Any DL music programs?

I am looking for help finding a DL doctoral program in Church Music or some closely related area of music. My first choice would be from a seminary, preferably something Baptist. Secondly, I would need for them to accept my Clayton University (St Louis) master's degree. I have made a list of schools, all unaccredited at this point, but they are falling off rather rapidly.

Any suggestions would be most appreciated.

 

Hi Mighty Mouse,

Is Clayton accredited?

Have you checked out the schools in S. Africa? A number of them have programs in the arts that lead to MA and PhD degrees.

Roscoe

P.S. Just curious... did you do any work at Bob Jones?

 

Clayton was not accredited, and it no longer exists. It did receive the DoE recognition that allowed students to receive federally-guaranteed student loans.

I have checked out the SA schools most often mentioned in this forum. Only UNISA has a musicology degree available through DL. Not really what I was looking for.

As for BJU: no, my undergrad degree is from Furman.

 

I've got a listing for a PhD program in Music at the University of New England (the one in Australia). I've never looked it over so I can't comment further.
Jack

 

Would a school approved by the BPPVE be better than one with dubious accreditation or with only a business license to operate? I have found a BPPVE website that lists no less than 70 schools with music programs, albeit not all of them doctoral level or distance programs.

I have contacted and received a reply from one that is both.

 

Since this thread has now been dragged into another more recent thread by this posting, I'll go ahead and comment here, where at least this comment belongs...

Mighty mouse asked: "Would a school approved by the BPPVE be better than one with dubious accreditation or with only a business license to operate?"​

Accreditation is a little like pregnancy: One(it) either is or isn't. Or it's like "danger," when Tom Cruise's character asked Jack Nicholson's character about "grave" danger and Nicholson's character responded with "is there any other kind?" in the 1992 motion picture, A Few Good Men. There's no "almost" or "dubious" or anything along any sort of accreditation continuum (other than a range of relative quality) which extends so far at either of its ends as to no longer be accreditation at all.

A school isn't accredited in the US unless the agency doing the "accrediting" is approved by either or both of the US Department of Education (USDE) and/or the Council for Higher Education Accreditation (CHEA). Period. Nothing else is "accreditation." And nothing on the low end of accreditation's continuum of quality is so low as to be considered "dubious."

So called "dubious" accreditation, then, isn't really accreditation at all. It's something else... usually akin to sleight of hand. To call it "accreditation" is like calling stain paint (or vice versa); or, perhaps more accurately, more like calling a shovel a car, or soap music.

Although, here's a really cool example of how the solar system can be music (click on the big blue image)... but, alas, I digress. Sorry.​

If a school's not accredited, then it's not. It can't be "dubiously" accredited. Calling it "accredited" if its "accreditor" is not USDE- and/or CHEA-approved can't mean its accreditation is dubious because it HAS no accreditation. And if it's not accredited, then while it may very well be legitimate and of high quality, it's likely that few employers nor licensing agencies will accept its degrees for any purpose; nor accredited schools accept its credits in transfer, or its degrees as requisite for entry into higher-level degree programs. Once again: Period. And wishing won't change that. Unaccredited credentials -- even if earned at legitimate unaccredited schools which require real rigor of their students -- have little or no utility, as a practical matter, in most situations.

State approval (which is all California's BPPVE approval is) isn't accreditation. Nor, however, is it merely having a license to do business. BPPVE at least had some standards... though they were rarely as vigorously enforced (or even, toward the agency's end, investigated) as they should have been. BPPVE is, as of this writing, no longer; soon to be replaced by BPPE, which is, at this writing, only its its formation stages. It remains to be seen what kind of agency BPPE will be.

In the meantime, California has become a bit lawless as far as educational institutions are concerned; and we've seen a bit of an increase in nefarious institutions of alleged "higher education" springing-up in that state. But even before that, a school that had its business license, and was BPPVE approved, was still unaccredited if it did not also have the approval of a USDE- and/or CHEA-approved accreditor... with all the impediments that I've herein indicated tend to accompany being unaccredited.

The last point I need to make in order to sum it all up is that any school which is not truly accredited, but which claims to be (which is not the same as "dubious accreditation", but, rather, it's just sleight of hand) is just fraudulent, on its face. And anyone who intentionally does business with an entity that's prima facie fraudulent gets what s/he deserves.

So, then, on paper, at least -- that is, theoretically -- a school that had only its business license and BPPVE approval would, by definition, be "better" than one with "dubious accreditation"...

...in part because... er... well... first I guess we'd have to define "better," but beyond that, in part because it's not even possible to have "dubious accreditation" in the first place; and in part because in order to have "dubious accreditation," were that even possible, the school would be prima facie fraudulent for merely having claimed to be accredited.

So, then, the answer to the part of your question, "[w]ould a school approved by the BPPVE be better than one with dubious accreditation" is (or at least would be if BPPVE still existed and was doing its job), categorically and by definition, "yes." (I started to write, "yes, of course!" but considering the bad schools which ended-up getting BPPVE approval, I'm not sure I can rightfully add the enthusiasm.)

However, the answer to the part of your question, "[w]ould a school approved by the BPPVE be better than one ... with only a business license to operate" is a little harder to answer. And that's because... well... first, again, we'd have to define "better;" and also because it's entirely possible for a school that's neither approved by BPPVE, nor accredited, to still be of good quality in terms of what and how it teaches.

But then the nagging question of utility crops back up. No matter how good the unaccredited-nor-BPPVE-approved school might be at either or both of what it teaches and/or how well it so does, its lack of accreditation makes it pretty much useless for the reasons herein earlier cited. Only if there were a specific use for the unaccredited degree (like, for example, it's acceptable to a state licensing agency, despite its lack of accreditation, like some unaccredited-but-BPPVE-approved schools offering psychology degrees are acceptable to that state's psychology licensing board), should anyone dare to pursue it.

Mighty Mouse further wrote: "I have found a BPPVE website that lists no less than 70 schools with music programs, albeit not all of them doctoral level or distance programs."​

And my reply to that is that if any one of them will serve whatever are your particular purposes, and you're convinced that you will not one day end-up regretting having obtained an unaccredited-but-BPPVE-approved music degree (and you're not planning on ever putting it on a resume/CV or business card or in advertising in places like Oregon), then by all means jump at one of them...

...and, if so, then good luck and may the force be with you.

 

This Google search will likely be helpful... just don't give-up on it... dig deep... page after page after page. You won't believe what's sometimes buried deeply in (back on the 30th or more page of) skilled Google searches... and this Google search is skilled, believe me.

In the other thread, I also suggested the unaccredited, but nevertheless darned-near-credible Graduate Theological Foundation (GTF) Doctor of Sacred Music program...

...but then you PM'd me about your concern over that, given its denominational underpinnings versus yours...

...to which I responded that while I'd be only too happy to respond to that PM, privately, more people will learn from your exploration if you put it right here in the open forums. I now await your response to that... either in the form of a reply PM, or your going ahead and re-posting the essence of that PM here in the forums, as I suggested... or both. And, again, I'll happily reply privately, but I just want as many people here to benefit as possible.