Lost in Thought - A Review

For all the criticism that academic pursuits get for putting someone in “an ivory tower” there is an awful lot of rat race that goes on.

When I would comment on the chaos in our department or a major corporation, mostly due to the ineptitude of a former boss, I would frequently be told “that’s the nature of the business, this isn’t like a university.”

The thing is, if it ever was such a thing, universities are no longer places of quiet rest and contemplation. The pressure to publish and present or miss promotions and tenure is real for many young faculty. More experienced faculty often are still trying to find elbow room for their ideas, publishing opportunities, and respect. To read the stories of the life of C. S. Lewis and his own accounts in That Hideous Strength, I think the halcyon days of a peaceful, irenic university faculty life are more urban legend than real history.

What, then, is the value of the intellectual life? Is it really just another hyper-competitive sphere of life, without any different potential than the rest of the corporate grind?

In Lost in Thought, Zena Hitz explores the possibility that the intellectual life has potential for enjoyment on its own.

This is the sort of book that is good for young academics wondering if the mountain is worth climbing or for older faculty wondering what joy there can be in a community that is often polite in the midst of savagery.

What Hitz finds is that, while academia is not for everyone, there is a joy in the process of learning for its own sake. She argues that learning has inherent value. It is worth pursuing even if it does not result in greater riches and measurable wealth. It does, however, require the space of time and energy that come from leisure—exactly the reason why it is so hard to justify learning for its own sake in our harried and exhausted culture.

Even for those outside of the ivy shrouded walls of academia there is value in intellectual pursuits. They provide a refuge in a hostile world as we touch the minds of many who have gone before and lived fuller lives. Hitz explores ways that being a bookish sort of person can lead to relief and blessing in the midst of struggle and difficulty.

Learning, however, must be pursued for its own sake to have the full effect. If the point of learning becomes to climb a social ladder, to be cutting edge, or to win approval, then it is perverted and many of its benefits are reduced. She writes, “Intellectual life is artisanal toast for the mind.” The idea being that it must be enjoyed to be worth the cost.

More significantly, learning must not be pursued for the sake of politics. In that case, learning becomes about indoctrination. This is true whether the guiding lights of the institution lean right or left. Real learning is meaningful when it wrestles with the thorny thoughts of different perspectives to come out the other side with transformative power.

This is a book that is inspiring for those outside of academia who are inclined to continue learning and growing but struggle with the value of those efforts—heaven knows that has been my fate for several years. Lost in Thought provides reassurance that reading, writing, and seeking to grow intellectually have a purpose even if those efforts are not rewarded with academic titles, publishing contracts, sabbaticals, and the other trappings of the university.

Lost in Thought: The Hidden Pleasures of an Intellectual Life

By Hitz, Zena

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To Think Christianly - A Review

One of the challenges for Christians in modernity has been trying to integrate faith will all areas on knowledge. Some fundamentalists attempted this by simply abandoning the public square and retreating into their own corners of the world with independent publishing, music, and entertainment that mimic the world, usually at a lower level of quality, but maintain ideological purity. Some revisionists simply accept what the world produces, call it good or attempt to relate Christian themes to the very non-Christian content and argue that everything is permissible. A third response has been to attempt to engage the culture and its artifacts from a meaningfully Christian perspective and highlight the ways that the world’s wisdom is consistent with Christianity and the points of difference.

All three of these methods of relating to the world around us can be witnessed within Christian education. Christians invented the university, in part because of the Bible’s message that all of creation speaks God’s name. Thus, all of creation should be understood in unity—a uni-versity. But as modernism undermined the place of God in creation—often denying any role through deism and later his very existence through atheism—those naturalistic ideas have largely taken over the educational spaces of the world. This left many Christians without a place to stand to think Christianly.

One response to the crisis of education was to create separate Christian universities. Those take several forms, with varying degrees of openness to broader scholarship. The Christian College movement has both strengths and weakness. It rises above its worst instantiations of institutions like Oberlin, which no longer reflect their Christian heritage in any way, or some fundamentalist institutions which are notorious for tight control of messaging.

Another response to the crisis of education, however, was the creation of parachurch institutions that often ran parallel to other educational institutions with the express goal of helping Christians think about all of life from a distinctly Christian perspective. Charles Cotherman’s recent book, To Think Christianly: A History of L’Abri, Regent College, and the Christian Study Center Movement, presents an engaging account of how that parallel movement rose and has flourished.

