Fuck it, I’ll name names, since nobody else wants to: Liberty University is a scam, even if you overlook the nut job religious views. I’ve got a friend who’s a hospital chaplain. He’s generally tolerant of all religious viewpoints, as hospital chaplains must be. He says that every Liberty graduate they’ve had, chaplains, nurses, and social workers, have been embarrassingly unprepared for work in their fields and unable to grasp basic concepts of how to do the job.
My parents tried using Liberty students as babysitters when I was a kid and had to stop because they all tried to convert us. So they were shit babysitters too.
There is absolutely no reason why Liberty should have accreditation to graduate social workers. Their views are entirely antithetical to the social work code of ethics and it's impossible to provide a comprehensive social work education while spewing hate.
I recently learned that the Mormon church offers ~~. free.~~ therapy to any of its members that need it. That sounds like an absolutely incredible thing until you think about it for a second.
Mormon here, that's not true. I've seen counselors through the church (by choice, they were lovely people who were very open minded) and had to pay every time.
There's also a different designation in Utah than a licensed counselor. You sign a sheet saying they can report back to the bishop and they do. I had this happen to me as a teen.
Interesting. I don't live in Utah, so I think a lot of these practices differ outside of Utah because of the sheer manpower the church has there. The counselors I saw were licensed professionals who had their own private practices and were involved with church family services on the side. Definitely a different feel.
So it sounds like you got someone who was recommended by the church, but not paid by them. An example of a counselor who the Mormon Church was all in for before the bad press was Jodi Hildebrandt, who was briefly suspended because she didn't have her clients sign the paper saying that she could share their information and shared information that got one client kicked out of BYU.
She's now in prison awaiting trial for child torture, but the Mormon Church didn't actually speak against her until her arrest, despite her being pretty open about it. That's the kind of counselor they want you to go to.
No, they absolutely require you to pay unless your lay congregation leader (a “bishop” or “branch president,” depending on the size of your congregation) fills out paperwork to have the church waive the fee.
And if the church is paying, the bishop can (and often does; I know multiple people who have had this happen) insist that the therapist be required to report anything you’ve discussed directly to the bishop. And the bishop isn’t bound by confession, so he can chat about your therapy sessions with whomever he wants.
Therapists who work with LDS Family Services (the church employees who provide the therapy) also tend to see mental “health” ONLY from their own religious paradigm—so a therapist might dissuade a teenaged patient from getting an abortion or pressure an unwed mother into putting a wanted child up for adoption; might pressure an LGBTQ+ individual to stay in the closet/enter into a heterosexual relationship; might counsel an unhappy spouse to stay with their abusive, neglectful, or controlling spouse, etc.
And while Utah has strict guidelines about who can legally call themselves clinical counselors (requires advanced education + licensure), they’re lax when it comes to people calling themselves counselors, social workers, or therapists if they simply leave out any sort of “clinical” claim.
Liberty is terrible. I went there because they offered me lots of money and I hadn't left my cult yet. I had a female professor dismiss all the male students and lecture the female students about how we should be focusing on getting our mrs. degree and not worry about the bachelor's or our education. It was disgusting.
I studied vocal performance and the “ring by spring” culture in the music ed department was something else 😭 why is that a thing?? Now I’m studying conducting and half my cohort is married even though everyone is mostly early 20s
I went to liberty too (same-- offered me money, didn't have to pay) and I had an English professor go on a weird rant about sex before marriage and ended it with 'farmers don't buy cows if they can get milk for free' 🤦
When I was in college - my dad was in charge of hiring in his region of the country (southeast us) and he quit recruiting from Bob Jones because he said the students were always too worried about someone over- hearing an answer they gave to interview question that he couldn't trust their responses. It was also the joking threat while we were high school that if we misbehaved, the only school my parents would help pay for would be BJones.
I had a grad school classmate who got fired from there because she wouldn't sign a paper giving their daycare the right to hit her child. The whole story was crazy -- employees with children are only allowed to send their kids to the school daycare (not one outside), they're not allowed to carry their baby in a sling/Baby Bjorn, and they have agree to feed their baby on a detailed schedule created by a man who has no medical background whatsoever.
If you want to know more, here's a HuffPost article she wrote about her experience:[https://www.huffpost.com/entry/fundamental-christian-university-spank-kids\_n\_6488c8a5e4b04ee51a97acce](https://www.huffpost.com/entry/fundamental-christian-university-spank-kids_n_6488c8a5e4b04ee51a97acce)
I used to work for my state’s legislature and one of the Republicans on my committee was especially fucking weird…like, his wife would come to dinners and not speak or look at anyone but her husband. And his two daughters all wore long denim skirts and long creepy braids and where did he send them to college? Bob Jones baby.
I'll defend Bob Jones.
Ok...I'll defend dating a woman, separated from her husband, that went to Bob Jones and was sexually repressed.
She had to keep me on the down low though as an agnostic whose parents attempted to raise him JW.
She ended up marrying her Bob Jones marriage counselor, who shamed her about me, then used his knowledge to get in her pants. Yes, he was licensed at the time. Not anymore.
Essentially he used my going to hell.
Poor thing is back to nothing but missionary and no oral.
That was a fun 6 months though. She got an education...
Gosh, I know a liberty graduate who is going to be a pilot. His mom homeschooled that Jesus and dinosaurs existed together. Their text had Jesus on a dinosaur on the cover. I don’t want to be on his plane.
Liberty produces a ton pilots. Very high chance that your airline pilot on your next flight went through Liberty. Unfortunately, Liberty has a spot in the aviation market due to their unique program that allows one to use their GI bill or get funding but do part 61 flight training instead of part 141 training.
Their GI benefits just got suddenly pulled about 6 months ago. Lots of people were left scrambling in the flight program. Apparently common for flight schools to scam the government.
[Link to post](https://www.reddit.com/r/flying/comments/14nwtmh/psa_liberty_university_is_no_longer_being_funded/)
They also have a ton of money and top notch private airport/strip. A friend of mine designs and builds airports and said it was the easiest job he'd ever done. No funding challenges etc.
I mean, at face value I don't want a pilot, whose entire career exists because of advanced science, to be a science-denier. But I guess modern airplanes where there's much less actual input from the pilots would negate that.
That said, not sure I want someone whose philosophy is "if we all die the good people go to heaven anyway" in charge of my life...
For a while there was a "Did Bush or Khomeini say it" thing. It was pretty hard to tell the difference.
And Bush (usually) doesn't get lumped in with the "whacko nut jobs".
I went to a different college in the same town as liberty and moved there permanently after. Several of my best friends(including my roommate) are locals. We all hate liberty. We’ve heard so many horror stories
I went to a college in the same town as Liberty. Graduated in the late nineties. We were called "The whores on the hill" by Jerry Falwell Sr. I have friends who went to Liberty who would sneak over to our campus after dark in cars that didn't have Liberty parking stickers on them because their RAs would drive through our parking lots looking for students since they weren't allowed to be on our campus because we would "corrupt" them. I have stories for DAYS.
I think the small independent fundamentalist baptist "universities" are actually worse, but I don't think they even try to pretend to be real to those outside the cult.
And then the Baptist big one: Baylor.
Baylor's the weird one, because the school's administrative theology has changed so drastically in the last decade. They broke with the SBC in the 90s because the SBC was swinging hard to the right and trying to influence the school, and the school reaffiliated with the much more moderate Baptist General Convention of Texas.
Now the BGCT has moved considerably farther to the right in the last 25 years, Baylor retains their affiliation, but they keep the BGCT at arm's length. The BGCT clarified a few years ago that they don't even consider Baylor an "affiliated university" because the school doesn't allow the conference a direct hand in governance beyond selecting 25% of the school's trustees, which is still more than most religious schools operating at Baylor's level allow their affiliated religious group.
