Has anyone taken courses at Ames or Nations U?

Excellent post.

The only addition I'd make is that the Ph.D. title seems to be slowly replacing the Th.D./D.Th. as the highest degree is Christian circles. The places that I'm familiar with in the US that retain the "Th.D." are mostly divinity schools at universities that have a religious studies department under arts and sciences that awards the Ph.D. Interestingly, at some schools like Duke the Th.D. is more ministerially focused than the Ph.D., while at others like Harvard the two doctorates are structurally identical.

 

You are required to take introductory undergrad courses first if your bachelor isn't in a religious focus area.

Also, as per the time frame of the M.Div. I am not positive, I am in the BRS program, not a masters (I would do MRS anyways) so I am not positive on the minimum completion time. Many d/l schools are self paced, and students can complete programs in shorter times than might be traditionally viable however.

 

Yeah, Lord Levicoff is wrong about NationsU. Mac Lynn is personal friend and the school gets my highest recommendation for a free, unaccredited school; I mean by that the degrees don't have a ton of utility outside the churches of Christ, but the work you'll complete is solid. Mac ran they Bible Department at Lipscomb University for many years, so he and his associates know what they are doing... Thumbs up all the way!

 

aim higher

Schools like Nations University and The North American Reformed Seminary offer a low-cost or free seminary education, good intentions which sound appealing, but the question is the quality of the free content. Given what has come up in two recent threads…

• Students at the unaccredited school have claimed their education was equal to that obtained anywhere else (who doesn’t say that?)

• Posters here say they know the faculty and they’re good eggs, and extrapolate from that that the work is “solid.” (but they’re in a completely different field - business not theology)

• A student says he’s finishing his M.Div. in under two years, and another student points out that this first one with an unrelated undergrad would have had undergrad pre-reqs to complete as well.

A program in which someone can breeze through undergrad pre-requisites plus three years worth (84 semester hours) of M.Div. work in “almost two years” does not inspire any confidence for me, and I hope gives prospective students pause as well. Compare this scenario to a variety of solid seminaries like Concordia Seminary (Lutheran), Nashotah House (Episcopal), and Westminster Theological Seminary (Presbyterian). If you’re considering seminary, call the admissions offices at these schools and ask how often people blow through their M.Div. in two years, even availing themselves of summer school.

Although the variable of very low cost/free graduate education is unusual, it appears that an unaccredited school is offering a sub-par program. That’s nothing new here.

 

Being that it is free, why don't you enroll yourself first and review it, prior to passing judgment?

 

Well one thing you have to consider is that it is self paced. If you want to spend more time on it to finish faster then you can. I chose to spend a great deal of time working on my bachelors with them, so I completed classes in less time. It is what you put in to it, if you do not have a great deal of bible knowledge you will not be able to do as well. Remember that some of us have spent our whole life’s studying the bible and we can apply a lot of what we already know to these programs. Nations will get accredited in a few years, were not talking about a mill who is ducking the law to keep from being shut down who only applied to buy some more time. They would not have spent their valued resources if they did not feel like they had a shot.

 

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