L’Abri, of course, was the home of Francis and Edith Schaeffer in the Swiss Alps. They founded “The Shelter” as a place to ask hard questions and provide answers from an orthodox Christian perspective. That faith community grew over a period of years, primarily through word of mouth, until it became a pilgrimage for seekers, skeptics, and Christians seeking to find how to live out their faith. The Schaeffers provided hospitality for many, the gospel for all, and a safe place to seek answers in God’s world. L’Abri was a first of its kind community, which is why Thinking Christianly considers that project in the first chapter.

Chapter Two moves to a history of Regent College, which came chronologically after L’Abri and shared some themes, but was intended to bring a Christian element to other non-ministerial degrees. Cotherman details the origins of Regent College as an affiliate institution to a Canadian university. James Houston was the founder of Regent College and, indeed a significant figure within the Christian Study Center movement, which this book discusses. The informal L’Abri model of lay-training and the more formal Regent College model remain the two major options for bringing theological teaching to a broad audience.

In Chapters Three through Six Cotherman looks at four particularly Christian Study centers that tried to replicate either L’Abri or Regent College. The C. S. Lewis Institute  was originally an attempt to found a Regent like institution, but shifted to a more informal study center that exists and continues to attempt to help working professionals in multiple large metro areas integrate their faith, work and life. The Ligonier study center was very L’Abri-like when it was founded by R. C. Sproul in Western Pennsylvania. It was small, residential, and community oriented. However, the shift from audio tapes to videos drew Ligonier to shift its model, move to Florida, and focus less on community-based instruction. In California, an attempt was made to provide some discipleship in a study-center in Northern California. The center still exists near the University of California Berkeley as a Center of Distinction of the Graduate Theological Union, which has continued its existence but allowed it to chart a different path than the first two centers. Similarly, the Center for Christian Study near the University of Virginia functions to help seekers understand Christianity and Christians to integrate their studies with their Christianity. Each of these four centers looks different, but each is attempting to show how faith is consistent with and can strengthen studies in another area.

The final chapter deals with the Consortium of Christian Study Centers, which exists to encourage entities like the six discussed in the book to start, maintain, and grow. Spawned out of the same movement, this is an attempt to bring discipleship to many people who might otherwise struggle to find meaningful Christian engagement with their lives.

As storm clouds continue to gather over accreditation of orthodox Christian institutions, especially those who seek to embody biblical Christian sexuality, Christian study centers may be an attractive option for future students. Some are residential, but many are simply physically located near a campus, allowing students access to resources and fellowship that can help put the pieces together in the fractured intellectual environment of the modern university. Christian study centers have the potential of helping to develop a Christian mind. While distinctly Christian institutions of higher education have a place and should continue to exist, even when social forces disbar them from accreditation, Christian study centers may be a way to help build disciples for future generations of nurses, doctors, engineers, and teachers in a cost-effective and deeply integrated manner.

For those interested in the life of the mind, the history of L’Abri and similar institutions, and parallel educational opportunities to universities, this is a very interesting volume. It is well researched, engaging and thorough. The book focuses excessively on whether or not institutions have promoted egalitarianism of ministerial function, which seems strange given the focus is not on ministry within the church but ministry in the world. Overall, the level of interest in this niche topic seems excessive, but does overly distract from an otherwise solid book. The beginning of the book is also much more interesting than the latter portion, as the emphasis on successor organizations that many people have never heard of seems both highly selective and, at times, too far into the weeds. That fact, which might discourage general readers somewhat, is likely to increase the academic value of this book that deals carefully with the history of institutions slightly off the beaten path.

Overall, this is a useful volume, particularly for those thinking into the future about ways to help bring unity to the cacophony of the modern university. As institutions grow increasingly hostile to Christian student organizations, an independent study center may be a strong path forward for both evangelism and discipleship.

To Think Christianly: A History of L'Abri, Regent College, and the Christian Study Center Movement

By Cotherman, Charles E.

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NOTE: I received a gratis copy of this volume with no expectation of a positive review.

Scams and Christian Education: Inflated Credentials and Fraudulent Accreditation

A while back I encountered a book by a self-published author that was presented as very helpful and offered for free, but when I picked it up, it was such a basic and low-content product that it might do more harm than good. It showed a real lack of expertise in the content and in style. That isn’t too uncommon for self-publication, but it is sometimes interesting to see how an author got to the point of self-importance that caused them to want to publish something absent expertise.