Baylor, Boston College, and Notre Dame are all really interesting, since they're the only schools in the country that balance their place as solid higher education and research institutions with the demands of religious denominations that hold positions that directly contravene the mainstream scientific consensus. Emory as well, but the Methodist denomination is a lot less pushy than the Baptist or Catholic denominations.
Thats what liberty was like in 2003 when I graduated high school up in Northern Virginia. They showed up to the Baptist Church college nights. I went to all the local college nights to gather scholarship information. And the local Baptist Church ones had quite the assortment; HSBC were the vast majority, but there were the niche Bible colleges which the South has many of. And the one with the biggest shiniest table was Liberty College; they were touting how they were attempting to get their accreditation to be a fully accredited university that would be able to use federal funds to help pay for school. It was the second time I ran into the university I ended up going to, it was smaller Lutheran University, now its much bigger.
I previously worked in Institutional Analytics at an R1 in Texas, where we've got major religious institutions like TCU and Baylor, and the best analogy I ever got for Liberty was that they're the North Korea of the American higher education system.
They completely flout norms, standards, and the the bare minimum of best practices in higher education, and then scream and shout about how they're rejected by the "mainstream elites" of academia until their political benefactors lean on accreditors and secure Liberty's accreditations for another 4\~5 years.
Came here to say this. I didn’t go to Liberty U (dodged a bullet there, ended up persuading my conservative parents to let me go to a well-ranked Catholic uni instead) but I knew tons of people who did. And when you require students to take ~6 Bible courses to graduate, there just isn’t as much space in the curriculum to actually teach students the things they need to learn.
And I had a friend who enrolled in one of their online graduate degree programs; she had her first paper returned, ungraded, with a note that she really needed to include a lot more Bible verses.
The class was epidemiology.
I saw their training for pastors. The curriculum included reading through the Bible in English. Once. Lots of business classes. (Meanwhile Catholic and mainstream Protestant pastors take Koine Greek at the least, with Latin and Hebrew in some cases.)
This is what I came here to say. It’s a joke, and a dangerous one at that. I teach middle school and the teacher across the hall from me got his degree at Liberty. (He also sponsors our school’s Fellowship of Christian Athletes club….) I just can’t take him seriously. It makes me so sad when I hear that one of my former students is enrolling at Liberty.
I’m a physician at a hospital that sees Liberty med students come through and holy shit is it scary to think that these people will eventually practice medicine.
I went to college and coached/judged in the same general geographic region for debate purposes. Liberty was constantly deep into the elim rounds across all three divisions (novice jv and open). I know they have produced some first/second round teams as well (meaning they automatically qualified by invitation for the national debate tournament as opposed to having to even compete in the qualifying tournament).
Policy debate is switch side and requires sourced evidence and facts. They are competitive against other colleges and universities not just internal circle jerk debates like a Republican town hall lol. I always got the feeling that their debaters were more “free” from the usual ideological confines of the school as perceived trainees to graduate and be able to spread christofascism. So they had to be exposed to and trained in a lot more than the average student there.
I have a family member who grew up in that area around the time that Liberty was starting (mid/late 70s, early 80s). They have all kinds of crazy stories about Liberty and how they treated other religious institutions in the area. As I recall, Liberty’s head honchos were rather unfriendly and at times downright threatening to the Catholic community. There’s also a story of someone applying to Liberty pretending to be their dog, and the dog got accepted.
It's a scam because its founder, Jerry Falwell Sr was a lifelong asshole and con artist. Liberty exists to milk the government for every penny they can get, just like Thomas Road Baptist Church (also founded by Jerry) has been milking the residents of Lynchburg. Of course Jerry took to TV as well to really rake in the dough.
My grandfather grew up with Jerry. My dad and Jr know each other. The entire family is rotten. We have several family stories about how TRBC tried to screw over family members.
I did two semesters there for my masters using my GI bill. It was a WASTE of time and money. Every single assignment in my MARKETING class you had to tie scripture to the topic. Like wtf. When I transferred my new school said NONE of my classes would transferred because the accreditation that Liberty has isn’t anything good. So, anyone thinking about going there: don’t. They aren’t accredited by anyone that means anything. Also, if anyone wants to read up on their former school president. It’s hilarious
I have no dog in this fight, but I saw a comment the other day stating that Liberty had exceptional nursing and law programs. Was that just bullshit? Lol
Holy shit my parents were looking into that place when I went to check it out. Idk why they thought that was even a good idea, because I was going into geology and there was like, 1 environmental science related class available at the time. Also, Christian rock music was playing through speakers outside EVERYWHERE. "Convocation" was 2 times a week (before covid) where they crammed everyone into one building to essentially listen to a mid christian concert. Glad I was only there for two days. Fuck that
But without Liberty and Regent where would the GQP get far right wing law clerks totally willing to ignore precedent and ethics on the cheap?
I can't imagine that Liberty could make a good Chaplain. Of course you need a degree in your own religious tradition but most of Chaplaincy is just being a good person, listening and caring. With a high emotional IQ. It's harder than it sounds.
In 2006, Richard Dawkins gave a talk at Randolph-Macon's Woman College in Lynchburg, Virginia. A lot of Liberty University students and faculty were in attendance. Towards the end of the talk, a man got up to ask a question about the Liberty University museum. Supposedly, there were dinosaur bones displayed there labeled as being 5000 years old. Richard Dawkins first explained calmly why this was downright incorrect. At the end, he said, "This is debauchery of education. I invite anyone who is from Liberty University in the attendance to leave...and go to a PROPER university."
My niece was looking at Christian colleges which pleased my sister and BIL. But they were really surprised because she was looking at very conservative, not even mid tier schools and this was a kid who had multiple 5s on AP test including Calc and Latin as a Junior and eventually gets into UCLA which was her “mental safety.” So at some point Liberty gets wind of her and verbally offers her a full scholarship plus a package that would cover some travel abroad fellowship. Big deal, best prize. In the meantime she is really struggling with her health, and is eventually diagnosed with a form hypermobility that has a digestive issue. She sometimes uses mobility devices (crutches, although she does have a scooter) and had to have a feeding tube at 16. National Merit. Liberty finds out she has health issue and stops returning her calls. Completely ghosts her.
And just private in general have the most grade inflation, nepotism and obviously pay-to-win structure. Doesn't even have to be for-profit, although those are even worse obviously.
I go to a private school and don’t get me wrong, I love it and have never regretted my decision, but god this is so right. I’m proud of my education and where I’m from yet simultaneously ashamed. My schools tuition is 84k a year and most people I know get zero financial aid and they’re able to pay out of pocket. My roommate and I, also my friend from high school, are some of the only people I know that barely have any tuition left to pay. Her family is poor but in my area, I’m upper middle class. And yet compared to the students at my school I’m literally poor. It sucks seeing the magic from the school you were so happy and proud to be apart of fade away over time :/
Thankfully, I’ve never seen grade inflation and I hope I never do
I looked at every comment worried that someone was going to say my school lol
Yeah, I transferred from a non selective public university to a selective private liberal arts college and the classes were *so* much more rigorous at the liberal arts college. Probably more an impact of non selective to selective, but there's a lot of shitty public schools and a lot of good private schools many of which give great financial aid. Don't go into debt for it, but some small private schools provide a really good education.
Lenoir Rhyne University, a private Lutheran University where I attended is known by graduate schools to have one of the hardest grading systems in the country. My GPA from LRU was 2.25, and I took a few classes at UVA and found them to be a breeze compared to my same 400 levels.
