referring to is a degree mill (you know that I like CA-approved schools), or else judging graduate programs based only on number of units required is simplistic.

Hint about the university: It's sometimes called "the farm" by its students. National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice used to be their provost. Chelsea Clinton earned her bachelors degree there.

 

I know that it is convenient to throw an opposing view on the horns of a dilemma, but I never called Bethany a degree mill. (of course Levicoff did--yet you use my post to quote!). What I said was that the doc in Theology there was shallow compared to even the ThM requisites at some schools in the US.

I will admit that I feel a 2 1/4 year (9 quarters after the BA) doc, Bill's unnamed school, were it in Christian Theology, is inappropriate. It is impossible to acquire any thing except possibly a foundation for doc work in Theology in two grad years. A further comparison on the Bethany degree is the 20, 000 word dissertation. My last paper , one of four done for one class only at the infamous TTS was 20,000 words. The PhD grader from DTS liked it very much, of course the topic was gender hierarchy in the ministry which topic niches well in the DTS position on women pastors. For me what ties the knot of the inadequacy of the Bethany doctorate is that the Biblical languages are not required. Of course the school believes the 1611 version is inerrant. But theological or Biblical research based on English only is exposed to much possible criticism. Yes, I know, neither does UNIZUL or POTCH in some programs require these. But I disagree with the practice. ( Yes, I know, 'Well Bill, when you've your own school then you can set your standards').

So the issue does concern the number of units , but it goes beyond this too.

 

Re: Re: A Critique of Walston on Bethany of Dothan: More Whining!

The issue is not merely one of credit hours. Bethany only requires 20,000 words for a doctoral dissertation, which roughly equates to 80 pages of writing. Though certain fields lend themselves to shorter dissertations, the field of biblical/theological studies is not one of them. A lean and mean dissertation in the field of biblical/theological studies would be around 50,000 words, and it's not uncommon for dissertations in this field to approach 100,000 words. By comparison, the Bethany requirement is rather anemic.

 

As far as I'm concerned, a diploma mill is a business that mills diplomas.

A school that does not meet the standards of regional accreditation is simply a school that does not meet the standards of regional accreditation. It might be a really bad school that doesn't deserve much prestige value, but if it's actually in the business of instructing rather than just selling diplomas, it is not a diploma mill.

I believe that Bethany is probably an academically substandard school, but certainly not a diploma mill.

To use "degree mill" as an intermediary term for a school that is substandard is confusing in my book, because degrees are abstract things that can't, by definition, be milled. It would be like referring to laid-back churches as "Christianity mills" or really bad sitcoms as "joke mills." There is no such thing.


Cheers,

 

I agree with Tom's statement. I do not consider Bethany a mill.

I think this Board would serve viewers well by having an article which describes what is good and bad about some of the 'better' known non accredited theological schools. I suggest it be co-authored by Walston and Levicoff

 

The school's name is Stanford University. I guess that theology really is the queen of the sciences, since Stanford's doctoral programs seem to do pretty well in other fields.

Of course, course requirements aren't all there is to it. Stanford graduate students take part in research alongside their mentors, they teach (most departments have teaching requirements) and they write some pretty sophisticated dissertations. What's more, these unit requirements are just the minimum institutional requirements. Individual departments often require more.

At which point one writes his or her dissertation, no?

I don't know what 20K words amounts to. Using Ed. K.'s remark that it equals about 80 pages, are you really saying that one class at "TTS" (what's that?) required you to write 320 pages? That sounds excessive to me.

Again, some Stanford departments have language requirements. Religious studies requires reading knowledge (not necessarily fluency) in two languages (one must be French or German), plus additional ancient or modern languages as necessary.

Philosophy doesn't seem to specify a language requirement, but I understand that it's simply expected. Which languages are necessary would depend on the student, I guess. A student of Plato might need different languages than a student of neo-Confucianism or al-Ghazzali.

So wouldn't a lot of these details, such as whether additional classes are needed or which languages are necessary, be left to the individual student and his or her advisor to work out in a British-stye "research doctorate"?

 

A rough and ready way to determine the number of pages based on word total is to divide the latter by 250.

 

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Bill, I know how prideful this sounds , but there is so very much required to `do theology work at the doc level that I agree with those who say even four years of grad study is in many cases barely suffient to qualify one to embark on a dissertation with the intent to teach or write in Systematic Theology (possibly not practical Theology) or New Testament or 'Old' Testament. Of course each school has a legal right to do what they wish in terms of requisites. I am in no position to give anything but my own opinion. But based on my initial Unizul chapters I have used a little Hebrew grammar , more of Greek grammatics, done textual and lexical studies, dug into early, medeival, and reformational dogmatic history, and contemporary theologians. I feel inadequate as I do not know Latin as well. Sorry if this is prideful.

 

Bethany is a degree mill. I recognize that Tom H., unlike me, does not differentiate between degree mills (through which one has to do some work, but not the amount or quality of work required by legitimately accredited schools) and diploma mills (through which one has to do no work at all, or a ridiculously low amount of work - such as nothing more than a ten-page dissertation for a doctorate). But I have never called Bethany a diploma mill (nor does the phrase appear until Tom's post), simply a degree mill.

Number of credits per se has nothing to do with my categorization of Bethany or Columbia as degree mills; I look at the big picture. The factors involing Columbia were discussed earlier. As for Bethany, here's what I have written about them previously:

In other words, Bethany is the classical type of religious degree mill - a Baptistic school, fundy in orientation and geared to the KJV (King James Version of the Bible, for any newbies to this), with significantly short requirements. A family affair, started as a "country bumpkin" operation, which happened to tighten its marketing to a sufficient degree that it thrived while similar schools went by the wayside. But still a joke.

By the way, if Harring Shuemake (chancellor of Bethany and an occasional participant here at degreeinfo.com) happens to read this, you still owe me that "Doctor of Hoaxology" degree you promised in our delightful correspondence a few years ago.

 

I missed the Houston-Love thing; that puts Bethany in a whole new light as far as I'm concerned, though I have to like any school that would acknowledge Elmore Leonard novels as part of its theology library.

(I never meant to suggest that you'd called Bethany a diploma mill, of course; that was a non sequitur on my part.)


Cheers,

 

Beel, Beel, Beel. Why you obsassed weed Ebreu end Greeg? Bathany dosn't requare Engleza. Look at the wabsite.

 

I don't understand , Tom, why the library is such an issue with you in distance ed. I do not use the UZ library at all. I have a small but good quality library for theological research of my own, seems most in my position would have one too. I have the Western library near , but don't generally require it. I buy books as needed. Also I have New First Search, Theological Journals from TREN, and reams of stuff off the net which is good. I mean I can copy Wesley or Arminius or Aquinas right off the web and journals too...so what's the big deal? At this level could not many do nicely without accessing a Bethany library even if the school had one?

My issue with Bethany is the school's modest requirements not how many books it has.

 

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I just looked...yes, and?????????

Unk, you stop sucking up that Carpathian joy juice or I'll stop praying for your conversion to evangelicalism...then you'll know where you'll end up!

 

It isn't, as a rule (though ECU does have the best DL library support of any school I have ever dealt with in any capacity); but if a general public library is referred to as if it were the school's own library, it casts some doubt in my mind as to how unapologetic the school is about its DL orientation and how honest its administrators are about its brick-and-mortar presence. I don't like duplicity, especially coming from a theology school. In other words, I would have had no problem if Bethany's literature said they had no library and no need for one; but my understanding is that they implied they had Houston-Love, and that doesn't sit well with me.


Cheers,

 

I see, now, Tom,

Thanks,