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| Louisiana Baptist University | |
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| Established | 1973 |
| School type | Private / unaccredited |
| President | Neal Weaver |
| Location | Shreveport, Louisiana, USA |
| Enrollment | 1,100 undergraduate and graduate |
| Faculty | 65 |
| Homepage | www.lbu.edu |
Louisiana Baptist University (originally called Baptist Christian University) is a conservative Christian university, founded in 1973, with the physical campus located in Shreveport, Louisiana. The school has no accreditation from the US Department of Education, which makes it an unaccredited university. It has an on-campus program, as well as an extensive correspondence/distance education program, which enrolls students from all over the world. LBU offers a curriculum of over 200 on-campus courses, with approximately ten different courses made available to students each semester and over 400 distance courses; mostly in subjects pertaining to the Bible and Baptist theology. As a non-traditional college, LBU provides a number of mechanisms by which a student may earn credit, including the application of military credit, credit by examination, and life experience credit. The school also has a liberal transfer credit policy.
Accreditation, licensing, and approvals
On December 10, 1998, the Louisiana Board of Regents unanimously voted to deny the University an operating license for its business programs, required it to cease admitting students, and cease advertising. Students matriculated at the time were allowed until December 31, 1999 to finish their degrees. Meanwhile, on April 22, 1999, the Board exempted the University from licensing requirements under a "religious institution exemption".
LBU is one of five approved colleges and universities of the Baptist Bible Fellowship International, an organization with over 4,000 churches in the United States and several foreign countries. Students who complete their degree in missions through LBU and meet other requirements may be approved as fellowship missionaries.
The University holds full institutional approval from the Association of Christian Colleges and Theological Schools. ACCTS is designed to monitor religious colleges, universities, and seminaries. However, it has no status with the U.S. Department of Education or any other federal agency charged with the accredition of religious institutions.
While the school is unaccredited, the url contains the .edu domain. This may mislead some to think the school has some standing with US government approval. Yet, the usage of the .edu domain was explained by the US Department of Education as "not all institutions that use an .edu as a part of their Internet address are legitimate institutions. Before the U.S. Department of Commerce created its current, strict requirements, some questionable institutions were approved to use an .edu. The current requirements allow only colleges and institutions accredited by an agency recognized by the U.S. Department of Education to use the .edu, however, some more suspect institutions have maintained the .edu addresses."
The University has 65 faculty, but it is unknown to what extent they are tenured, full time, part time, full professorships, or assistant professorships. Nevertheless, only two people on the staff are known to have completed PhD doctoral work from an accredited institution. The majority of the faculty listed graduated from LBU itself, while even more have degrees under its previous name Baptist Christian University and sister institution Baptist Christian College.
LBU's 2002-2003 handbook stated that the school was listed in the Directory of Postsecondary Institutions, published by the National Center for Educational Statistics of the U.S. Department of Education. However, according to their online system, they are not listed.
Notable alumni
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Diploma mill allegations
Louisiana Baptist University matches several criteria of diploma mills, as defined by the US Department of Education (USDE) among others. Primarily if a university is accredited, but not by an agency recognized by the Council on Higher Education Accreditation (CHEA), then its likely to not be a reputable institution. LBU and the Association of Christian Colleges and Theological Schools are not listed by CHEA nor is the school listed as a charity, making it an unaccredited school. The USDE warned to "beware of institutions that offer college credit and degrees based on life experience, with little or no documentation of prior learning" as a sign of a suspect school. LBU allows for this when they "take into account past professional experience and present occupational learning opportunities as we provide the academic courses for a unique educational experience."
Dissertations
Unlike accredited schools and even many that are not accredited, LBU does not make graduate student research available to the academic community. This is considered unusual because the purpose of graduate work is to conduct research, write and publish the results in a graduate-level document and add that material to academia in a form readily available to others. At accredited schools a master's thesis and doctoral dissertations are microfilmed and made available for loan. Doctoral work is required to be deposited in the United States Library of Congress (LOC) where it is made available to the public. Since 1940, all accredited universities in the United States have deposited dissertations in the LOC, and many written after 1997 are available online.
LBU does require dissertations to be professionally bound and a hardback copy submitted to the LBU library for public viewing. Yet, due to the fact that LBU policy does not require submission to the LOC and online distribution, it is relatively difficult to determine the quality of instruction and graduate work at the University. In comparison, the Harvard Divinity School, for the Doctor of Theology degree, requires that the original dissertation with their abstracts should be submitted to the registrar for University Microfilms International (UMI). Since 1999 the UMI has submitted dissertations to the Library of Congress.
Noteworthy events
- 2005: Governor Kathleen Blanco declared April to be "Louisiana Baptist University Month," citing the school as an "important leader in innovative Christian education in the United States and in the world," while praising it as "an Ambassador of Good Will."
- 2006: Jerry Falwell, chancellor of Liberty University, is scheduled to appear at the graduation ceremony and will give the commencement address.
See also
References
- Guidelines for Writing Assignments pamphlet (PDF document)
External links
- Louisiana Baptist University – Official website
- Library of Congress Doctoral Information – Information on PhD dissertations
- Credential Watch – Lists the Association of Christian Colleges and Theological Schools as suspect accrediting agencies
- US Department of Education webpage on Dipolma Mills – Includes explanation of .edu domains
- LBU's Alumni Page