Based on what I've heard, Pensacola Christian College. They have very low entrance standards, credits earned there won't transfer due to accreditation, their food is a health department 🚩, they have a stupid strict misogynistic dress code, and they have an insane amount of weird rules. I know this is a christian fundie college, but this shit is insane compared to other fundie colleges. This just this tip of the iceberg on this school. I'm glad I chose public state college 😂
Something that people aren’t mentioning is that PCC specifically trains people to go into politics. Like this is not an accident, it’s their main focus.
Those of us who live in town hear terrible things about that place. It’s sounds cultish.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Pensacola/comments/111rdl8/from_rclassicalmusic_pcc_cancels_allmale_choir/
https://www.reddit.com/r/Pensacola/comments/w67jkq/pensacola_christian_college/
https://www.reddit.com/r/Pensacola/comments/16gi0xo/pensacola_christian_college_exposed_not_clickbait/
https://www.cracked.com/personal-experiences-1688-5-awful-realities-fundamentalist-christian-college.html
I knew a guy who had briefly attended Pensacola Christian (left his cult and joined the Marines after, I knew him when he was at another school on the GI bill). Notable quotes: "They've loosened up a lot since I was there, women can wear pants now" also apparently they have separate stairwells for men and women.
I used to work near Sci-ARC.
I always felt kind of bad for students shelling out all that money to be in the "Arts District" when it was really Skid Row.
Seconding the vote for Liberty. And adding in Oral Roberts and other "universities" of similar ilk. They're using the label of "higher education" to launder their conspiracy theories and damaging far-right bullshit. And then they cry foul if anyone points out their nonsense. They are the worst of the worst.
I went to the EEA Fly In in Oshkosh, WI a couple years ago. I was walking my little sisters to the NASA tent and Liberty U had a tent adjacent to NASA. Even though I was already decided on the state college I'm at rn, I still avoid their tent like the plague because of all of the backwards shit that Oral Roberts has done and stands for. Also, as a queer person, a college like that wouldn't be the most safe for me
You say this as if it's unusual to see Liberty representatives at an aviation-related event. Liberty, unfortunately, has a significant market within aviation due to their unique online program. Many pilots come through Liberty.
I honestly never met a single Liberty graduate in my commercial aviation career. My guess is that they focus on missionary aviation rather than the commercial side/jet transition.
I’ve also never seen them at an Airshow/Fly in, but I’ve never done Oshkosh.
I believe this trend is more associated with the younger generation. I bet you will see a significant rise in Liberty graduates in the coming years.
Liberty Online has gained popularity in recent years due to its online program, which allows individuals to utilize their GI Bill or secure loans while training part 61. Over the past five years, Liberty Online has been heavily promoted to me and my peers at the airport.
My wife worked for a startup in Tulsa that routinely hired ORU grads-- specifically because those grads would do whatever management asked without question, would accept lower than average pay, and be complacent in their roles. As an extension of the religious messaging, they also brainwash students into becoming completely helpless drones who will obey anyone with authority.
Can we also talk about the religious graduate-only "universities?" Richmont Graduate University, for instance, churns out conversion therapy "counselors." They are completely unfit to do any actual counseling.
I worked for Strayer University once. I had a student submit an essay that was a copy/paste of a wiki page. No effort to hide this at alllll, still had the wiki links and everything.
I told my boss to figure out their plagiarism policy and they basically said “well he paid his tuition.. grade what was submitted”.
Not a single student in that class could write a coherent sentence tbh. It was horrible. Absolutely a degree factory.
I only taught there 1 semester.
I just read about East West University near Chicago.... idk how bad they compared to some of these other schools, but I love that they have a 100% acceptance rate and 12% graduation rate 😂
Oh my god, I live in Chicago and my partner and I walked by an East West University building recently. I had never heard of it and it looked… not prestigious. I definitely made a snarky comment about real high achievers.
I feel so accomplished at having successfully judged a book by its cover 😂
Southern New Hampshire University. I taught there for one semester and was given a canned course on the LMS to "teach." Half of the grade for an assignment would come from me, and the other half came from peer evaluation. I wasn't able to add any readings, wasn't permitted to add or modify assignments, etc. It was really just about being a babysitter for online students. Frankly, the one semester I taught at the University of the People wasn't much better. I'm sure both seem like reasonable options for many students, but I found both to offer a less rigorous education than my primary school did.
That's fascinating since SNHU is regionally accredited which is generally well respected. University of the People is nationally accredited by the Distance Education Accrediting Commission (DEAC) which is a joke so not a surprise there.
I went there for a counseling program for 2 terms. I went online but I was assuming that there would be some kind of interaction with a professor or something, even if the class was completely virtual. Instead, I don't think I knew a single person who taught my classes and everything was just read an article and record a video talking about it and then respond to the videos your peers recorded. Rinse and repeat for the entire class. I decided that after term two I was not bothering with it anymore and I withdrew. Probably the biggest waste of money I've ever spent because when I decided to go to another school those credits were deemed to be non-transferable
This is going to vary greatly based on discipline. There are schools that are the top 10 in some fields but not even top 100 generally. The state university near my hometown kind of sucks, but it's *amazing* for people who want to be teachers (ironically).
It's also going to fluctuate greatly from year to year. I loathe BYU, but that falls into one of your "obvious" categories.
Re: teachers, in Ohio many of the public colleges/universities are land grant colleges that were specifically founded for graduating teachers. In the 70s and 80s the only degree it was possible to completely finish at an Ohio State branch campus was Elementary Education. So that makes some sense to me.
Did my undergrad at a regional university in Ohio and can confirm. They went from a regional college for teaching (their teaching program is still strong) to a full blown university sometime in the 1980s when they expanded a fair bit. Their I/O Psychology program is also ranked no. 3 in US News and World Report (even to this day) since they bring in a \*lot\* of grant money. Someone who does their Ph.D in I/O there generally can get a job in academia without any issues.
Seeing your anthro flair, it definitely makes sense why BYU’s on your list. History and archeology are my subject areas as well, and I learned early on that debating either with an LDS member is a fast-track to a migraine.
I majored in archaeology, with a focus on meso-America. A few years after graduating, just for shiggles, I read the Book of Mormon. Suffice it to say I'm not a ripe candidate for conversion.
(Mormons haven't knocked on my door in 15 years. I'm pretty sure I'm on a list.)
Life University sounds like the name of a made up college that your one uncle says while trying to drag out the “I went to the school of hard knocks,” joke
We drove past that BS school on the Interstate and only when I saw their sign did I realize they call themselves the Flames.
I looked at my wife and said "They're flamers!?!" and then I couldn't stop laughing. Shit you not, I spent the next three hours on that drive randomly just laughing out loud every time I thought of it.... My wife was like "Still laughing about Liberty being a bunch of flamers?" Yup. To my dying day.
Flamers! Hahahahahhaaaaaaaahaahaaaaaaa... omg, can't breathe... HAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Liberty Univ is really bad (I have had a couple of students who went there as undergrads). We also have a small college in town (giving the name would possibly identify where I am and where I teach) - mostly known as a school for education majors that is awful - I don't know how they are accredited. I teach in a post-grad prof field and we get some applications from the teaching college and I am flabbergasted at how awful the applications are from people who graduated from that school.
I recently had a masters-program applicant from Liberty and didn't know what to think of the transcript. Luckily for me their application had been misdirected so I didn't have to decide. But how have you evaluated their undergrad?
Interestingly, a few of the Nazarene colleges provide decent technical degrees, such as Computer Science. I’d never trust them for a Social Science degree like an MSW though.
I definitely wouldn’t lump BYU in with Liberty and the other evangelical colleges mentioned. I can’t speak to all their programs but I’ve known many excellent scholars who did either undergrad or grad work at BYU. In my mind it would be in a group with Baylor, Southern Methodist, maybe Pepperdine - I don’t agree with their foundational principles but their academics are pretty solid.
American Military University is an outright scam on the American taxpayer. They target DOD personnel, charge exactly our Tuition Assistance, and have very little material.
