Gulf Coast Bible College and Seminary

Schools website: www.gcbcs.com

Can anyone give me any information on the Gulf Coast Bible College and Seminary, Panama City- Florida???

According to the schools website the school is registered with the Florida State Board of Independent Colleges and Universities (FSBICU) and a Charter member of the Florida Council of Private Colleges (FCPC) and the are listed in the Department of Education Directory of schools.

Is the Florida Council of Private Colleges (FCPC) legite????

If they are registered with the FSBICU their degree would be Accredited Yes/No/Maybe?????????????????


Thanks,


jek2839

 

Any legitimate accreditor will itself be accredited by the United States Department of Education (www.ed.gov) or the Council on Higher Education Accreditation (www.chea.org). Any good religion program would seek accreditation from the Association of Theological Seminaries in the United States and Canada (www.ats.edu) and/or the Association for Biblical Higher Education, formerly known as the American Association of Bible Colleges (www.aabc.org) and/or Transnational Association of Christian Schools (www.tracs.org). The relevant regional accreditor is the Southern Association (www.sacs.org). And, of course, for distance learning, there is the Distance Education and Training Council (www.detc.org).

Quite frankly, I've never heard of the Florida State Board of Independent Colleges and Universities or the Florida Council Private Colleges. Have you searched them at yahoo (www.yahoo.com)?

 

I wish people would spend a little time reading the threads to learn how to go about checking-out an institution.

[sigh]

Oh, well.

First, what Ted said.

Second...

It's not accredited by an agency approved by the United States Department of Education (USDE) or its Council for Higher Education Accreditation (CHEA). A quick check of the CHEA institutional database clearly shows that.

The web site is very amateurish. It's clearly some kind of private, unaccredited... umm... "institution" (and I use the term loosely) that may or may not provide legitimate coursework; and, even if it does, its "degrees" (again, I use the term loosely) wouldn't be worth the paper on which they're printed... except, maybe, in denominations or churches affiliated with the "institution."

Looks like a huge waste of time to me... but that's just me.

Why so many question marks? You sound frantic.

Depends on how you define "legite" (by which I presume you meant "legit"). It's got a fancy web site to be sure. It's certainly not an accreditor, if that's what you're asking. And if one is judged by the company it keeps, then it's noteworthy (in a bad way, I should point out) that the knuckleheaded and well-known-as-a-waste-of-time "Evangelical Theological Seminary" claims membership in FCPC, too. That should be enough to scare anyone away.

Again with the multiple question marks. Oy.

No, registration with FSBICU (whatever that means) does not make it accredited.

You know, if you want an unaccredited theological credential, there are unaccredited "seminaries" and "divinity schools" and "theological schools" that are actually halfway credible -- most of them relatively inexpensive, and a couple of them flat-out free. Most importantly, any of them come across more credibly than the so-called "Gulf Coast Bible College and Seminary."

Keep looking. And learn how to use Google.

 

Re: Re: Gulf Coast Bible College and Seminary

Of course, just because I've never heard of them doesn't mean anything. But, being the nice guy I am, I ran a couple of yahoo searches for you.

"Florida State Board of Independent Colleges" (www.myflorida.com/eog_new/eog/library/releases/2001/july/ind_ed-07-13-01.html) yielded the fact that the Florida State Commission for Independent Education is the successor organization to the Florida State Board of Independent Colleges and Universities and the Florida State Board of Nonpublic Career Education. Apparently, the Florida State Commission for Independent Education, the new organization, is a state regulatory agency that is responsible for granting certificates, diplomas, degrees for independent postsecondary education institutions through exemption, registration, authorization, and licensing.

"Florida Council of Private Colleges" (www.fcpc.info) yields the FCPC website, which states that the purpose of FCPC is to promote quality faith-based education and provide support services for each college and university to accomplish their purpose and mission; to represent member colleges and universities before any government and/or educational agency; to provide certification of private, primarily religious colleges through quality peer review, onsite visits, verifying data, to FCPC standards which exceed the minimum standards of the state of Florida.

 

Thanks

jek2839

 

Re: Re: Re: Gulf Coast Bible College and Seminary

None of the foregoing makes the school "legit," per se... and certainly not accredited in any sense of that word. That's the important thing to remember.

Whether any of the schools approved or listed by those agencies is any good is difficult to determine... hence the reason accreditation is so important.

 

Re: Re: Re: Gulf Coast Bible College and Seminary

Sorry, I got interrupted for awhile.

The old Florida State Board of Independent Colleges and Universities, now the Florida State Commission for Independent Education, seems to be the state regulatory agency that authorizes, exempts, licenses, and registers schools; none of this necessarily means that any quality control measures were taken and thus their registration by FSBIC is not to be taken as the equivalent of accreditation.

The Florida Council of Private Colleges seems to have some aspects of a trade association and seems to offer some sort of accreditation. But I'm not sure how much their accreditation means. Some of the schools they accredited got terrible write-ups in Josh Walston's Guide to Christian Distance Learning.