To find out more, I read the author’s biography. This is something I’ve gotten used to doing as a serial book reviewer. Before I read a book, I tend to ask myself why this author is the person who has something to say on this particular topic. There are gems that can be found by people who have no clear qualifications or experience on a subject, but they are rare. I don’t consider it my responsibility to find and expose those gems.

What drew my attention in this case was that the author listed an advanced degree from an institution I’ve never heard of. It was a doctorate of some variety in biblical studies. (The author’s website actually lists a degree the institution does not offer, but that is a topic for another post.)

Not being a known institution of higher learning may reflect more on my ignorance than the quality of the education, but my interest was piqued. So, I searched for the institution online. And I found it. It has a very elementary website with a number of missing elements (e.g., the institutional history claims to be under development), typos in menus (e.g., “Distance Learning” became “Distant Learning”), and interesting language about accreditation, which led me on my quest. The issue went beyond careless typos into blatant dishonesty.

What I found is a profoundly deceitful example of trying to ape the world’s standards dishonestly. It was an attempt to inflate credentials for the individuals. For the institution, it was an opportunity to make a little money by offering a knock off imitation of a product very much in demand. It is likely that the primary target audience of the institution’s sham degrees is people overseas who want an American education at a developing world price.

Basically, what I discovered in following this trail was a Diploma Mill designed to inflate credentials and put of a false front of credibility. More significantly, the false front was deepened by relying on an unrecognized “accreditation agency” whose approval is self-designated and, therefore, virtually meaningless. It was a Diploma Mill certified by an Accreditation Mill: a double deception destined to dishonor the name of Christ.

Background on Accreditation

Maintaining accreditation can be a difficult process. Not everything in the accreditation process is really helpful or cost effective, but overall, it does provide some assurances of institutional integrity and quality that protect students and faculty from various forms of abuse. I say this as someone who has worked on accreditation reaffirmations for several institutions.

In the United States, accreditation is unlike many other countries. The federal government authorizes the Council for Higher Education Accreditation and US Department of Education to set standards and vet the agencies that accredit programs and institutions. CHEA and USDE both accredit accreditors. Neither accredits specific programs or even whole institutions.

There are six regional accrediting agencies that oversee the accreditation of institutions along distinct geographic lines. If you are looking at schools in the U.S., this is generally the mark of a degree that will have value in the marketplace after graduation. Regional accreditors certify the quality of an entire institution and do not accredit specific programs.

In addition, there are specialized accreditors that approve specific programs at an institution. For example, there are two accreditors for nursing programs recognized by CHEA and/or USDE. Those agencies are focused on nursing and will come into an institution (which is likely accredited by a regional accreditor) to check the specifics of the nursing programs. They will not look at the English major (for example) when they come to visit. If you are shopping for programs in a distinct professional discipline, it is often very beneficial for your program to be accredited by one of the recognized specialized accreditors. You can get a degree in nursing (for example) from an institution that is only regionally accredited and does not have a specialized accreditation, but that may have negative implications for hiring or licensing.

To be clear, a good education can be attained apart from accreditation. There may come a time when accreditation of orthodox, faith-based institutions in the U.S. will not be possible. However, at the present time, degrees from regionally accredited institutions are the baseline standard in the marketplace. Employers expect you to have a degree of a certain quality from an institution certified by an authorized accreditation agency. In certain fields (like engineering, seminary degrees, nursing, and other professional fields), specialized accreditation is also necessary for the degree holder to enter the workforce in their chosen specialty.

Diploma Mills

Other than hiring practices and licensing requirements, CHEA and USDE derive their significance from being gate keepers to federal aid money. Institutions that are accredited by CHEA or USDE recognized accreditors can (but don’t have to) allow their students to get subsidized student loans, federal grants, or other government authorized aid. Part of the reason for the rise in significance in accreditation was to ensure that GI Bill money and other Federal student aid money was being spent on real, value-added educational programs.

However, as educational opportunities have proliferated, undergraduate degrees have become more of an entry ticket into more stable professional employment. (There are signs that this is changing, which I generally see as a good thing.) This has made it more important for people to have “the piece of paper” that states they completed a specific degree. Enter the Diploma Mill.

A Diploma Mill is an organization (or individual) representing itself as a legitimate educational institution with degree granting authority, but which does little or nothing to validate the recipients of that degree have the knowledge, skills, or experience that the degree normally implies in common usage.