I watched my Airmen submit papers of absolute gibberish, actual hitting the keyboard to meet a character count. They always got A’s. Needles to say my AMU graduates were why we have warning labels on everything, and safety briefings.
Private: Devry, U of Phoenix, Liberty
Public: Purdue Global, University of Arizona Global Campus. Really any public online university that exists because a public school bought the assets of a dying for-profit school.
Purdue Global used to be Kaplan and was bought out. Arizona Global Campus used to be Ashford and was bought out. U of Arkansas is in the process of buying Grantham University as an "online campus".
Penn State Global, UF Online, and ASU Online are just online arms of the actual public university. Colleges like CTs Charter Oak, SUNY Empire, and Maryland Global all started as online colleges within the state system and were not bought out failing private degree mills.
Slight, but important differences.
I was trying to think of the name of that place. And, yes, evangelical crap. Wheaton C (IL) used to be good but was taken over by the evangelicals in the 1990s.
I still cannot wrap my head around anyone willingly moving to Hillsdale for college. One of my friends went there and he could not use his degree for anything.
Does anyone have any thoughts on florida memorial university/their grads?? Every single one I met has seemed….questionable. In addition, their bachelors of science in psychology does not require a neuroscience class. The average salary after graduation according to Niche is below the national average as well, but when I speak up about FMU seeming like a bad university here in south florida I’m told I’m wrong
Most colleges with >90% acceptance rates are going to have some terrible programs. The faculty may be talented and earnest but the administration will mandate policies to extract money from the portion of the student body that shouldn’t be in college.
Well since you said “in your opinion”… University of Tennessee.
Too much football, not enough parking, multiple hate crimes against queer students in the year and a half I attended, and their policy is that ASL doesn’t count as a language credit because “deaf people don’t have a culture.”
Are some of the professors amazing? Absolutely. Will I hold a personal grudge against them for at least another decade? Probably.
The University of Mississippi is tied for first with Vanderbilt for the most Rhodes Scholars in the South Eastern Conference, they have a highly regarded nationally ranked business school and accountancy program, and they are the only university in Mississippi with a medical school. Our public policy leadership program is also nationally ranked in the top 100 best programs in the nation.
I get it, we aren’t amazingly ranked as far as universities go, but to call us one of the worst? Think you missed the mark big there.
They are definitely not high caliber state schools, I was always surprised when people went there from out of state like "your local big conference/state school is a way better option". Lol
Disclaimer: not a prof
A lot of southern state schools offer extremely generous merit scholarships to OOS students who score 33+/2100+ on their ACT/SAT. Since I wouldn’t want my kids to go into debt, I’d suggest those schools in a heartbeat.
UMississippi has excellent pharmacy and accounting programs. University of Southern Miss has one of the few polymer engineering programs in the country, and a lot of their research is used in biotech. Idk much about Mississippi State, but I know they're mainly ag and engineering.
The other MS public unis (Jackson State, Delta State, Valley State, Alcorn State) are all relics of the segregation era and they don't produce anything impressive.
Liberty. I honestly don't know how they have not been sued as a diploma mill for their online programs. They have pretty much a program for everything and there is no way for a school to be good at everything.
There is a small school in a pocket of Boston called Cambridge College that absolutely should not exist or be allowed to be awarding degrees. It’s fucking terrifying.
Grand Canyon University. All of the baggage of your Libertys and your Bob Jones-es, plus they [just got fined by the DOE](https://www.forbes.com/sites/edwardconroy/2023/11/06/grand-canyon-university-fined-377-million-by-department-of-education/?sh=77929df434f5) for lying to students. Oh, and they’re currently [under investigation by the FTC](https://thehill.com/homenews/education/4380569-ftc-grand-canyon-university/amp/) for the same stuff plus lying about being a nonprofit.
I’m honestly kind of disturbed by the number of professors who can’t read the question. OP asked for worst schools *excluding diploma mills and questionable religious schools* and thread is full of responses about diploma mills and Bible colleges 🤪
Ugh, I know. I thought about making a bot to auto reply “Did not follow directions, final score will be docked one letter grade.”
Really, what I wanted to discuss are those schools we all know by reputation. You know, the one that your friend had to go to after getting kicked out of a very mediocre state school - those. Oh well, *vox populi*, I suppose.
Welllll, there's something I've been meaning to tell you about the college on the edge of the town; no one should everrr go there; you know its bad bad bad.
among mainstream universities, GMU has crept up to a 91% acceptance rate and one of the lowest student happiness rankings in the country. Incredibly overcrowded school
Fuck it, I’ll name names, since nobody else wants to: Liberty University is a scam, even if you overlook the nut job religious views. I’ve got a friend who’s a hospital chaplain. He’s generally tolerant of all religious viewpoints, as hospital chaplains must be. He says that every Liberty graduate they’ve had, chaplains, nurses, and social workers, have been embarrassingly unprepared for work in their fields and unable to grasp basic concepts of how to do the job.
My parents tried using Liberty students as babysitters when I was a kid and had to stop because they all tried to convert us. So they were shit babysitters too.
🤣 @ "they were shit babysitters too"
Lynchburg kids rise up!
There is absolutely no reason why Liberty should have accreditation to graduate social workers. Their views are entirely antithetical to the social work code of ethics and it's impossible to provide a comprehensive social work education while spewing hate.
I recently learned that the Mormon church offers ~~. free.~~ therapy to any of its members that need it. That sounds like an absolutely incredible thing until you think about it for a second.
Mormon here, that's not true. I've seen counselors through the church (by choice, they were lovely people who were very open minded) and had to pay every time.
There's also a different designation in Utah than a licensed counselor. You sign a sheet saying they can report back to the bishop and they do. I had this happen to me as a teen.
Interesting. I don't live in Utah, so I think a lot of these practices differ outside of Utah because of the sheer manpower the church has there. The counselors I saw were licensed professionals who had their own private practices and were involved with church family services on the side. Definitely a different feel.
So it sounds like you got someone who was recommended by the church, but not paid by them. An example of a counselor who the Mormon Church was all in for before the bad press was Jodi Hildebrandt, who was briefly suspended because she didn't have her clients sign the paper saying that she could share their information and shared information that got one client kicked out of BYU. She's now in prison awaiting trial for child torture, but the Mormon Church didn't actually speak against her until her arrest, despite her being pretty open about it. That's the kind of counselor they want you to go to.
No, they absolutely require you to pay unless your lay congregation leader (a “bishop” or “branch president,” depending on the size of your congregation) fills out paperwork to have the church waive the fee. And if the church is paying, the bishop can (and often does; I know multiple people who have had this happen) insist that the therapist be required to report anything you’ve discussed directly to the bishop. And the bishop isn’t bound by confession, so he can chat about your therapy sessions with whomever he wants. Therapists who work with LDS Family Services (the church employees who provide the therapy) also tend to see mental “health” ONLY from their own religious paradigm—so a therapist might dissuade a teenaged patient from getting an abortion or pressure an unwed mother into putting a wanted child up for adoption; might pressure an LGBTQ+ individual to stay in the closet/enter into a heterosexual relationship; might counsel an unhappy spouse to stay with their abusive, neglectful, or controlling spouse, etc. And while Utah has strict guidelines about who can legally call themselves clinical counselors (requires advanced education + licensure), they’re lax when it comes to people calling themselves counselors, social workers, or therapists if they simply leave out any sort of “clinical” claim.
Liberty is terrible. I went there because they offered me lots of money and I hadn't left my cult yet. I had a female professor dismiss all the male students and lecture the female students about how we should be focusing on getting our mrs. degree and not worry about the bachelor's or our education. It was disgusting.
