I would find it very useful to have a public list of universities that say they are, but really aren’t. We could put Liberty University at the very top; these aren’t really institutions of higher learning, but institutions of indoctrination and dogma pretending to be genuine places of learning.
But here’s another: Shorter University.
In October, the college announced it would require all employees to sign a “lifestyle statement” rejecting homosexuality, adultery, premarital sex, drug use and drinking in public near the Rome, Ga., college’s campus. It also requires faculty to be active members of a local church. The statement, one of several steps the university has taken to intensify its Christian identity after the Georgia Baptist Convention began asserting more control over the campus six years ago, provoked an uproar among faculty, alumni and observers.
Any university that requires a pledge of allegiance to a particular dogma, or that monitors and restricts the private life of its faculty and staff, ought to just be denied the right to use the unqualified word “college” or “university” in its name. “Bible college” is OK; that’s an open admission of its worthlessness. Otherwise, I think that ‘university’ ought to voluntarily rename itself “Shorter Church” (wait, that might even draw in a few suckers!), or “Shorter Gulag”, or perhaps “Shorter Madhouse”.
I also like “Liberty Prison” for its ironic qualities.
(But do read the story: for all the risible failings of the administration of Shorter Clown College, it has some commendable faculty who are openly protesting the imposition of a “lifestyle statement”, and many are resigning. There are good people even at these abominations of education.)
I suggest terminology which I learned from Japlish: we could call these institutions Unversities.
Anything with the word “Christian” in the first few pages of its catalogue, mission statement, or name would be on that list.
You could save a huge amount of time with a list of universities with “Christian” in there somewhere that are, in fact, real universities. Oddly enough, there are a few. Notre Dame, Baylor, some of the Lutheran ones, SMU, TC and ????. Like I said, not many though.
It’s even more pathetic when you think of how expensive college has gotten. Those brainwashing nonuniversities are just as expensive or more so than real ones.
I’d estimate that my good (formerly heavily subsidized) state U. now costs 6-10 times what it cost me to go there a few decades ago. Not unusual for the time, I graduated completely broke but debt free.
Thread won in the first comment. I’m impressed.
The geology dept. of BYU is perfectly cromulent, too.
It looks likes they already have their own database up and running:
http://www.cccu.org/members_and_affiliates
Hm, people may mistake that for simply misspelling “university.” Since the prefix here is “uni,” which means (as far as I remember my Latin/Greek roots, prefixes and suffixes – decently not incredibly well) “all” or “one,” perhaps you could change it to “nonversity” or “disversity” (I like the latter for the pun on “diversity”).
I’ll bet money that there’s far, far more unaccredited disversities with something about Christianity in there than real universities with a hint of Christianity in there like Notre Dame. It’d probably be a helluva lot easier to put up a list of the fifty to one hundred real universities with religion associated with them than to put up a list of the thousands of bullshit ones.
What university? I will be entering the university system soon (currently getting a 2 year at a community college then going to transfer), and it’s gonna put me $20k in the hole at the least to go to University of Washington for two years – and we have a relatively good education system (at least for the United States).
A list of nutty conservative institutions.
The Loony U List ? The Brain Killers list ?
The Dread Pool !
Hello, my name Is Kent Hovind…
I’d suggest we start requiring that they be called monasteries, but a whole lot more interesting intellectual discussion came out of them than has ever emerged from one of those black holes of academia.
We have a do not call list. Now we need a do not hire from list.
Er, to be clear on the dangling modifier: calling the schools monasteries would be an insult to monks.
How about “Adversities?”
As an aside, I’ve only just now recognized the handle “Rip Steakface” . . .
Butch Deadlift . . . Blast Hardcheese . . . Big McLargehuge . . .
Such a great episode.
Still learning,
Robert
Lincoln appears not to be on the nice list.
Someone go start making a list at Pharyngula Wikia!
It doesn’t surprise me that there are good faculty even at schools like these. I’m a PhD student and I know that my colleagues, especially in fields with fewer options outside the academy, are somewhat desperate to find faculty jobs. I can see how a religious school might get more appealing, even to qualified, competent scholars, when there are so few options.
Let’s see if the link works today: http://pharyngula.wikia.com/
Ha, I knew someone would eventually point it out. One funny guy asked if my handle had a botched rhinoplasty, that was a good one.
As for “Adversities?” I love it. Someone create a page on the Pharyngula Wiki that’s a list of Christian adversities.
@Rev. BigDumbChimp
Kent Hovind will never live it down, will he?
It’s worth noting that Shorter has not always been the sort of wretched hive of scum and villainy that Liberty is. Ten years ago, it was a fairly typical small regional religiously-affiliated liberal-arts college—they made a bit of noise about the Jesus stuff here and there, but it didn’t stand out from the crowd of such schools down South. They’ve had some changes in leadership lately and things have gone way, way downhill.
Let’s hope not.
Fixed that for him.
I really must protest the slandering of a good institution here.
Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Clown College has contributed greatly to society in many fields, including high-occupancy vehicles, applications of carbonated water, and specialty footwear, as well as educating great Americans like Penn Jilette and Leslie Nielsen.
As the motto goes, “Minutus cantorum, minutus balorum, minutus carborata descendum pantorum.”