A visit to the CHEA website (www.chea.org) does not show Gulf Coast Bible College and Seminary on its list of accredited schools.
I was unable to find the list of accredited schools at USDOE (www.ed.gov).

 

Re: Re: Re: Re: Gulf Coast Bible College and Seminary

Well, a visit to http://ope.ed.gov/accreditation/Search.asp shows that the U. S. Department of Education does not list the Florida Council of Private Colleges as an accredited accreditation agency.

And a visit to http://ope.ed.gov/accreditation/InstList.asp shows that Gulf Coast Bible College and Seminary is not on the Office of Postsecondary Education's list accredited private non-profit 4-year and above or private for-profit 4-year and above schools in Florida.

 

I did some checking the Florida Council of Private Colleges several months ago...

My impression is that it is an association primarily made up of Bible colleges, seminaries, etc that are not accredited or recognized by any of the traditional associations. They resist any governmental or generally accepted oversight standards.

They seem to have banded together to give each other credibility and therin is the rub... It seems to me that it is important to have some independent, objective oversight agengy.

I would suggest a seach of the degreeinfo.com sight for Florida Council of Private Colleges...

Don't let the curt answers to your questions bother you... Some of the "oldies" on this board have been through the wars and answered some of the same questions time and time again and have forgotten that having patience is a good thing.

 

Thank you for the info

Ted and Revkag,

Thanks for all your help.

 

Re: Thank you for the info

jek2839,

Happy 6th birthday to you!

 

No longer even a website

Brad White, the pastor at Lifepoint Church in Tampa, states that he graduated from Gulf Coast Seminary. However, I can't even find a website for Gulf Coast Baptist College and Seminary in Panama City anymore.

In fact, the only places on the web that I can even find it mentioned are places that talk about colleges, although none of those sites has any statistics or anything on the school past an address.

It appears that this school is a diploma mill or some other unaccredited scam, which leaves the validity of Brad White's pastorship of Lifepoint Church in Tampa in question. This makes me sad.

 

Here is the link to the main page. I would always question a Doctor of Biblical Studies for $150. Price is not the end-all to determine if a school is good or not but this would be concerning. This does not make Mr White a "bad guy" as I am sure he has other qualifications.

 

Seriously with the FIRST AMENDMENT in play these degrees are as valid to use, are they good degrees maybe so and maybe not but you are forgetting that fact that in most cases there is no state oversight on this matter. And that is simply on the grounds that faith and the secular are apart and the state if they mandated accreditation would have to also go after most ministry programs involving the education of religious workers. I would think no court would let that stand long on any books if Florida said to a seminary okay you train pastors offering a degree in ministry, you must be accredited or close.

I know its not fair, you can drive a truck passed the holes in the system but as far as I can tell unless you cannot use the degree at all this school is legitimate, although not being "accredited" at all might be a better option than "claiming one". After all in truth its not needed.

 

Here you go again. When will you ever get it? Nobody is forgetting their First Ammendment rights here. You should have noticed by now that the discussions on these fora often center on whether an institution is academically legit and accredited by an accreditor recognized by the US Department of Education or not. The question of the o.p. is:

The Separation of Church and State is known to all of us. You always come here flaunting your fake and meaningless "degree" that you bought for $10.00 from Universal Life Church, the Country's most notorious diploma mill, and talking as if you are the only one who is aware of the Separation between Church and State. Goodness gracious! You're such a nuisance.

 

Yeah...I would look elsewhere. Not sure why people waste their time with these schools.

Seriously, South African Theological Seminary (cheap and accredited). Columbia Evangelical Seminary is inexpensive and unaccredited but recently ranked as one of the top apologetics schools in the country (by an independent reviewer of schools). TNARS is unaccredited but free (you have to work though). CES and TNARS work through a mentor system (one on one).

 

Don't forget Nations. Free (small charge for US residents) and hopefully will eventually become accredited. (NationsUniversity - Tuition-free Online Christian Education - NationsUniversity)

 

(I recognize this is an old thread but the information contained is grossly incorrect.) The School you linked is Gulf Coast Bible Institute in Fort Walton Beach Florida, which I believe you are confusing with another entity.

Gulf Coast Bible Institute in Fort Walton Beach Florida is also responsible for countless Prison Discipleship Programs across like the United States. Marshall County Correctional Facility in Holly Springs Mississippi under Warden David Helmic as the Program Director.

Www.prisonbibleschool.com

And

Www.gulfcoastprisonministries.org

The pricing structure you see on the website is the “per semester price” and it’s strictly to encourage students to invest something into their own education. To summarize, as an alumni of GCBI, I don’t know what a “diploma mill” looks like but my Bachelor Degree cost me $2160 and 128 credit hours, which took me 6 years to complete due to my heavy work schedule.

The accreditation debate can be had by someone else, just wanted to assure you the training he is intense.

Www.gcbi.org is the (unbroken) link to this correspondence college.

 

Please see below.

 

This is exactly what a diploma mill looks like. When a "school" posts on their website that "accreditation has nothing to do with a quality education", and the majority of their faculty have "doctorates" from that same institution it's time to turn around and run away.