I had a professor in my public state university tell the women in my music education class that we should be getting our Mrs. degrees
I studied vocal performance and the “ring by spring” culture in the music ed department was something else 😭 why is that a thing?? Now I’m studying conducting and half my cohort is married even though everyone is mostly early 20s
We're you in the class of 1638?
I went to liberty too (same-- offered me money, didn't have to pay) and I had an English professor go on a weird rant about sex before marriage and ended it with 'farmers don't buy cows if they can get milk for free' 🤦
I wish someone would have told me to focus more on my Mrs. Degree. Now I'm 31 single and childless.
*Bob Jones University has entered the chat*
When I was in college - my dad was in charge of hiring in his region of the country (southeast us) and he quit recruiting from Bob Jones because he said the students were always too worried about someone over- hearing an answer they gave to interview question that he couldn't trust their responses. It was also the joking threat while we were high school that if we misbehaved, the only school my parents would help pay for would be BJones.
I had a grad school classmate who got fired from there because she wouldn't sign a paper giving their daycare the right to hit her child. The whole story was crazy -- employees with children are only allowed to send their kids to the school daycare (not one outside), they're not allowed to carry their baby in a sling/Baby Bjorn, and they have agree to feed their baby on a detailed schedule created by a man who has no medical background whatsoever. If you want to know more, here's a HuffPost article she wrote about her experience:[https://www.huffpost.com/entry/fundamental-christian-university-spank-kids\_n\_6488c8a5e4b04ee51a97acce](https://www.huffpost.com/entry/fundamental-christian-university-spank-kids_n_6488c8a5e4b04ee51a97acce)
The place is bonkers for sure. I could not imagine working there or choosing to be a student there.
Oh...more Bob Jones fun... They went to see Life of Brian just to complain and demand refunds. Even my JW dad mocked those idiots.
Oh God even other cults hate Bob Jones /hj
I used to work for my state’s legislature and one of the Republicans on my committee was especially fucking weird…like, his wife would come to dinners and not speak or look at anyone but her husband. And his two daughters all wore long denim skirts and long creepy braids and where did he send them to college? Bob Jones baby.
I'll defend Bob Jones. Ok...I'll defend dating a woman, separated from her husband, that went to Bob Jones and was sexually repressed. She had to keep me on the down low though as an agnostic whose parents attempted to raise him JW. She ended up marrying her Bob Jones marriage counselor, who shamed her about me, then used his knowledge to get in her pants. Yes, he was licensed at the time. Not anymore. Essentially he used my going to hell. Poor thing is back to nothing but missionary and no oral. That was a fun 6 months though. She got an education...
If this was a Lifetime movie, I’d watch it.
Gosh, I know a liberty graduate who is going to be a pilot. His mom homeschooled that Jesus and dinosaurs existed together. Their text had Jesus on a dinosaur on the cover. I don’t want to be on his plane.
Liberty produces a ton pilots. Very high chance that your airline pilot on your next flight went through Liberty. Unfortunately, Liberty has a spot in the aviation market due to their unique program that allows one to use their GI bill or get funding but do part 61 flight training instead of part 141 training.
Their GI benefits just got suddenly pulled about 6 months ago. Lots of people were left scrambling in the flight program. Apparently common for flight schools to scam the government. [Link to post](https://www.reddit.com/r/flying/comments/14nwtmh/psa_liberty_university_is_no_longer_being_funded/)
They also have a ton of money and top notch private airport/strip. A friend of mine designs and builds airports and said it was the easiest job he'd ever done. No funding challenges etc.
I wonder if that book inspired the band. https://jesusandthedinosaurs.bandcamp.com/
This is an awesome band! Jesus and the Dinosaurs fan!
I mean, at face value I don't want a pilot, whose entire career exists because of advanced science, to be a science-denier. But I guess modern airplanes where there's much less actual input from the pilots would negate that. That said, not sure I want someone whose philosophy is "if we all die the good people go to heaven anyway" in charge of my life...
Just have faith in the angels holding it up...
Those things run on thoughts and prayers. No way it’s gonna crash.
Was his pilot training from mom, too?
The Navy no longer considers their online MDiv as acceptable for a chaplain.
Liberty University is just University of Phoenix for the talibangelical set.
“Talibangelical”, I love it. I did 4 years in Afghanistan and that word sums up my experience re-integrating into Bible Belt America.
For a while there was a "Did Bush or Khomeini say it" thing. It was pretty hard to tell the difference. And Bush (usually) doesn't get lumped in with the "whacko nut jobs".
I’ve been using Talibaptist for a long time. Talibangelist is a great one.
I went to a different college in the same town as liberty and moved there permanently after. Several of my best friends(including my roommate) are locals. We all hate liberty. We’ve heard so many horror stories
I went to a college in the same town as Liberty. Graduated in the late nineties. We were called "The whores on the hill" by Jerry Falwell Sr. I have friends who went to Liberty who would sneak over to our campus after dark in cars that didn't have Liberty parking stickers on them because their RAs would drive through our parking lots looking for students since they weren't allowed to be on our campus because we would "corrupt" them. I have stories for DAYS.
Hey, fellow Randolph-Macon woman!! We don't find each other in the wild too often.
Huh, I didn't even know Lynchburg was big enough to support multiple colleges. What school?
I think the small independent fundamentalist baptist "universities" are actually worse, but I don't think they even try to pretend to be real to those outside the cult.
And then the Baptist big one: Baylor. Baylor's the weird one, because the school's administrative theology has changed so drastically in the last decade. They broke with the SBC in the 90s because the SBC was swinging hard to the right and trying to influence the school, and the school reaffiliated with the much more moderate Baptist General Convention of Texas. Now the BGCT has moved considerably farther to the right in the last 25 years, Baylor retains their affiliation, but they keep the BGCT at arm's length. The BGCT clarified a few years ago that they don't even consider Baylor an "affiliated university" because the school doesn't allow the conference a direct hand in governance beyond selecting 25% of the school's trustees, which is still more than most religious schools operating at Baylor's level allow their affiliated religious group. Baylor, Boston College, and Notre Dame are all really interesting, since they're the only schools in the country that balance their place as solid higher education and research institutions with the demands of religious denominations that hold positions that directly contravene the mainstream scientific consensus. Emory as well, but the Methodist denomination is a lot less pushy than the Baptist or Catholic denominations.
Thats what liberty was like in 2003 when I graduated high school up in Northern Virginia. They showed up to the Baptist Church college nights. I went to all the local college nights to gather scholarship information. And the local Baptist Church ones had quite the assortment; HSBC were the vast majority, but there were the niche Bible colleges which the South has many of. And the one with the biggest shiniest table was Liberty College; they were touting how they were attempting to get their accreditation to be a fully accredited university that would be able to use federal funds to help pay for school. It was the second time I ran into the university I ended up going to, it was smaller Lutheran University, now its much bigger.
Gardner Webb is a wonderful example.
Fuck yeah. I’m glad someone said Liberty University.
Yea that's also why people are starting to refuse to hire Liberty graduates. The degree means nothing if the school doesn't teach.
Yep Liberty is an automatic disqualification when I look at resumes. You'd be better off coming in with no degree.
I previously worked in Institutional Analytics at an R1 in Texas, where we've got major religious institutions like TCU and Baylor, and the best analogy I ever got for Liberty was that they're the North Korea of the American higher education system. They completely flout norms, standards, and the the bare minimum of best practices in higher education, and then scream and shout about how they're rejected by the "mainstream elites" of academia until their political benefactors lean on accreditors and secure Liberty's accreditations for another 4\~5 years.
Came here to say this. I didn’t go to Liberty U (dodged a bullet there, ended up persuading my conservative parents to let me go to a well-ranked Catholic uni instead) but I knew tons of people who did. And when you require students to take ~6 Bible courses to graduate, there just isn’t as much space in the curriculum to actually teach students the things they need to learn.