For many people, going to school to obtain a degree is a schedule and/or financial impossibility. It becomes very tempting for institutions to pop up to offer easy access to get degrees. In the worst cases, these “institutions” are simply people with a nice printer that will spit out a personalized piece of parchment with a legitimate sounding school name on it for a few hundred dollars. In less egregious cases, there are actual institutions that offer real classes, but the amount of work required to complete courses is far below reasonable expectations or the amount of credit they grant for experience is well above normal limits. Often the faculty at these institutions have degrees from other Diploma Mills (even the one they teach at), so have never been exposed to experts in the field.

These, and the variants between, are all referred to as Diploma Mills. Most of these institutions make no claim to accreditation, it is up to the buyer to figure out the potential market value of the offered degree. The price seems too good to be true and the product much needed. Most of the time, the product is cheap because it is fake.

To be clear (and fair to some good actors), there are non-accredited institutions that offer legitimate educations. In some cases, there are ideological arguments for not seeking accreditation. For example, some Fundamentalist Christian schools believe that seeking accreditation requires a compromise of the principle of separation from sin. We can debate the merits of that position, but it is a legitimate one. In other cases, an institution may simply not have existed long enough to have accreditation. An institution cannot get accredited until it has a track record of operation for the accreditor to evaluate. Accreditation is also a costly process, so some young or financially struggling institutions that are academically sound may not be able to afford it. Not having accreditation, however, should be plainly stated with an explanation somewhere in the institution’s literature and website. The simple lack of meaningful accreditation does not make an institution a Diploma Mill, but it bears further investigation.

Accreditation Mills

The rabbit hole that I followed based on the author biography, however, revealed a third type of institution: a school that asserts it is “Fully Accredited” with a link to an “accreditor” that is not recognized by either CHEA or USDE. The accreditor, in this case, is actually an “Accreditation Mill.”

Simply put, an Accreditation Mill is an organization that claims to offer a value-added certification of the quality of the degree from an institution but does little to ensure its quality. It offers the appearance of legitimacy, without the necessary diligence to ensure it.

In the world of educational deception, Accreditation Mills are generally more morally insidious than bald-faced Diploma Mills. Accreditation Mills are tools used by illegitimate degree conferring institutions to maintain the appearance of validity without doing the work needed to have it.

In the best light, a struggling institution may purchase their “accreditation” from an Accreditation Mill to stay alive. It’s hard to attract students to a school that is not accredited. However, purchasing that accreditation is an act of deception intended to give the appearance of legitimacy to an otherwise low to no value degree. It is, necessarily, a form of dishonest misrepresentation.

Institutions that represent themselves as “Accredited” or, worse, “Fully Accredited” by an “accreditor” that is not recognize by USDE or CHEA are using people’s general ignorance as a tool to legitimate them. It is, at the heart, a fundamentally dishonest and despicable practice.

A Problem of Standards and Legitimacy

Out of curiosity, I moved from the website of the Diploma Mill in question to the “accreditor” from whom the institution received their status as “Fully Accredited.”

As a side note, no institution or program should ever claim to be “Fully Accredited.” (Just as a woman cannot be a little bit pregnant, but is either pregnant or not.) In legitimate regions of higher education, there is accreditation or no accreditation. An institution may have findings against their accreditation status, but they are still either accredited or not. Some legitimate institutions mistakenly publish themselves as “Fully Accredited” due to ignorance in their administrations, but that term should be a flag to ask further questions.

In the case under investigation, the institution claims to be “Fully Accredited,” but the “accreditor” is not certified by either the USDE or CHEA, nor are they pursuing any official status. The claim is a false front design to deceive the ignorant about the market value of the degrees.

If you know what to look for, it can be easy to pick out this misrepresentation. In this case, helpfully, the organization is pretty plainly a low-grade confidence scheme. The “accreditor” has a link from their main page offering to explain their “legal status.” Their website advertises them as a registered 501c3, showing a recent filing as a non-profit entity in Florida (despite being based in Missouri). Above that document there is a strongly worded paragraph that warns visitors they are a legitimate organization and that they have sued and will sue anyone who publicly describes their disreputable activity as…disreputable. They object to the term “accreditation mill” and “diploma mill.”

Most dishonest people don’t see themselves as bad guys.

Below their Florida entity registration area host of mean letters they have paid lawyers to send to bloggers and review sites to attempt to have the evidence of their perfidy scrubbed. [Incidentally, I am not putting these frauds “on blast” by name because I don’t feel like wasting my time on exposing them, and dealing with frivolous complaints, when the type of fraud is much more significant and widespread that this one Accreditation Mill.]

