Levicoff on Nations University

Civil discourse would be novel. You skirt the edge of that.

I will move on. This is becoming boring and empty verbiage.

You keep the using the term "fanboy". Not familiar with it so I looked it up in the Urban Dictionary. I found it rather amusing.

 

fanboy
1. A person who is completely loyal to a game or company reguardless of if they suck or not.
2. A pathetic insult often used by fanboys themselves to try and put down people who don't like whatever it is they like.

Urban Dictionary

 

While this is not a residency requirement, I noticed that the M.Div requires a service project. Excuse the formatting.

http://nationsu.org/files/2611/File/2015-student-catalog.pdf

 

If someone was to question the quality or the integrity of the university I work for, I could get defensive, or I could see it as an opportunity to sing the praises of the university. I recognise that some of those things that people typically go on about aren't really applicable to a university that's trying to offer free education, high-ticket items like international conferences, new libraries, high-tech labs, etc. That's fine. But there are still lots of accomplishments that have to do with academic excellence that aren't dependent on huge budgets or government affiliation: exciting peer-reviewed faculty publications, demonstrated teaching excellence, demonstrated research excellence, student research projects, students getting into competitive PhD programs, faculty winning outside competitive grants, that sort of thing. Not every university has all of these equally, but most have at least one they can point to. So if you feel put on the defensive by anyone suggesting that accreditation alone doesn't equal those things above, seize the opportunity and talk up your institution.

 

<crickets>

 

What is a group that made hits with Buddy Holly. I'll take Threads that Pointlessly Go On for 100.

 

Not with Buddy Holly but ....


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kemivUKb4f4


Weezer rocks!

 

Most churches require some kind of involvement and experience in the church environment as a preacher, etc. before giving you a chance as a minister. It is not very realistic that a person working at McDonald's and no church involvement and official affiliation all of the sudden becomes a Minister because of a MDiv NU degree.

I believe the NU MDiv degree and similar opportunities are for people already working in the field that just need a credential to qualify but it is not meant for someone looking to break into a ministerial career with no previous background.

Ministerial careers are service oriented careers, a person that wants to become a minister would need to start from providing service to the community and the church as a bible teacher, event organizer, etc before becoming a minister.

I am not so concerned about the lack of face to face training in an MDiv because a person would never be able to become a real minister unless the person acquires the experience required, the same stands for any other profession and this is not unique to ministerial careers.

NU effort is noble, I have taken few classes with them and many of the students live in Countries in Africa and other underdeveloped countries that wouldn't afford a Christian education otherwise.
Would a NU degree help you to become a professor of theology at an American school or a recognized scholar? Most likely not but I think this is not the goal of the program.

A NU MDiv or MTS degrees have utility in Canada, some churches would ordain a minister with a MDiv degree from a CHEA recognized accredited agency and some professional Christian or Spiritual counseling associations would also accept graduates from a MTS accredited school.

At the end of the day, how many of us have asked a minister where they went to school for training? If my goal was to become a minister and couldn't afford tuition, I would try NU and try to break in by involving myself in church activities and service to my community, I would eventually get a ministerial career if I probe myself.

 

CPE: At most one. That is a huge commitment of time and effort and nickel and dime money. Since I am employed as a PRN chaplain all my stuff was paid for by employer. However, some of the people who did not have proof of all the shots and everything spent a couple hundred getting ready. Let me also suggest there are not enough CPE centers to hold all the people going through an MDiv program. This would also take away from those who doing military who really need the 2 units. And the people who want to be chaplains who need four units. Several of those who were forced to be in my last CPE unit through their denominations (read ELCA) took away from the whole process.

Many churches require nothing more than a degree to be a minister. I personally think the worst ministers are the go to college go to MDiv and go work in a church types. They are like an author or artist with no experience. Just my humble opinion. However, there is such a glut of pastors right now churches can be a little more choosey. I know there are some exceptions to the glut and those are mostly mainline and more liberal denominations (ELCA and Episcopal come to mind).

