In Theory: Should religious schools get accreditation?
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An essay by an English professor at the University of Pennsylvania, published July 7 by the Chronicle of Higher Education, posits that religious colleges should not be given accreditation because their programs do not allow for “unfettered skepticism and inquiry” that are the hallmarks of American research and education.
Professor Peter Conn writes the current practice of giving a religious college accreditation assuming it meets other criteria concedes “that the integrity of scholarship and teaching is merely negotiable” and he objects to the fact that taxpayer dollars are used “in support of religious ideology, in particular when that ideology has set itself in opposition to the findings of modern science.”
Q: What it your opinion of Conn’s position? Does he have a point?
This is yet another atheist’s rant about the stupidity of belief in God and his own faith in what he believes to be “free-thinking” — that is, thinking that prohibits considering the possibility that God exists and has something to contribute to mankind’s discovery of God’s own creation. It gets so tiring.
How does Conn think Christian institutions teach such disciplines as his? English classes have only so many weeks to accomplish assignments, and so one might expect in a Christian university the works of C.S. Lewis or T.S. Eliot will be explored, whereas in the cynical professor’s class, perhaps he’d make his students imbibe Ayn Rand or other atheist authors of her ilk. A career English teacher should be familiar with both sides, unfettered by atheism or theism, but in the brevity of general education, the difference that faith makes is a choice that Conn simply abhors — though in most fields it shouldn’t matter. Will Christian universities teach different math than atheist institutions, or will their chemistry follow a different periodic table?
Conn’s real gripe is whether or not someone embraces Creationism or Naturalism. Did an eternal, immaterial God create the universe, or did nature just pop into existence out of nothing? Conn takes the latter view, and thinks it too fettering to believe there could be a God, and subsequent purpose to human existence beyond survival of the fittest.
Christians (including those in the sciences) debate the age of Creation, but they agree philosophically and evidentially in God. I must remind Conn that universities were born of Christian concern for truth, and that Harvard was started by Puritans; Yale was a seminary, and Princeton’s first professors were clergymen. Today, the Ivy-League schools are considered bastions of liberalism because they fill their ranks with such as the ideologically unspiritual Conn, who perpetuate the downward spiral while spending our tax dollars. Phooey!
The Rev. Bryan Griem
Montrose Community Church
Montrose
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Professor Conn certainly has a point. But how does one determine what a “religious” college is? There are plenty of good, small colleges founded by various religious groups. And one very big one, the University of Southern California, was founded by Methodists. I understand what Conn is getting at, and I couldn’t agree more: The idea of “creationism” or “creation science” is laughable. But what kind of “religious” are we talking about? Doane College in Crete, Neb., is a good school, and it also happens to be related to my denomination, the United Church of Christ. What would Conn think of Ohio Wesleyan, another good school, founded by Methodists? Elmhurst College in Illinois is a UCC school, and fully accredited. In fact, the great theologian Reinhold Niebuhr taught there, I believe, and perhaps was even a student there. So Conn raises a good point — but the problem is, how does one enforce which college should be accredited and which should not? I am with him on withholding accreditation from schools such as Wheaton in Illinois or Bob Jones University in South Carolina — but how would he rate a Hiram, Defiance, or Heidelberg, all in Ohio? The idea of withholding accreditation is a good one, but the question of how to rate or who does the rating is the sticking point.
The Rev. Skip Lindeman
La Cañada Congregational Church
La Cañada Flintridge
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If we take Professor Conn’s words literally, he makes no exceptions in saying that Christian colleges fail to allow “unfettered skepticism and inquiry,” and I can’t agree with that.
I was already an atheist when I went to Capital University, a Lutheran liberal-arts school in Ohio, and I encountered no fetters there.
Despite the religious and political landscape having shifted depressingly far to the right since, the Lutheran flavor of Christianity, along with many of their brothers and sisters in other thinking denominations, still provide excellent educations which comply with principles of science and of academic freedom.
But Conn’s essay, “The Great Accreditation Farce” makes a solid case that some Christian schools are not living up to scholarly standards.
Just one example: Many church schools require professors to sign “faith statements,” attesting to their belief that the Bible is literally true, that evolution is bunk, and other inanities.
Professor Conn also nicely summarizes the elaborate and time-consuming higher-education accreditation process, its objectives and its failings.
To his critique I would add that any number of private, for-profit post-secondary institutions need to be stripped of their accreditation. Many exist solely to suck up student financial aid and then turn out graduates with dismal job prospects.