The organization also attempts to mislead visitors to the website by having a “US Government” link on their main page, which has links to documents that in no way connect them to the U. S. government in any meaningful sense. Oddly, the jobs page provides links to several positions at public universities (including an LGBT diversity coordinator, which is odd for an organization that “accredits” KJV loving institutions) that are outdated by several years and well out of the reach of anyone who graduates from a school “accredited” by this organization. And, to top off the wonder of the train-wreck, they list a Gmail account as one of the primary emails for the site.

For those who explore the links, there are a large number of warning flags.

Even more telling, perhaps, is that there are typos in the accreditation standards on their website. For example (and sic), “Institutions muse provide a time requirement…” Such an obvious typo in one of the few standards the “accreditor” has seems sketchy, to say the least. Not to mention that the accreditation standards are so far below any accepted standards of quality as to be meaningless.

The whole thing is a fraudulent shell game. It is a dishonest ruse.

Why Is This Bad?

The ruse works because most people who are seeking a degree do not understand how accreditation works. It intentionally trades on general ignorance of what accreditation means

The ruse is damaging for several reasons.

First, some people may do the work and pay for the degree from one of these fraudulent institutions and not recognize that it is making claims that are fundamentally dishonest. When businesses require an accredited degree, they mean one that has been accredited by a recognized accreditation organization. Ignorant people who get jobs based on untrue claims, even if it is not due to their own dishonesty, may face job loss. Or, they may find that they get rejected for employment because the hiring manager investigates their qualifications and writes them off as either a fool or a trickster for representing themselves as having a valid degree. In either case, the too good to be true degree that they got is really false and can cause damage down the line.

Second, counterfeit degrees devalue real degrees. Someone who invests four years going through the work of earning a 120-semester hour Baccalaureate degree deserves more credit than someone who spent a year and a couple thousand dollars doing busy work (if that much) for a Diploma Mill diploma or a degree from a non-accredited institution. Getting a degree may not mean you are a better person, but it should mean that you’ve done something recognizable and meaningful. If someone does not value the process of becoming accredited or earning a degree, then be honest and don’t pretend to have the product.

Is this Illegal?

What many of these Diploma Mills and Accreditation Mills are doing is likely not illegal.

It is dishonest to take advantage of people’s ignorance or confusion to sell them a low-quality, low-value degree, even if it is at a cut-rate price. However, in the cases I examined neither the school nor the “accreditor” make openly false statements about the value of their accreditation or their relationships with the US government.

This is simply a case of using information superiority to take advantage of ignorant people who think they are buying a product they are not.

The guy selling “Oakley” sunglasses on the streets of New York may never tell you they are actually brand name products. He allows you to draw that conclusion from the similar logo and look without making the overt statement. His conscience is clear (maybe) and he is not legally liable because, in some sense, you have deceived yourself. He just set up the conditions for it to happen.

Diploma Mills and Accreditation Mills are immoral, but they may not be illegal.

Why this Annoys Me

In this case, the author whose biography prompted this whole investigation makes a claim to hold a doctorate. I happen to hold a doctorate from an institution with both a regional and specialized accreditation. My doctorate took me years and required me to write a book-length dissertation. His dissertation was completed online in monthly installments and required a “thesis” that would be a lengthy seminar paper in most PhD programs.

The problem here is that to the average person on the street, his credentials are the same as mine. The difference is that he didn’t do the formative work to earn that title or status, and it shows in the results he puts on display.

The individual who sparked this post got my attention for offering a low-quality book, but also because he preached one of the most illogical and rhetorically poor sermons I have ever heard. The credibility of his preaching was raised in the eyes of some because of his “doctorate.” The fact that he said multiple things that were incoherent or simply factually false discredits my degree, because a religiously-based doctorate becomes associated with foolishness. When people see his errors and associate them with the education he claims, it decreases the trustworthiness of those who earned their credentials from a reputable, accredited institution.

Worse still, people who hear him are going to assume that his objectively false statements are valid because he is supposed to be an expert. Having a degree in the field about which you are speaking should ensure some credibility. In the case of this author and speaker, any credibility would be falsely assumed.

Degrees from institutions that misrepresent the nature of their “accreditation” are issuing counterfeit credentials that devalue the perceived value of degrees for those who do the work to earn them from legitimate institutions. This is dishonest and represents a failure of neighbor love.