OF nationsU. It seems that the objection is calling themselves UNIVERSITY. Looking at their curricula it seems that they are on par with some BM seminaries. They are most certainly on par with the distance learning schools Luther Rice, Global University, GTOS, and many more. The classes require about 1000-1500 pages in reading, a few tests (granted multiple guess), and either at least a 10 page paper (many at 20) or an essay final. Granted they do not require Greek or Hebrew but many seminaries are moving away from those.

Is there a real difference between NA certification? IS DEAC really that much less than TRACS? And apparently according to another thread RA does not matter as GCU gets student teaching agreements rescinded. NationsU seems to fill a niche that no one else can or will fill.

The other issue seems to be cost. Many online will charge over $500 for a unit. At the least of 72 units that comes to 36K. Even around the averages of $350 for 90 credits is $31K adds up quickly. Add another $20 on top of that and you are going into a profession that will have small chance of paypack.

 

If the Christian Scriptures weren't written in English, how seriously should one take an M.Div. without languages?

ChasIsaac, I seem to recall you were considering NationsU, but not attending. Do you know if the multiple-choice assessment is current?

 

In my opinion, the answer to that question is pretty contextual.

For Religious Communities, Churches etc: The last church I belonged to was a small(ish) independent community church. I served on the search committee for our new pastor after ours lefte. Because we were independent we accepted applications from pretty much everyone. No denominational affiliation required and we didn't have our eyes on the graduates from a particular seminary. But we also didn't need the wisest theologian in all the land. We needed a pastor. We needed someone to lead services, officiate life cycle events, teach, lead, fundraise and engage in the broader community. A grasp of Greek, Latin or Hebrew might be nice but it didn't really serve our needs directly. One of our top candidates was a woman who didn't have a seminary degree at all. She had an M.A. in Religious Studies and had worked as a hospital chaplain.

For denominations: It depends greatly upon the denomination. I once asked a Catholic priest a question about Latin. He shrugged and told me "I only took two semesters of Latin as an undergrad." And that was the extent of his language training in a theological context. He was fluent in Spanish, however, which his bishop heavily pushed him to learn so that he would be able to minister to Spanish speaking Catholics.


Regarding some of Chasisaac's notes...

It's impossible to say that their curricula is "on par" with those universities unless you actually evaluate them side by side. Page count is certainly a measure that we would use to identify a diploma mill (i.e. "This diploma mill only requires a 2 page essay to graduate!") but more words does not equal a guarantee of legitimacy.

Personally, I would give more weight to a DEAC school over a TRACS school any day. I, personally, do not feel TRACS should be recognized by USDOE/CHEA and I view their recognition as merely pandering to a political constituency that is trying its damnedest to drag us back into the middle ages.

That said, TRACS and DEAC are recognized by USDOE. And so my political displeasure with TRACS is really just that. My company requires that all degrees used for employment or promotion purposes be from schools accredited by USDOE recognized accreditors. So would I mis-shuffle someone with a TRACS degree? No, I wouldn't. Because I don't let my political notions impact how I do my job. So there's really two issues: 1) What do I think about an accreditor, about a school, about a program and how it stacks up against other peer institutions and entities and 2) What I am willing to do with that information?

Were I on a search committee for a pastor again I would not, based solely upon the possession of a NationsU degree, throw it in the trash. But neither would I put that candidate to the top of the pile based upon their alumni status (while I might for graduates of certain well established and well known seminaries). If that individual had the requisite experience and, most importantly, we liked him/her then they'd be a strong candidate. That, however, doesn't mean that NationsU is "as good as" Brite Divinity School, NYTS, GTS etc.

Think of it like this, I am gainfully employed and have been so since I left the Navy. I have worked for some top employers. They hired me because of my experience and certifications. My degree really just checks a box. I work with Cornell ILR school grads. They are my peers. One of them is my subordinate. Does that mean that Colorado Technical University is "as good as" Cornell's School of Industrial and Labor Relations? Hardly. It just means that I am good at my job. You could say that I rose to my present position "despite" being a CTU grad. But the simple fact remains that, without a degree, I never would have been hired into HR (at least at the level into which I was hired into HR initially).