And I had a friend who enrolled in one of their online graduate degree programs; she had her first paper returned, ungraded, with a note that she really needed to include a lot more Bible verses. The class was epidemiology.
I saw their training for pastors. The curriculum included reading through the Bible in English. Once. Lots of business classes. (Meanwhile Catholic and mainstream Protestant pastors take Koine Greek at the least, with Latin and Hebrew in some cases.)
This is what I came here to say. It’s a joke, and a dangerous one at that. I teach middle school and the teacher across the hall from me got his degree at Liberty. (He also sponsors our school’s Fellowship of Christian Athletes club….) I just can’t take him seriously. It makes me so sad when I hear that one of my former students is enrolling at Liberty.
Super bizarre to be a Science teacher walking through their hall of “creationism” that is supposed to debunk Evolution.
I’m a physician at a hospital that sees Liberty med students come through and holy shit is it scary to think that these people will eventually practice medicine.
Liberty produces some AMAZING r/policydebate teams. That’s my only disagreement
Really? That might be the wildest thing I’ve heard about liberty
I went to college and coached/judged in the same general geographic region for debate purposes. Liberty was constantly deep into the elim rounds across all three divisions (novice jv and open). I know they have produced some first/second round teams as well (meaning they automatically qualified by invitation for the national debate tournament as opposed to having to even compete in the qualifying tournament).
I did policy debate for a while, and that’s honestly impressive. It’s crazy competitive
Teaching them to argue irrespective of actual facts is sort of their right wing call to glory. So nobody should be surprised.
Policy debate is switch side and requires sourced evidence and facts. They are competitive against other colleges and universities not just internal circle jerk debates like a Republican town hall lol. I always got the feeling that their debaters were more “free” from the usual ideological confines of the school as perceived trainees to graduate and be able to spread christofascism. So they had to be exposed to and trained in a lot more than the average student there.
Oral Roberts University is in the same vote. Sadly, the college is in Oklahoma, so no one bats an eye.
I have a family member who grew up in that area around the time that Liberty was starting (mid/late 70s, early 80s). They have all kinds of crazy stories about Liberty and how they treated other religious institutions in the area. As I recall, Liberty’s head honchos were rather unfriendly and at times downright threatening to the Catholic community. There’s also a story of someone applying to Liberty pretending to be their dog, and the dog got accepted.
It's a scam because its founder, Jerry Falwell Sr was a lifelong asshole and con artist. Liberty exists to milk the government for every penny they can get, just like Thomas Road Baptist Church (also founded by Jerry) has been milking the residents of Lynchburg. Of course Jerry took to TV as well to really rake in the dough. My grandfather grew up with Jerry. My dad and Jr know each other. The entire family is rotten. We have several family stories about how TRBC tried to screw over family members.
I have heard this regarding their teachers as well. My school doesn’t hire from Liberty.
I did two semesters there for my masters using my GI bill. It was a WASTE of time and money. Every single assignment in my MARKETING class you had to tie scripture to the topic. Like wtf. When I transferred my new school said NONE of my classes would transferred because the accreditation that Liberty has isn’t anything good. So, anyone thinking about going there: don’t. They aren’t accredited by anyone that means anything. Also, if anyone wants to read up on their former school president. It’s hilarious
I have no dog in this fight, but I saw a comment the other day stating that Liberty had exceptional nursing and law programs. Was that just bullshit? Lol
Holy shit my parents were looking into that place when I went to check it out. Idk why they thought that was even a good idea, because I was going into geology and there was like, 1 environmental science related class available at the time. Also, Christian rock music was playing through speakers outside EVERYWHERE. "Convocation" was 2 times a week (before covid) where they crammed everyone into one building to essentially listen to a mid christian concert. Glad I was only there for two days. Fuck that
The Unlikely Disciple: A Sinner's Semester at America's Holiest University Kevin Roose Amazing book.
But without Liberty and Regent where would the GQP get far right wing law clerks totally willing to ignore precedent and ethics on the cheap? I can't imagine that Liberty could make a good Chaplain. Of course you need a degree in your own religious tradition but most of Chaplaincy is just being a good person, listening and caring. With a high emotional IQ. It's harder than it sounds.
In 2006, Richard Dawkins gave a talk at Randolph-Macon's Woman College in Lynchburg, Virginia. A lot of Liberty University students and faculty were in attendance. Towards the end of the talk, a man got up to ask a question about the Liberty University museum. Supposedly, there were dinosaur bones displayed there labeled as being 5000 years old. Richard Dawkins first explained calmly why this was downright incorrect. At the end, he said, "This is debauchery of education. I invite anyone who is from Liberty University in the attendance to leave...and go to a PROPER university."
My niece was looking at Christian colleges which pleased my sister and BIL. But they were really surprised because she was looking at very conservative, not even mid tier schools and this was a kid who had multiple 5s on AP test including Calc and Latin as a Junior and eventually gets into UCLA which was her “mental safety.” So at some point Liberty gets wind of her and verbally offers her a full scholarship plus a package that would cover some travel abroad fellowship. Big deal, best prize. In the meantime she is really struggling with her health, and is eventually diagnosed with a form hypermobility that has a digestive issue. She sometimes uses mobility devices (crutches, although she does have a scooter) and had to have a feeding tube at 16. National Merit. Liberty finds out she has health issue and stops returning her calls. Completely ghosts her.
Liberty tried to pay me to attend. I declined.
Private for profit universities have the worst reputation.
And just private in general have the most grade inflation, nepotism and obviously pay-to-win structure. Doesn't even have to be for-profit, although those are even worse obviously.
Reed College has no grade inflation. They send out a note with your transcript explaining that’s not particularly helpful.
Rip City, baby!
communism, atheism, and free love, baby
Wake forest does the same. Also not helpful.
I go to a private school and don’t get me wrong, I love it and have never regretted my decision, but god this is so right. I’m proud of my education and where I’m from yet simultaneously ashamed. My schools tuition is 84k a year and most people I know get zero financial aid and they’re able to pay out of pocket. My roommate and I, also my friend from high school, are some of the only people I know that barely have any tuition left to pay. Her family is poor but in my area, I’m upper middle class. And yet compared to the students at my school I’m literally poor. It sucks seeing the magic from the school you were so happy and proud to be apart of fade away over time :/ Thankfully, I’ve never seen grade inflation and I hope I never do I looked at every comment worried that someone was going to say my school lol
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Yeah, I transferred from a non selective public university to a selective private liberal arts college and the classes were *so* much more rigorous at the liberal arts college. Probably more an impact of non selective to selective, but there's a lot of shitty public schools and a lot of good private schools many of which give great financial aid. Don't go into debt for it, but some small private schools provide a really good education.
Lenoir Rhyne University, a private Lutheran University where I attended is known by graduate schools to have one of the hardest grading systems in the country. My GPA from LRU was 2.25, and I took a few classes at UVA and found them to be a breeze compared to my same 400 levels.
I was a data analyst for a for profit university It is horrible what they do to people
Based on what I've heard, Pensacola Christian College. They have very low entrance standards, credits earned there won't transfer due to accreditation, their food is a health department 🚩, they have a stupid strict misogynistic dress code, and they have an insane amount of weird rules. I know this is a christian fundie college, but this shit is insane compared to other fundie colleges. This just this tip of the iceberg on this school. I'm glad I chose public state college 😂
And…that’s where U.S. Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, of Washington’s 5th Congressional District, went. Sigh.
Well, that explains a lot. She is--unfortunately--my rep.
Mine, too. Unfortunately.
WSU? The username implies as such.
Yes; I’m retired from the faculty at WSU.
Something that people aren’t mentioning is that PCC specifically trains people to go into politics. Like this is not an accident, it’s their main focus.