It’s telling that at these Bible colleges, like other religious institutions, when they have people swear to something, it’s always to Old Testament fire & brimstone stuff like sexual orientation and drug use. It’s never a statement that “I will treat others as I wish to be treated” or even something like “As a member of this Christian body, I will learn the Bible and follow its teachings to the best of my ability.”
Our way or the highway.
This is typical of Southern Baptists. The cult was taken over by right wing extremists a few decades ago.
They promptly purged all the moderates and threw out all the centuries old principles of Baptism.
Some people left at that point. More have been leaving as they get more and more extremist. They have lost total membership for four years in a row now.
They can count well enough to know this, that is where those number came from in the first place. They keep trying to get their numbers up while becoming weirder and weirder. Can’t see that it will work.
I object to the increase in greenhouses gases caused by this policy as students drive away from the campus neighborhood to enjoy a brew.
Don’t forget any of the so-called “accredited naturopathic medical colleges” http://www.aanmc.org/
As this is my alma mater (it seemed like a good idea at the time, I promise), I at least feel the need to explain the school’s situation. As noted above, the whole “scum and villainy” thing is rather new, and wasn’t actually the school’s fault. The entire change is, in fact, due to the backhanded workings of the Georgia Baptist Convention and the Georgia Supreme Court. It’s been a while, but I’ll try to remember the story as accurately as I can.
Basically, a long time ago, Shorter was just a nominally-affiliated but not insane college. It was especially well known for the fine arts programs (and yes, this is going to cause exactly the problem you think it’s going to). At some point in the murky past, Shorter was having some cash problems, and the Georgia Baptist Convention offered to help cover some small portion of their operating expenses, in exchange for the chance to get to nominate a couple of members to the board of trustees. They were, to my understanding, non-binding, and the nominations could always be beaten by other nominees.
This was the situation up until roughly 2004 or so. At that point the GBC decided it didn’t like all the kids in the fine state of Georgia being taught things that might make baby Jebus sad in their expert opinion, so it decided to start nominating hard ideologues to the board at this point to crack down. (They were right, of course. One of my RAs was an atheist, and this was the time I was losing my own faith. Thanks to, ironically, the one religion course we were required to take.) Naturally, very little of the administration or student body was too happy with the idea, and the GBC nominees were rejected. They did not take this well. Eventually a court case happened, and the result was basically the Georgia Supreme Court deciding, in one of the most insane decisions I’ve seen, that the contract between the GBC and Shorter somehow actually meant that the GBC got veto power over other nominees and the right to have it’s nominees chosen. Fast forward a few years to now when they’ve had the chance to stack the board and the administration to their liking, and you have this monstrosity, utterly unlike the school I graduated from.
Does the college therefore feel that drunken stoned gay adulterous premarital sex is more acceptable in public the further away it takes place from campus?
Two more categories of un-versity: colleges of traditional Chinese medicine and chiropractic colleges.
I’ve of two minds about the places that teach massage leading to official registration. Too many of the ads for RTM’s (registered massage therapists) here indicate that most also dabble in various forms of quackery. Too bad, as massage is a valuable form of therapy.
Some good news from the faculty. I don’t have time to use my google-fu at the moment, but a friend of mine in Shorter’s nursing program tells me every nursing faculty member is considering leaving en masse, losing the program its accreditation.
I would love to have a list of non-universities. It would be incredibly useful. Lots of fake places of education have innocuous names that sound like real places of education and having a centralized place to list them would be great. Like others said, I’d add fake medicine schools and probably many for-profit schools.
Perhaps, “Alternative Universities” (or “Alternative Universe-ities” to emphasize the joke). It either reads like its associating the college with alternative “medicine” or as the actual joke: That it is clearly teaching material that is only true in an alternative universe.
From the Shorter University website’s “Christ-Centered Critical Thinking” Section . . .
I think this pretty much sums up their plan to eliminate most of the faculty as a big success in their eyes.
watry #30
They probably would just replace the nursing program with a “laying on of hands” program.
Seriously though, I hope your information is right – perhaps the threat of loss of accreditation might make them reconsider?
What about: Shorter Bus University?
(Is that wrong?)
Yay! I therefore went to the oldest University in England – the University of London.
Yes. Yes it’s wrong.
And petzl20 gives indication of knowing that it was a statement which would be hurtful to innocent bystanders whom petzl20 presumably does not believe should be wantonly harmed.
I hope, and optimistically expect, that in retrospect petzl20 will agree this was a thought which should have been kept to one’s self, and that future such thoughts would also be best kept to one’s self.
You can also add Biola University to the list, the university where William Lane Craig is misinforming students. All people there have to adhere to the following:
This is why Craig is liar by definition.
I would like to add Crandall University (formerly Atlantic Baptist University) in Moncton, New Brunswick, Canada to the list as well. Here is a sample of their “Statement of Moral Standards”:
3. To be sexually pure, refraining from such activities as adultery, fornication, homosexuality, and the use of pornographic materials; (Exodus 20:14; I Corinthians 6:18-20; Ephesians 5:3)
This from an organization which has been funded by municipal, provincial, and federal governments. Their Mission Statement is revealing http://www.crandallu.ca/cu/mission-statement/statement-of-moral-standards , as is their “Statement of Faith”. They are well-known around the community for the termination of employees based on their definition of “purity” and their students are required to attend a Church service regularly (they are forced to “swipe in” to the services to ensure they are attending).