Of course it does. Every school with students fills a niche that no one else can or will fill. Otherwise it wouldn't have any students.

For me, CTU filled a niche. There were distance learning programs when I earned my degree. But many of them had very clunky platforms compared to CTU. It was easy to use. And they shipped my books to me automatically (I realize that might not sound like a big deal but remember that I was overseas in the military when I finished my B.S. Ordering books from multiple sources often caused headache because people would get the wrong books and have to spend time mailing them back and waiting for the correct ones or only getting part of their order etc). Were there other options? Of course. But CTU, at a bare minimum, marketed themselves better in that space, at that time and to a key demographic (active duty military).

Does that make it a good school? I think that it was a mixed bag. My professors were miles beyond the professors I had at U of Scranton, IMHO. But the canned curriculum meant that the Operations Manager at Amazon (who taught my Operations Management course) couldn't influence the course development as much as might have been useful to really get the biggest impact from having such good instructors. But for me to say that CTU is "just as good as" Cornell, Penn State or even its neighbor Colorado State, based upon nothing more than accreditation (and the length of reading assignments) would be silly. I have a degree from an unranked, for-profit and somewhat controversial school. I'm not going to spend my life trying to argue that it is anything different.

Likewise, I think that people hear criticism of NationsU and interpret it as criticism of the people who enroll in those courses. Not true. I can imagine there are many people who are actively working in ministry who are simply trying to "check a box" with a degree. In that case, yeah, why not Nations? Why not pretty much any schools accredited by TRACS? Why not Grace Communion Seminary (DEAC/ABHE)? or Global (DEAC/RA)? But my point is that if your school excels at providing "check the box" degrees and never aspires to be anything more than that it isn't really a "good" school.

Nations can do much to show that they strive to be good. Their struggle for accreditation certainly didn't look good for them. But, honestly, I can think of a handful of things that, if they started doing, would make me take them more seriously (and those things have nothing to do with Greek or Latin).

Will they do them? I don't know. And frankly, I don't really care. It's up to NationsU to win over critics by reaching for the stars. It isn't up to me to find excuses to "like" them.

 

I don't believe that to be the case. A school filling its niche and attracting students are really separate issues. Why did so many of my former high school classmates attend either Kings College or Wilkes University? Well, because those schools allowed them to study their desired subject without having to move. It made better sense for some people. Wilkes's Pharmacy program attracts people from around the world. So if you want to continue living in Wilkes-Barre, PA and also want to be a pharmacist, then Wilkes was a stellar choice. The fact that it was a pretty good pharmacy school was kind of an added bonus.

If I really want a self-paced Master of Public Administration (and I don't care about it being NA) then UMT is a good choice. It fits those specific needs. Now, their enrollment numbers might suffer because they don't really market themselves very much. But the degree program still fits a niche for MPA candidates who desire a self-paced program. Anyone who enrolls in that program did so because it met those very specific criteria. That they might have five people enrolled when, with some marketing effort, they could have 500 doesn't change the fact that the school fills a niche and students embrace it.

Perhaps I'm getting a bit esoteric in how I think of a school fulfilling its mission. But that was my intention. Marketing is, in my opinion, a completely separate monster. A significant portion of my critique is that the argument that NationsU "fills a niche" is that TRACS is basically the accreditor of schools largely filling the same niche (without having worried about the fact that their website looks like it was made in an AOL template creator circa 1997).

 

Hello Neuhaus, I don't disagree with your contextual perspective on hiring here, but I think you're focusing on the credibility of people, not programs. Yes, a hiring committee may, based upon its own local pastoral needs, pick someone with a different degree or an unknown degree. Fine. I'll grant that, and if I was on the committee with you, I might agree with that. But I'm asking my question in regards to a program (the M.Div.) that ostensibly provides complete academic (not practical) preparation for ministry. How seriously should one take a graduate program in French Literature taught entirely in English translation? With no requirement to take a French class?