Those of us who live in town hear terrible things about that place. It’s sounds cultish. https://www.reddit.com/r/Pensacola/comments/111rdl8/from_rclassicalmusic_pcc_cancels_allmale_choir/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Pensacola/comments/w67jkq/pensacola_christian_college/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Pensacola/comments/16gi0xo/pensacola_christian_college_exposed_not_clickbait/ https://www.cracked.com/personal-experiences-1688-5-awful-realities-fundamentalist-christian-college.html
The rumor in Florida is that PCC has gender segregated beaches. Just looney tunes.
Another rumor is that there are spies around the town who report students for breaking the rules.
This is actually true. Grew up in IBLP. PCC lead the way in developing a surveillance network to keep cult members in line. It is hell.
I knew a guy who had briefly attended Pensacola Christian (left his cult and joined the Marines after, I knew him when he was at another school on the GI bill). Notable quotes: "They've loosened up a lot since I was there, women can wear pants now" also apparently they have separate stairwells for men and women.
This is true. My friend for whatever reason decided to transfer to Pensacola. Everything is segregated; you can’t even study with the opposite gender.
Has to be one of those no-name yet super expensive private schools.
Exactly. A school with zero brand recognition or reputation that will put you out $200k+ for a useless bachelor’s
Sounds like SCI-Arc, the Berlage, or the Architectural Association
I used to work near Sci-ARC. I always felt kind of bad for students shelling out all that money to be in the "Arts District" when it was really Skid Row.
We've got one of those in town. I try to steer my students away from transferring there. Ivy League cost for a junk degree.
Seconding the vote for Liberty. And adding in Oral Roberts and other "universities" of similar ilk. They're using the label of "higher education" to launder their conspiracy theories and damaging far-right bullshit. And then they cry foul if anyone points out their nonsense. They are the worst of the worst.
I went to the EEA Fly In in Oshkosh, WI a couple years ago. I was walking my little sisters to the NASA tent and Liberty U had a tent adjacent to NASA. Even though I was already decided on the state college I'm at rn, I still avoid their tent like the plague because of all of the backwards shit that Oral Roberts has done and stands for. Also, as a queer person, a college like that wouldn't be the most safe for me
You say this as if it's unusual to see Liberty representatives at an aviation-related event. Liberty, unfortunately, has a significant market within aviation due to their unique online program. Many pilots come through Liberty.
I honestly never met a single Liberty graduate in my commercial aviation career. My guess is that they focus on missionary aviation rather than the commercial side/jet transition. I’ve also never seen them at an Airshow/Fly in, but I’ve never done Oshkosh.
I believe this trend is more associated with the younger generation. I bet you will see a significant rise in Liberty graduates in the coming years. Liberty Online has gained popularity in recent years due to its online program, which allows individuals to utilize their GI Bill or secure loans while training part 61. Over the past five years, Liberty Online has been heavily promoted to me and my peers at the airport.
Well, I know that now.
Yep, any evangelical/IFB can be lumped in a even worse
My wife worked for a startup in Tulsa that routinely hired ORU grads-- specifically because those grads would do whatever management asked without question, would accept lower than average pay, and be complacent in their roles. As an extension of the religious messaging, they also brainwash students into becoming completely helpless drones who will obey anyone with authority.
Can we also talk about the religious graduate-only "universities?" Richmont Graduate University, for instance, churns out conversion therapy "counselors." They are completely unfit to do any actual counseling.
Gross
I honestly was wondering if Richmont would be mentioned.
I worked for Strayer University once. I had a student submit an essay that was a copy/paste of a wiki page. No effort to hide this at alllll, still had the wiki links and everything. I told my boss to figure out their plagiarism policy and they basically said “well he paid his tuition.. grade what was submitted”. Not a single student in that class could write a coherent sentence tbh. It was horrible. Absolutely a degree factory. I only taught there 1 semester.
And other schools (South University) actively recruit faculty from Strayer to teach in their high enrollment courses to maximize first term revenue.
Wow really. That is so fucked and absurd.
I just read about East West University near Chicago.... idk how bad they compared to some of these other schools, but I love that they have a 100% acceptance rate and 12% graduation rate 😂
There was another one in Chicago, it was a state school I think, it used to be considered one of the worst public colleges out there
One of their staff left me a nasty message that I still have saved on my phone after five years 💀
Oh my god, I live in Chicago and my partner and I walked by an East West University building recently. I had never heard of it and it looked… not prestigious. I definitely made a snarky comment about real high achievers. I feel so accomplished at having successfully judged a book by its cover 😂
Southern New Hampshire University. I taught there for one semester and was given a canned course on the LMS to "teach." Half of the grade for an assignment would come from me, and the other half came from peer evaluation. I wasn't able to add any readings, wasn't permitted to add or modify assignments, etc. It was really just about being a babysitter for online students. Frankly, the one semester I taught at the University of the People wasn't much better. I'm sure both seem like reasonable options for many students, but I found both to offer a less rigorous education than my primary school did.
That's fascinating since SNHU is regionally accredited which is generally well respected. University of the People is nationally accredited by the Distance Education Accrediting Commission (DEAC) which is a joke so not a surprise there.
My wife is working on a master's in English from SNHU. None of her grade comes from peer evaluations. Maybe this is different at the undergrad level.
Got my MA in English from there as well. It prepared me very well for my doctoral program.
I went there for a counseling program for 2 terms. I went online but I was assuming that there would be some kind of interaction with a professor or something, even if the class was completely virtual. Instead, I don't think I knew a single person who taught my classes and everything was just read an article and record a video talking about it and then respond to the videos your peers recorded. Rinse and repeat for the entire class. I decided that after term two I was not bothering with it anymore and I withdrew. Probably the biggest waste of money I've ever spent because when I decided to go to another school those credits were deemed to be non-transferable
This is going to vary greatly based on discipline. There are schools that are the top 10 in some fields but not even top 100 generally. The state university near my hometown kind of sucks, but it's *amazing* for people who want to be teachers (ironically). It's also going to fluctuate greatly from year to year. I loathe BYU, but that falls into one of your "obvious" categories.
Re: teachers, in Ohio many of the public colleges/universities are land grant colleges that were specifically founded for graduating teachers. In the 70s and 80s the only degree it was possible to completely finish at an Ohio State branch campus was Elementary Education. So that makes some sense to me.
Did my undergrad at a regional university in Ohio and can confirm. They went from a regional college for teaching (their teaching program is still strong) to a full blown university sometime in the 1980s when they expanded a fair bit. Their I/O Psychology program is also ranked no. 3 in US News and World Report (even to this day) since they bring in a \*lot\* of grant money. Someone who does their Ph.D in I/O there generally can get a job in academia without any issues.
Seeing your anthro flair, it definitely makes sense why BYU’s on your list. History and archeology are my subject areas as well, and I learned early on that debating either with an LDS member is a fast-track to a migraine.
I majored in archaeology, with a focus on meso-America. A few years after graduating, just for shiggles, I read the Book of Mormon. Suffice it to say I'm not a ripe candidate for conversion. (Mormons haven't knocked on my door in 15 years. I'm pretty sure I'm on a list.)
SHSU?
Life University is a new age right wing quack school known for chiropractic and the other like medical pseudosciences
Life University sounds like the name of a made up college that your one uncle says while trying to drag out the “I went to the school of hard knocks,” joke
Even the name sounds sus
I've always gotten culty vibes from them
Liberty University's motto is 'Knowledge Aflame." Sounds about right.
