When I did a search for the term "diploma mills" on Amazon just now, four of the 12 'finds' were the four volumes of The Book of Bebb by Frederick Beuchner. How can I never have heard of these? Has anyone else? Short review, perhaps? (From Amazon, they would seem to be novels focused on the life of a diploma mill operator.) Thanks. John
"In the Bebb Quadrilogy, it is the ex-Catholic writer Antonio Parr who sets out with the determination to expose Bebb, the phony evangelist who runs a correspondence diploma mill which creates ministers at $5 a contribution, and who ends by finding that Bebb is more honest than he." http://theologytoday.ptsem.edu/jul1979/v36-2-article3.htm You see, Dr. Bear, if you'd get to know these men you'd find them to be more honest...
Decimon: " You see, Dr. Bear, if you'd get to know these men you'd find them to be more honest... " John: I have met many of them. As far as I'm concerned, there are two basic categories: The "charming scoundrels" -- They are polite, they are sometimes humorous, even jolly, they know I write unkind things about their schools, but at least I spell their names right. They'd never sue or harm me, I'm pretty sure, because they count on me to help publicize their schools, because they can tell prospective students, "Oh, yes, we're listed in Bears' Guide, the standard reference work in this field." And then there are the really evil people, who not only do bad things selling degrees, but do and say terrible things to me, and others who try to expose them. Ronald Pellar (Columbia State) used to send 30-page anti-semitic and segregationist faxes, on my letterhead, to magazines where I advertised. Ernest Sinclair (California Pacifica U.) sent telegrams to every church and business in the small county where I lived, saying that I gave his school a bad write-up because he had rejected my homosexual advances. The guy from Rockwell College (or, as he told police, "It must have been someone else using my phone") phoned death threats to me. Edward Reddeck (North American University) filed nuisance suit after suit, for as much as $500 million. That sort of thing. I'd put the Vancouver group that posts on a.e.d. under dozens of names in the same category. Of course Sinclair, Reddeck, and Pellar ended up in federal prison. Maybe this karma stuff works after all.
Bears' Guide, 15th Edition, page 243: XYZ College of New Age Fundamental Theology, located in Simonsville, Arkansas, offers worthless and fraudulent degrees by DL. XYZ College of NAFT 2003-2004 Catalog, page 12: XYZ CNAFT is listed in the 15th Edition of Bears' Guide. Dr. John Bear is the leading authority in field of DL.