Both the dishonesty and the degradation of my earned credentials rub me the wrong way.

Degrading Christianity and Christian Institutions

Perhaps more significantly than my personal annoyance, however, is that creating Christian Diploma Mills or pursuing an Accreditation Mill certification to misrepresent reality is a form of treachery.

Notably the Accreditation Mill that I was focused on is “faith based.” When I did a search for institutions that were “accredited” by them, the ones I clicked on all claimed to be Christian or at least to offer some sort of theological education. (This despite the fact that one of them included “State” in their name to masquerade as a public university.)

Several of these institutions issue semi-standard fundamentalist warnings that their degree was not intended to advance your “secular career.” The insinuation is that non-Christians are likely to look down on your degree simply because it comes from a religious institution.

There may be some validity in that, though it has not played out that way for institutions like Notre Dame, Baylor, and Georgetown.

However, these institutions are working toward devaluing degrees from religious institutions because they are putting forth low quality substitutes for the real thing and crying about it. In truth, overtly Christian institutions that provide excellent educational opportunities tend to have students that do well in both “secular” and faith-based fields.

There are enough cultural forces trying to put highly qualified Christians in a dhimmi status without creating a back-alley café with greasy silverware and claiming it is just as good as a highly rated New York bistro. Being a shyster as a representative of Christ is a good way to get everyone to think that all Christians (or most) are shysters.

If institutions don’t want to play by the accreditation rules, that is fine, but it degrades Christianity and legitimate Christian academic institutions when people falsely claim to produce excellence when they are pumping out excrement. This dishonors Christ because it is intentionally deceptive.

Why Is This Dangerous?

The false credentials purchased through these online programs can be dangerous because it can produce people who, to those who aren’t aware, have the letters that signal expert without the knowledge to back it up. The low-quality book and poor sermon of the “doctor” I encountered is a symptom that could have truly negative consequences in another field.

For example, one of the institutions “accredited” under this false front offers a “Doctor of Psychology” degree for about $8,000. The courses for this degree are all “accelerated” with one offering noting that it expects students to do a 6-semester hour course in 6 weeks.

This requirement is unrealistic.

Most institutions of higher learning expect, for undergraduate programs, a basic 2:1 ratio between homework and class time. They also anticipate that a given semester hour will have 50 minutes of contact per week for 15 weeks. So, a typical 3 credit course could be expected to have 2250 minutes of contact time—or classroom time for traditional education—per semester with an additional 4500 minutes of homework. For those good at math, that is an expected 6,750 minutes of total work for the average student to master the material in that course. That comes to 112.5 hours.

This 6-semester hour course, therefore, could be expected to consume at least 225 hrs of the students’ time during that 6 week period. That is 37.5 hrs per week.

What are the odds that the amount of work in this class actually matches that standard expectation for an undergraduate program? Recognize that the work for a graduate or advanced course is usually more taxing.

I didn’t register for the class (and the syllabus was not online) to find out, but I’d lay even money that this class isn’t that rigorous otherwise no one would finish the program. Even if a student crams through some material in this six-week session, how much are they likely to retain? How can someone who has crammed that much material hope to be exposed to the range of literature in the field? Education typically requires soak time.

At the end of a series of these classes, someone with a little extra time and a few thousand dollars has a piece of paper that lists a degree that could convince a patient to come listen to their advice and pay them for it. Even if they never get a job from a medical practice, someone with no real knowledge could be giving advice to people in desperate need of real help.

All of this is an issue because people rely on degrees, accreditation, and certifications to mean something. Beyond being immoral and dishonest, when bad actors intentionally misrepresent their product, it could lead to real danger.

Conclusion

Credential inflation is not something new in the Christian world. The number of honorary doctorates given by Fundamentalist Christian institutions in the 20th century could probably feed a bonfire for a decade.

Credential inflation is problematic because it reflects a desire to see oneself as more important than one really is. It is an attempt to claim a level of expertise and experience that is not legitimate. It is an attempt to gain honor from the work that others have done.

Significantly, institutions and individuals that misrepresent their own credentials are dishonoring the name of Christ by putting their own honor above the truth. It is not strictly necessary to say something untrue to lie, one can simply intentionally mislead.

As Christians we ought to be known for our adherence to truth. Pursuing inflated credentials or misrepresenting the nature of credentials offered by an institution within the body of Christ should be unthinkable. May it become so soon.