 

The key difference between an MDiv (or an MTheo or an MMin) and an MA/PhD in French Literature is that one implies a language proficiency and the other does not. An MDiv is not just a degree in ancient and sacred texts. Nor is the typical MDiv graduate capable of completely unassisted translation work. Exceptions? Of course. But MDiv isn't, unlike that French Lit degree, taught in Greek, Latin or Hebrew. It's a degree taught in a native language with a few language components. Your french lit program may very well (and should) require you to be delivering a dissertation in French, but I've never seen an MDiv program require the would-be graduate with such a requirement.

What makes NationsU and other online programs different from a traditional MDiv is not the absence or inclusion of a language component it's the fact that it is on,one and not residential. The MDiv in particular is designed to prepare a person for pastoral ministry and knowledge of biblical Greek is simply not as important as other things taught in the course of that program. A degree in French lit, however, carries with it the expectation that you can read the texts in their original language.

There are a number of MDiv programs (at older, more established seminaries) that have eliminated the language requirement. Some schools, like St Tikhons or St Vladimirs, don't have courses in Latin or Greek at all and require you to study Church Slavonic (despite the fact that the bible was not originally written in Slavonic). So, there's an example of a school that requires a language component specifically to study a translation.

I say this not to defend NationsU but to put it into perspective. The language component (or lack thereof) is, at best, a yellow flag for the program and of minimal interest to many churches where a graduate would be hired and even to many of the denominations that might consider accepting someone for ordination.

 

There are many MDiv programs which do not require languages.

Yes. I do know. I was really curious so I paid the $25 bucks to get access. Damn cat.

From Intro to OT scriptures:

From the first class A Search For Spirituality.

 

Neuhaus, you've created a false choice here by crafting an incredibly rigorous French MA and a low-standard M.Div. I am not a French professor, but I am unaware of any MA programs that require the master's thesis to be written in French. I believe, however, they do require enough classes to be able to stumble through texts in the original language. I am not a seminary professor, but I believe that same standard is met by most three-year M.Div. programs, regardless of denomination. I picked the catalogs of three I had heard of and the non-denominational Master's Seminary requires four semesters each of Greek and Hebrew, the Presbyterian Westminster Theological Seminary requires three semesters each, and the Episcopalian Nashotah House requires two semesters each. You said that “knowledge of biblical Greek is simply not as important as other things taught in the course of that program,” but I hope potential students reading this realize that other hiring committees may not share your perspective.

ChasIsaac, I've taught at three different colleges and universities now, and I don't think any of them would accept a multiple-choice test as suitable for assessing university students. DEAC evidently does, so more power to NationsU, I suppose. I don't understand your comment about the cat.

Best wishes to you both, though we disagree.

 

I fail to see how I've created a false choice. I didn't pit the M.Div. up against the M.A. in French Literature, you did. I was pointing out that your comparison doesn't hold true because one is a degree program in which linguistic proficiency is implied by the very nature of the degree. The other (the M.Div) language is merely a component of the program.



I am not a connoisseur of French M.A. programs. However, every single one of my philosophy professors in school delivered their dissertations in the foreign language applicable to their study (i.e. my advisor, who specialized in Kant, wrote his dissertation in German).

How common is this? No clue. But here are the guidelines for when it is done at Columbia.

Here's the M.Div. curriculum for Brite Divinity School, a multi-denominational seminary which is pretty well respected. You'll notice that the only time Greek or Hebrew are required are for Presbyterian and Episcopal students. Everyone else is free to avoid those subjects entirely.

So, there's that.

To repeat myself (seriously, I've said this before in this very thread) the linguistic requirements for an M.Div. are generally denominationally driven. If you earn an M.Div at St. Vladimir's Seminary, you're going to need to study Church Slavonic and study it hard. And if you don't have a grasp of Church Slavonic then you are going to be at a significant disadvantage as you hit active ministry within ethnic Russian parishes. If you attend a Roman Catholic seminary your Latin requirement may vary greatly. But if you are a member of the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter, you better study that Latin well because you're going to be expected to be pretty proficient in it before you can work in one of the Fraternity's Tridentine-use parishes.

