How good/bad is Oral Robert University?

gadad
Tue, 07 Sep 2010 10:06:12 +0000

Though I’ll surely get flamed by certain CC posters for sharing this opinion, I would maintain that ORU does not offer higher education. A caring community of faith? Sure. But outside its narrow segment of support, a degree from ORU will not be seen favorably by the vast majority of Americans.

Its vision statement says that “Oral Roberts University is a charismatic university, founded in the fires of evangelism and upon the unchanging precepts of the Bible.” When an institution predetermines that any understanding is “unchangeable,” they’re engaging in religious instruction, not true education. ORU says that its Biology program “integrates biblical faith with the study of the biological sciences providing an educationally and biblically sound perspective.” For an individual to allow biblical faith to inform their understanding of the world is a matter of personal belief. But for an institution that purports to be engaging in higher education to suggest that allowing their view of an “unchanging” Bible to weigh upon their students’ understanding of biological sciences is fraud. This is just one of the reasons that ORU is consistently found among the bottom of the list in most ratings of U.S. universities.

Here’s another:

“Scandal Brewing at Oral Roberts University”

"TULSA (AP) — Twenty years ago, televangelist Oral Roberts said he was reading a spy novel when God appeared to him and told him to raise $8 million for Roberts’ university, or else he would be “called home.” Now, his son, Oral Roberts University President Richard Roberts, says God is speaking again, telling him to deny lurid allegations in a lawsuit that threatens to engulf this 44-year-old Bible Belt college in scandal.

Richard Roberts is accused of illegal involvement in a local political campaign and lavish spending at donors’ expense, including numerous home remodeling projects, use of the university jet for his daughter’s senior trip to the Bahamas, and a red Mercedes convertible and a Lexus SUV for his wife, Lindsay.

She is accused of dropping tens of thousands of dollars on clothes, awarding non-academic scholarships to friends of her children and sending scores of text messages on university-issued cellphones to people described in the lawsuit as “underage males.”


USA Today, Oct. 5, 2007