Some Lessons from Dissertation Writing

This week I turned in my dissertation. Now I wait for my defense. In the moment of euphoria before I find out everything that is wrong with the project I’ve been working on for a year, I decided to jot down some of the things that I’ve learned so far about the process.

Some of these lessons are based on advice and counsel that others gave me, but that I’ve since found to be wise. We’ll find out how well I did on the final product in a couple of months. Even if there are flaws (there are, trust me) in my dissertation, here are some things that I have learned through writing the longest academic work I’ve ever attempted.

1.         It’s never going to be perfect. – One of the hardest things to recognize just prior to my submittal of my dissertation was that there were still going to be some imperfections in the manuscript. I’ve read the completed manuscript multiple times. So has my wife. I have no doubt that there are still a few typos, missing words, extra spaces, or the like throughout. At some point you have to let it go.

• Book Review
• Ethics
• Review
• Social Justice
• Christian Mind

2.         You can’t read every possible source. – I wrote each of my chapters, referencing those volumes and thinkers that best related to my point in the text. However, as I was doing my final read through of the dissertation before submitting it, I kept on thinking of additional sources that could have bolstered my point or that I could have read. There are new books in the academic catalogs that are begging to be included in my bibliography and dozens of articles that I downloaded that I never got to read. I could have tried to read and cite more, but sooner or later you have to turn the project in.

3.         Having someone else read it is invaluable. – My amazingly patient wife also serves as my editor. She doesn’t do style manual stuff, but she does read for grammar, clarity, and typographical issues. Having her read my chapters to tell me where I made no sense or where I had errors made a huge difference in the end, I think. There were a number of places she called my attention to that were unclear and needed simple rewording to make the project better.

4.         This isn’t the best thing you will ever write. – Looking at the 358 pages of manuscript is pretty impressive. It’s the longest piece of scholarship I’ve ever written. In fact, most of the chapters are longer than any paper I’d previously written. What I had to continually fight back was the goal to make this my magnum opus. I will write something better later on, so I need to make a good effort but not think that this is the pinnacle of my scholarship. My scholarship and writing should get better in the future. That’s not a ding against my dissertation, it’s a reflection of academic maturation.

5.         Doing a read-through at the end is important. – Before I had the final proofreading done by my wife, I read through the dissertation from cover to cover in about two days. Since some of my chapters had been written about a year before, this was an important step in the editing process. By the end of the writing process I had developed some key phrases and learned to avoid others. I was able to edit the earlier chapters to reflect the language of the later chapters (chronologically) by the end. This step helps the project read more like a cohesive work of scholarship, instead of a collection of essays. I was also able to find some places where I could clarify my own explanations, which, I think, made the end product more readable for someone else.

6.         Creating a project plan with deadlines is vital. – The internet is flooded with “dissertation writing as project planning” sites. There is value in the approach. I only met a couple of my deadlines, so I had to keep revising and extending the project plan. However, by delineating the steps and what it would take to get there, I could focus on the next thing instead of getting overwhelmed by the size of the project. By having an internal deadline (with plenty of margin built in to the institutional deadline) I had something to keep me moving. Because I had looked at the institutional deadline and built my project plan based on that, I knew what I had to do to get the project in on time. This made it easier to prioritize so that I could know when I needed to lock myself away to write or when I could play another game of Monopoly with the kids.

7.         Stay on topic. – There were about a million times in the process of writing that I found interesting rabbit trails to go down. I even ventured down a few of them. I’ve got extensive notes and footnotes to prove it. However, when I was polishing my dissertation, most of the work of those rabbit trails ended up deleted from the final product. I may use some of the material for essays later on, but I sometimes spent a week on research that was interesting, but did little to support my final dissertation. A bit more discipline would have benefited me significantly.

8.         Keep notes on the side ideas. – I wasted some time along the way exploring rabbit trails. However, one of the things that I think will bear some fruit in the future is using some of that material and the ideas that I got while writing my dissertation to produce journal articles at a later date. I’ve got a list of potential topics with some sources that I can chase down now that I’ve finished my dissertation. These don’t all relate directly to my dissertation topic, but there is room for further research. I now have more ideas for the future than my life and schedule can possibly support.

There are probably more things that I’ve learned. Perhaps after my defense I’ll pick up the topic again. Or, I may discover that some of my lessons learned aren’t as helpful as I thought. I’ll let you know what the readers think.