To highlight how variable this requirement is, consider the language requirement at Harvard Divinity School which requires students to take three semesters of one language "relevant to their program." So a Greek Orthodox student could take three semesters of Greek, a Roman Catholic could take three semesters of Latin and a Jewish student could take three semesters of Hebrew and, as the website notes, "several" options exist.

But, if you think that Brite and Harvard are poorly constructed M.Div. programs because they don't live up to your standards, that's cool too.

====================

Now, all of that aside, I decided to register for NationsU (the free kind) and poke around in the coursework to see what all they were up to.

I'm not going to say I'm "impressed" but I'm also not terribly disappointed in them. I have no doubt that this program simply doesn't compare to a residential ATS/RA M.Div. That isn't even a consideration. Non-proctored multiple choice exams don't win me over (Graduate studies require two proctored comprehensive exams but the class modules themselves are unproctored, it seems). Writing assignments are somewhat plentiful but appear largely simplistic. Perhaps not terribly surprising some courses require you to buy the professor's book (but this happens in regular B&M universities as well) to pass the course. In the course on spirituality, you have to buy the prof's book and write a 2,000 word "review" of it as one of three writing assignments.

Nations is a prime example of a school that I really wish would have excluded the word "University" from its title. If they were "Nations Seminary" or "Nations Institute of the Bible" or even "Nations Bible College" I would probably feel a little less hostile toward them and their acolytes.

Things I liked: Despite being clearly Christian the course materials make it pretty clear that anyone can take the courses. Assignments are written in ways like "Either from your own or through the third party perspective of a person of the Christian faith explain..." So, hey, kudos. They made it so that even a non-believer like me could take a course and play around inside, maybe even earning a degree. Compare to Global University which has a statement proudly displayed that they reserve the right to kick out any student who publicly advocates for same sex marriage.

Yeah yeah, religious school and first amendment, blah blah blah. Thing is, I like it when a school doesn't try to impose beliefs. Let me study but don't go threatening me with expulsion if, somewhere outside of your "school" I say something you don't like.

Things I didn't like: As Helpful notes, I cannot imagine a school looking at these multiple choice answers as equivalent to a person undergoing a three year residential program at an ATS seminary. Parts of the school seem a bit self-serving (like the mandatory purchase of a prof's book) and the testing system seems open to abuse.

That aside, I'm sure there are non-denominational ministers, lay persons of all denominations and a whole flock of prisoners who benefit from these programs in some way. You're talking about an annual fee of $480 to gobble up as many self-paced courses as you can. It cannot compete with an established M.Div. program.

Thing is, if you're serving time a residential M.Div. program isn't even an option.

I like programs that support prisoners. If they didn't use the word "University" and instead of an M.Div. they awarded just the M.T.S. and say, something a little less traditional, like an S.T.M. or just an M.A. in Religion, then I think they would be far less controversial in their offerings.

So, I'm not saying they're "good" or "equivalent" to anything, but I will say that I kind of see the charm, I support their mission of giving prisoners something meaningful to do.

That doesn't mean I'm going to encourage my kids to sign up (besides, I think 3 is too young for Bible College). But, I'll probably relegate them to the space in my brain for things I have a largely neutral opinion on rather than the previous place I stored it in my brain (things I dislike, an area which includes everything to do with the Kardashians, small talk and people who dot their "i's" with smiley faces and hearts).

I also will stop actively wishing for them to lose DEAC accreditation because I think the "I told you so" moment would feel good. What can I say? That hardened heart thing didn't work out very well for Pharaoh.

 

Me too! A lot!

And since the US has, by some margin, the largest total prison population of any nation - 'way more than China (!) - such programs are sorely needed. Let's have more of them! All areas of learning.

J.

 

China's low incarceration rate is helped, of course, by executing-- instead of imprisoning-- north of 10,000 convicts each year (including many for comparatively minor and nonviolent crimes) so I'm not sure that's a particularly good frame of reference. But I agree, prisoners that are able to become self-sufficient and employable after release are less likely to re-offend; a good thing.

(I have nothing useful to contribute to the NationsU discussion.)