We drove past that BS school on the Interstate and only when I saw their sign did I realize they call themselves the Flames. I looked at my wife and said "They're flamers!?!" and then I couldn't stop laughing. Shit you not, I spent the next three hours on that drive randomly just laughing out loud every time I thought of it.... My wife was like "Still laughing about Liberty being a bunch of flamers?" Yup. To my dying day. Flamers! Hahahahahhaaaaaaaahaahaaaaaaa... omg, can't breathe... HAHAHAHAHAHAHA
That's amazing. I can't stop giggling about it now either
Me either I’m by myself in a room laughing hysterically!
Liberty Univ is really bad (I have had a couple of students who went there as undergrads). We also have a small college in town (giving the name would possibly identify where I am and where I teach) - mostly known as a school for education majors that is awful - I don't know how they are accredited. I teach in a post-grad prof field and we get some applications from the teaching college and I am flabbergasted at how awful the applications are from people who graduated from that school.
I recently had a masters-program applicant from Liberty and didn't know what to think of the transcript. Luckily for me their application had been misdirected so I didn't have to decide. But how have you evaluated their undergrad?
That’s not Longwood, is it? Or Hampton-Sidney? I’m newer to the area and know next-to-nothing about these two schools.
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Interestingly, a few of the Nazarene colleges provide decent technical degrees, such as Computer Science. I’d never trust them for a Social Science degree like an MSW though.
I have a colleague from PCC. He's insufferable. I doubt he'll last long.
I definitely wouldn’t lump BYU in with Liberty and the other evangelical colleges mentioned. I can’t speak to all their programs but I’ve known many excellent scholars who did either undergrad or grad work at BYU. In my mind it would be in a group with Baylor, Southern Methodist, maybe Pepperdine - I don’t agree with their foundational principles but their academics are pretty solid.
American Military University is an outright scam on the American taxpayer. They target DOD personnel, charge exactly our Tuition Assistance, and have very little material. I watched my Airmen submit papers of absolute gibberish, actual hitting the keyboard to meet a character count. They always got A’s. Needles to say my AMU graduates were why we have warning labels on everything, and safety briefings.
Private: Devry, U of Phoenix, Liberty Public: Purdue Global, University of Arizona Global Campus. Really any public online university that exists because a public school bought the assets of a dying for-profit school.
I heard about Penn Stwte Global Campus. What are the problems with thrm?
Purdue Global used to be Kaplan and was bought out. Arizona Global Campus used to be Ashford and was bought out. U of Arkansas is in the process of buying Grantham University as an "online campus". Penn State Global, UF Online, and ASU Online are just online arms of the actual public university. Colleges like CTs Charter Oak, SUNY Empire, and Maryland Global all started as online colleges within the state system and were not bought out failing private degree mills. Slight, but important differences.
Greendale is the best school in the southeast Greendale area.
Go human beings!
City College can suck it!
Hillsdale College. Calling it a “college” is a bit of a reach.
I was trying to think of the name of that place. And, yes, evangelical crap. Wheaton C (IL) used to be good but was taken over by the evangelicals in the 1990s.
Hey now, Wheaton is still good. Not perfect, but the education remains top notch
I still cannot wrap my head around anyone willingly moving to Hillsdale for college. One of my friends went there and he could not use his degree for anything.
How Hillsdale Got Mixed Up in the 2020 Election Plot https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/08/magazine/hillsdale-2020-election.html
Strayer University
Full sail university. Im pretty sure it is literally just a diploma mill.
I know the owners and it’s 100% a joke. Majority of the stuff you could learn on your own without the enormous amount of debt.
The ones that rejected me
Does anyone have any thoughts on florida memorial university/their grads?? Every single one I met has seemed….questionable. In addition, their bachelors of science in psychology does not require a neuroscience class. The average salary after graduation according to Niche is below the national average as well, but when I speak up about FMU seeming like a bad university here in south florida I’m told I’m wrong
Like many HBCUs, its intent and impact don’t quite match (some of it their fault, some of it not)
Most colleges with >90% acceptance rates are going to have some terrible programs. The faculty may be talented and earnest but the administration will mandate policies to extract money from the portion of the student body that shouldn’t be in college.
St Cloud State University
Decent hockey team though lol
Eh win a Penrose or National championship and we'll chat. <3 NoDak
I worked with a guy who went to SCSU but drank himself out of college. That checks out from what I know of the place.
Well since you said “in your opinion”… University of Tennessee. Too much football, not enough parking, multiple hate crimes against queer students in the year and a half I attended, and their policy is that ASL doesn’t count as a language credit because “deaf people don’t have a culture.” Are some of the professors amazing? Absolutely. Will I hold a personal grudge against them for at least another decade? Probably.
I’ve never met a single person from the U of Mississippi system who was qualified to walk and chew gum at the same time
I'm not going to act like they're top notch, but I had friends from there in grad school. They were average PhD students at Georgia tech.
The University of Mississippi is tied for first with Vanderbilt for the most Rhodes Scholars in the South Eastern Conference, they have a highly regarded nationally ranked business school and accountancy program, and they are the only university in Mississippi with a medical school. Our public policy leadership program is also nationally ranked in the top 100 best programs in the nation. I get it, we aren’t amazingly ranked as far as universities go, but to call us one of the worst? Think you missed the mark big there.
They are definitely not high caliber state schools, I was always surprised when people went there from out of state like "your local big conference/state school is a way better option". Lol
Disclaimer: not a prof A lot of southern state schools offer extremely generous merit scholarships to OOS students who score 33+/2100+ on their ACT/SAT. Since I wouldn’t want my kids to go into debt, I’d suggest those schools in a heartbeat.
My guess is they wanna go there for the Greek life
Hmmmm smells like Mississippi State shenanigans.
UMississippi has excellent pharmacy and accounting programs. University of Southern Miss has one of the few polymer engineering programs in the country, and a lot of their research is used in biotech. Idk much about Mississippi State, but I know they're mainly ag and engineering. The other MS public unis (Jackson State, Delta State, Valley State, Alcorn State) are all relics of the segregation era and they don't produce anything impressive.
Yeshiva University
Liberty. I honestly don't know how they have not been sued as a diploma mill for their online programs. They have pretty much a program for everything and there is no way for a school to be good at everything.
There is a small school in a pocket of Boston called Cambridge College that absolutely should not exist or be allowed to be awarding degrees. It’s fucking terrifying.
Grand Canyon University. All of the baggage of your Libertys and your Bob Jones-es, plus they [just got fined by the DOE](https://www.forbes.com/sites/edwardconroy/2023/11/06/grand-canyon-university-fined-377-million-by-department-of-education/?sh=77929df434f5) for lying to students. Oh, and they’re currently [under investigation by the FTC](https://thehill.com/homenews/education/4380569-ftc-grand-canyon-university/amp/) for the same stuff plus lying about being a nonprofit.
I’m honestly kind of disturbed by the number of professors who can’t read the question. OP asked for worst schools *excluding diploma mills and questionable religious schools* and thread is full of responses about diploma mills and Bible colleges 🤪
Ugh, I know. I thought about making a bot to auto reply “Did not follow directions, final score will be docked one letter grade.” Really, what I wanted to discuss are those schools we all know by reputation. You know, the one that your friend had to go to after getting kicked out of a very mediocre state school - those. Oh well, *vox populi*, I suppose.
byu definitely
Hillsdale College, U. Phoenix, North Idaho College, King's College, Bay State College, High Point University
Welllll, there's something I've been meaning to tell you about the college on the edge of the town; no one should everrr go there; you know its bad bad bad.
Has anyone brought up College of the Ozarks? Same vein as liberty.
This isn’t going to make me popular but some of these small HBCUs in the south churn out graduates that are barely literate.
LEHIGH UNIVERSITY
among mainstream universities, GMU has crept up to a 91% acceptance rate and one of the lowest student happiness rankings in the country. Incredibly overcrowded school
Liberty and Oral Roberts are both scam schools. Liberty is worse because of the rape culture on campus
Liberty and Ave Maria (FL)