Schools claiming bogus accreditation, then receiving legit accreditation

I agree but ATS/RA seminaries fall under the same situation. When I was at ESR the students and professors cursed and told crude jokes.

At CTS, the same thing occurs.

 

New Testament Values

As I recall Jesus hung out with prostitutes and tax collectors. OK so tax collectors get a break nowadays but the general idea was that Jesus didn't give a hoot about reputation.
As long as these places repent of their sinfulness they should be just fine. But perhaps they need to be open about it as we try to be at Bishop Beaver College.
Personally I am in a quandary as my institution was accredited by Gnome University and we told our students that "Beryl the Gnome" would verify their qualifications. Now the tables have turned and Gnome University is no more and we at Bishop Beaver College have to accredit the ministry courses for the Church of Rockall. Oh what to do?
Vera Calico
Professor of Celtic Spirituality and Vice Chancellor
Bishop Beaver College

 

Another similar question: If a school has been offering clearly substandard non-accredited programs for many years, then cleans itself up in order to seek accreditation, should accreditors accept it? (No, I'm not referring to CCU, the question concerns the principle.)

More generally, when schools apply for accreditation, should their past history count?

We could argue that the acceditor's concern should be with whether or not the school currently offers programs that meet accreditation standards, and with whether or not the school has the internal processes in place to ensure that those standards are maintained into the future. If both conditions are satisfied, then the school is accreditable and arguably should be accredited.

But past history does speak to school owners' ethics and philosophy. (And these kind of schools always have individual owners, as opposed to having their own corporate identity like Stanford or MIT.) If a school's owner has proven himself ethically-challenged in the past, that speaks directly to the probability of his school honestly trying to maintain standards in the future, as opposed to trying to beat or dodge or loop-hole them.

And past history also reflects back on the accreditor. Accreditors are only as credible as the lineup of schools that they accredit. If the accreditor starts welcoming schools that the community perceives (rightly or wrongly) as questionable, the accreditor's standards will eventually be questioned as well. Attracting well-regarded inductees and avoiding embarassments is in the accreditors' self interest, and in the interest of all the other schools that they accredit.

Personally, I'm not sure what my final opinion is on this. I guess that I lean towards the view that accreditors do need to consider applicant schools' pasts, but that they should be willing to consider convincing evidence that things have changed for the better. There has to be a carrot as well as a stick, or else there would be no hope for shady schools that belatedly decide to shape up.

But compassionate exceptions should be employed sparingly. They should be accompanied by a higher than normal level of close and continuing external scrutiny, and in some cases by conditional or probationary accreditation that lasts for a period of years. How draconian the conditions would be should probably be a function of how heinous the past transgressions were.

 

Re: New Testament Values

 

As the mad priest tries to rescue this thread from too much religion--
Bill's on-target indictment of Newburgh-on-the-Old-Mill-Stream is *not* what I mean--did not William Howard Taft (the law school, not the Chief Justice) get sold swampland by the execrable WAUC and then on becoming aware of the um transreality of WAUC sue them, righteously? Taft, of course, has gone on to DETC and its prez, David Boyd, is our distinguished colleague here. There is absolutely no criticism of WHT in my question; if anything, the very opposite.

 

Bill Dayson

You are insightful and well-spoken.