The Professor's Puzzle - A Review

There are very few jobs where someone recently from their training does not feel inadequate and somewhat unprepared. This occurs even in training nuclear operators, where we spent thousands of hours practicing in a simulator, studying the facts behind systems, and performing tasks under the supervision of qualified operators. Despite all of the practice, operators consistently reported that on the first day on the job on their own they felt nervous.

In the case of college professors, unlike many other professionals, the complaint is much more valid. This is because PhD programs focus on expertise in the field instead of pedagogy. In other words, the prospective professor learns the subject matter and not the means to explain it well. This is a benefit when it comes to doing scholarly research and writing, but it does not prepare PhD candidates for one of the most important tasks in their academic careers: teaching students.

Michael Lawson’s recent book from B&H Academic aims to fix that problem, specifically for professors teaching in a Christian context. The book he’s written, The Professor’s Puzzle, is a gift to the church because it fills in significant gaps that PhD programs leave out. He’s written a book that will help recent graduates, whether they come from a seminary or a university.

Summary

In ten chapters, Lawson manages to at on the major skills that are neglected by most doctoral programs. In Chapter One he builds a philosophy of education, which is frequently skipped. Then, in the next chapter he outlines the basics of the integration of faith and learning. Lawson’s version of faith and learning integration goes well beyond slapping a Bible verse onto the syllabus but shining the light of the gospel on the whole educational experience.

Chapter Three gives an overview of several significant learning theories. Given the diversity of opinions on this topic, Lawson’s chapter is obviously not the final word, but he is balanced and informative. In the fourth chapter, Lawson outlines a method for outlining a syllabus, which is a skill that many new faculty lack. Lawson lays out the basics of course design in a single chapter; I’ve taken and witnessed many professors late in their careers who could benefit from reading and applying that chapter.

The fifth chapter continues the pedagogical theme, discussing degrees of mastery of content and introducing Bloom’s taxonomy. In Chapter Six Lawson discusses managing a classroom, which includes the layout of the classroom, the volume of content in the course, and the flow of the class time. This chapter is, perhaps, a concentration of the most important aspects of teaching that many new professors may have never encountered before receiving their hood and guild card. In the seventh chapter, the assessment process is discussed. This includes assessment of the students, assignment of grades, and assessment of the course.

Chapter Eight touches on basic instructional techniques. Lawson does not call for killing the lecture, but he does recommend doing something besides merely lecturing. The ninth chapter deals with the relational skills that are particularly important for the Christian professor. As fellow believers or as witnesses to unbelieving students, Christian professors have the responsibility to engage their students on a personal and spiritual level. In the final chapter, Lawson presents some of the realities of university life to the young professor. These include budget concerns, enrollment, advising, tenure, etc. All of the things that keep the administrators up and sometimes bleed into faculty life more than they’d like. The book then closes with three appendices with examples and additional information to augment the earlier discussions.

Critique

I have been a professional instructor (in commercial nuclear power, not academia), a longtime student, and an administrator in higher education. This book is a condensation of much that I wish all faculty knew. It does not provide the definitive word on any topic, but it does touch on most of the major topics.

The two weaknesses of the volume are that it has limited advice for online instruction and it does not cover academic assessment of student learning. Lawson does address online some, but it feels like the discussions of online are tacked on the end of the chapters. There is room for more development here. Additionally, Lawson talks some about assessing learning, but given the pervasiveness of assessing Student Learning Outcomes, it would have been beneficial to discuss that more in detail here. In this regard, however, I may be overly biased as I am a Director of Assessment.

These weaknesses are minor in comparison to the extraordinary breadth of information that Lawson covers. This is a one-stop shop for the new Christian professor. It should become part of PhD curricula across the country, particularly at seminaries. Lawson’s vision for teaching the whole student and integrating knowledge with a distinctly Christian worldview are more important today than they ever have been.

This is the sort of book that should be included in courses at Christian seminaries and universities that deal with pedagogy. I am recommending it for my university’s new faculty orientation next year. Faculty who are early in their career should pick it up and read it this summer; it may provide the solution to various problems both inside and outside the classroom. The Professor’s Puzzle is not a volume that will lead to high volume sales to the general Christian population, but it should be a keystone in the library of most young Christian academics.

The Professor's Puzzle: Teaching in Christian Academics

$30.26

By Dr. Michael S. Lawson

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Note: A gratis copy of this book was granted by the publisher with no expectation of a positive review.