Louisiana Baptist University

Louisiana Baptist University is an unaccredited, conservative, Christian university, founded in 1973, and located in Shreveport, Louisiana [1][2]. It has an on-campus program and an extensive correspondence/distance education program, which enrolls over 1,100 students in 40 different states and 20 different countries.[3] LBU currently offers over 250 ground-based and 400 distance courses, mostly in Bible and theology [4].

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.

Louisiana Baptist University has specific writing requirements for their master's theses and doctoral dissertations, which are outlined in their Guidelines for Writing Assignments pamphlet.

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 [5]. 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" [6].

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 [7][8].

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 no longer appear to be listed. [9]

The usage of the .edu domain was explained by the US Department of Education noted "However, 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." [10]

Diploma Mill

Some assert that LBU is really a diploma mill, as defined by the US Department of Education. First, one sign that a school might be a diploma mill is the "chosen university is accredited, but not by an agency recognized by the Council on Higher Education Accreditation (CHEA), "[11] [12]. Louisiana Baptist University and the Association of Christian Colleges and Theological Schools are not listed by CHEA. Nor is the school listed as a charity [13]. Secondly, the Department 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.[14] LBU does this very point, when they "take into account past professional experience and present occupational learning opportunities as we provide the academic courses for a unique educational experience." [15]

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 (a thesis or dissertation) and add that material to academia, recording and storing the additions to human knowledge in a form readily available to other researchers and interested parties. At accredited schools, a master's thesis is microfilmed and made available for loan from accredited schools, and doctoral dissertations are obtainable in similiar fashion. Doctoral work is required to be deposited in the United States Library of Congress (LOC), where it is made available to interested parties wishing to examine the work. (Since 1940, all accredited universities in the United States have deposited dissertations in the LOC [16]. The practice began in 1870, and many dissertations have been available online from the LOC since 1997 [17].). Yet, due to the fact that LBU policy does not require these standard practices, it is difficult to determine the quality of graduate work completed at the University, and it is, therefore, also difficult to determine the quality of the instruction.

In comparison, Harvard's Divinity school, for the Doctor of Theology degree, requires that, "once sustained by the Committee, the original dissertation and the first copy, in bound form, together with their abstracts and an unbound, boxed copy for University Microfilms International (UMI), should be submitted to the registrar."[18] As noted on the Library of Congress webpage, since 1999, the UMI has submitted dissertations to the Library of Congress, which are then available for download online [19].

Noteworthy events

2005 Governor Kathleen Blanco declared April to be "Louisiana Baptist University Month". [20]

Alumni

Contact information

Louisiana Baptist University

6301 Westport Avenue

Shreveport, LA 71129

Phone: 318-686-2360

Email: lbuinfo@lbu.edu

External links

Louisiana Baptist University
Library of Congress Doctoral Information Information from the US Library of Congress on PhD dissertations.
Credential Watch - Lists the Association of Christian Colleges and Theological Schools as a suspect accrediting agency.
The US Department of Education webpage on Dipolma Mills Includes explaination of .edu domains.