Accreditation can also be used as a weapon when an accreditation commission disapproves of the perceived politics of a school — that is happening at the moment at the City College of San Francisco.
Accreditors do seem to need some course correction at this point.
Consumers of education must also be critical thinkers in choosing schools.
Roberta Medford
Atheist
Montrose
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Professor Conn has a point, that accreditation must stand for something. I do think though that he is short sighted in singling out the religious institutions that require belief statements from their faculty as the only ones that should be denied accreditation. Let’s look at all institutions that formulate one path of thinking to the negation of others, such as University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine, which does not offer even one course in Eastern medicine in its more than 75 centers and institutes (look at its website), such as acupuncture and creative visualization which have shown to be so effective in curing patients.
Perhaps, Professor Conn should be reminded of the quote said by Albert A. Michaelson, the great 19th-century physicist, at the turn of the 20th century, “There is nothing new to be discovered in physics now.” Whether you believe in religion only, or science only, or as I do, a combination of both, you can always say the others’ narrow-mindedness does not deserve university-level validation. I have a compromise. Have the accreditation committee validate the courses and programs at the college or university that demonstrate, “unfettered skepticism and inquiry” and deny it to others. As a graduate of one public state university, two private Jewish institutes of higher learning and one Lutheran college, I know that at those locations there was unfettered skepticism and inquiry, but at one of the public and one of the private universities I attended, there was a limiting of debate, which led to my leaving without a degree from either. Their loss not mine.
Rabbi Mark Sobel
Temple Beth Emet
Burbank
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I too am concerned about institutions of higher learning that stifle free inquiry by students and try to limit them to a narrow creed or dogma. But I do not think that the accreditation process is the best way to ensure that they will be exposed to a broader way of thinking. The purpose of accreditation is to measure the rigor and quality of education, not whether students are exposed to beliefs that conflict with their own. Once we start censoring what people choose to believe, no matter how foolish we may think it is, we are trampling the very freedoms we are trying to encourage.
The statement that “we can’t manage what can’t measure” is important in evaluating virtually any system or idea. But religious beliefs are not truly subject to “measure.” That is why religious people talk about their “faith.” Faith is belief that is beyond absolute proof. So accrediting someone’s choice of faith is not even possible — no matter how much we might wish it were. Faith is not rational.
Those who are choosing a college or university need to be careful in their evaluation of what is being offered at various institutions. Reading their literature, talking to those who have been there, and visiting the campus should provide ways to measure the breadth and depth of the program that will be offered. Then, the student can make a choice that works for him or her.
As a Unitarian Universalist, I would hope that students are encouraged to investigate far beyond the boundaries of doctrine or a limited set of tenets. And I need to point out that not all religious colleges or universities stifle such free inquiry. But in our country we are able to make choices about what we will believe and how we will live. And that is good.
Rev. Dr. Betty Stapleford
Unitarian Universalist Church of the Verdugo Hills
La Crescenta
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The weakness in Professor Conn’s argument is that he speaks with the same moral absolutism that he condemns in others.
Conn wants to deny accreditation, and thus eliminate student financial aid, to universities with religious affiliation. Taking his article at face value, the unworthy institutions include Notre Dame, Boston College, DePauw, various Loyolas, Brigham Young University and Brandeis. Does he really believe that they and every other religiously affiliated school are without academic merit?
Conn bases his case on a comment from a lone professor at one college and the fact that some other schools require faculty to sign statements of faith. Nowhere does he address what is actually taught, or not taught, in academic courses. Logic requires that this be considered.
I will offer BYU as an example. The religion department teaches that God placed life upon the Earth, while allowing that we don’t know the exact process followed. The university also expects faculty who are church members to encourage faithfulness among students. However, it is possible to instill spiritual values within the context of rigorous intellectual pursuits.
One example: Even as the church embraces the concept of life’s divine origins, BYU faculty and students have for decades conducted field research attempting to identify and understand speciation, the linchpin of the evolutionary process. If students are taught and participate in legitimate science, if faculty members publish research in peer-reviewed journals, it is difficult to argue that anyone is being denied the “skeptical and unfettered inquiry” that Conn deems essential.
So would it be fair, then, to deny students pursuing secular degrees financial aid because of what is taught in Old Testament classes?
Accreditation should be based on an assessment of a school’s overall curriculum. Conn would like to narrow the focus to accommodate his particular bias. That would be unjust.
Michael White
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
La Crescenta