<p>lol, Pizzagirl is owning this thread.</p>
<p>Here’s my problem with Liberty and its ilk, and the reason that like Zonlicht, I’d have trouble deciding to hire someone with a degree from there. Regardless of the major, the primary intellectual goal of an undergraduate education is learning the process of critical thinking - the ability to think through situations open-mindedly, free from the constraints of prior assumptions. A critical thinker amasses evidence and makes decisions based upon that evidence, even if it runs contrary to previous beliefs or conventional wisdom. Schools that begin with an assumption of unassailable truth - usually arbitrarily chosen - teach one to examine the available evidence and accept only that which supports the predetermined assumptions while rationalizing away that which is contrary. Barrons, I know that you live in Lynchburg and like Liberty students because they’re less likely to cause commotion or pee on your bushes coming back from bars, but I can’t trust that they have the open-minded critical thinking skills that are necessary in a 21st-century work environment.</p>
<p>Iveybass, your company’s HR department would be able to tell you whether UA’s interdisciplinary degree with concentrations would constitute a degree that could qualify you for the positions you’re seeking.</p>
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<p>But would you hire an astronomer who avowed that “the Bible cannot err?”</p>
<p>Galileo, for example?</p>
<p>Or a physicist who believed that God is everywhere present, and in the holiness of the unintelligible Godhead?</p>
<p>Max Planck for example?</p>
<p>Or one whose whose works on astronomy contain writings about how space and the heavenly bodies represent the Trinity?</p>
<p>As do Kepler’s?</p>
<p>Or who wrote “The most beautiful system of the sun, planets, and comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being.”</p>
<p>As did Newton? </p>
<p>[Famous</a> Scientists Who Believed in God](<a href=“http://www.godandscience.org/apologetics/sciencefaith.html]Famous”>http://www.godandscience.org/apologetics/sciencefaith.html)</p>
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<p>Actually, it doesn’t appear you can necessarily trust that, no matter what the name on the certificate:</p>
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<p>[Excerpt</a> from Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses by Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa](<a href=“Excerpt from Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses by Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa”>Excerpt from Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses by Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa)</p>
<p>“I’m a huge believer and supporter of tolerance. I really don’t care for bigotry of any sort.”</p>
<p>Creekland, if you truly believe this, you would not defend a college that banned a College Democrats group and is notoriously anti-gay. Liberty is a bastion of intolerance. (And, on a side note, it speaks volumes about Romney that he chose to deliver the commencement address there earlier this month.)</p>
<p>Back to the OP, I know we are talking exclusively about online degrees, but I still think Alabama has a legitimate advantage over Liberty. Just going on rankings alone (which I wouldn’t put much stock in if the two schools were ranked closer), Alabama is ranked 75th among national universities and Liberty is ranked 80th among SOUTHERN universities only. Except in very conservative circles, your degree from Liberty is going to be a potentially negative talking point in interviews and something you have to work to overcome–if you get your foot in the door in the first place.</p>
<p>I don’t care what religion someone is, but I do raise an eyebrow about degrees from what I consider to be “bible schools”…which I consider LU to be.</p>
<p>The universe is not several thousand years old.</p>
<p>Annasdad, the failure of some college grads to make full use of their educational opportunities is one thing, but an intentional strategy by a university to limit those opportunities in the first place is a deal-breaker.</p>
<p>I’m a Protestant Christian and have grown up with many people who attended religiously-affiliated colleges and universities. I’ve known lots of professors at those schools. Those schools have a strong Christian emphasis and a few even still require chapel attendance. In all of those, God is acknowledged as the creator of the universe. However, those same schools teach evolution in science classes. They have both College Democrats and College Republicans. They have some non-Christian faculty members. They encourage independent, critical thinking.</p>
<p>In Protestant circles, Liberty is considered far, far out of the mainstream. I do not personally know anyone who would consider sending a child to Liberty.</p>
<p>I am sure that there are plenty of fine Liberty graduates. However, in most of the country (the South included), a degree from Liberty would be looked on with some amount of concern, at the least. Anyone who wonders why should read The Unlikely Disciple.</p>
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<p>I agree.</p>
<p>I do think, however, that colleges and universities run by religious organizations do have a right to expect that students there accept the religious dogma of the institution (and I realize that the great majority of the religiously affiliated schools do no such thing). What really bothers me about Liberty is its requirement that students also adhere to a political philosophy.</p>
<p>I don’t care if someone says to me “I believe the word of God is inerrant, and thus that creation must have happened as written in the bible. I understand that this is in conflict with the scientific evidence, and I can’t explain that conflict so I turn to faith to decide what to believe” or “I believe that evidence was created by God as a test of our faith”.</p>
<p>That to me is religious belief, and I support people’s right to believe whatever they want. </p>
<p>But when people twist science in the name of creationism and teach that there is scientific evidence to dispute it, despite the fact that that that evidence doesn’t exist. Or when they present creationism as science, thus calling into question their understanding of the entire concept of science and scientific evidence and what it means when something is a theory.</p>
<p>I have many friends who were raised and still practice Catholicism. These are people I know, and like, and whose judgement I respect. Some are co-workers, and others are people I’d be honored to work with. They believe and teach their children that the wine is transformed into Jesus’s blood during the Eucharist, and that Jesus rose from the dead. I don’t happen to believe these things. But they teach their kids to believe these things based on faith. They don’t create scientific institutes or college majors on the science of transforming wine to blood ('cause there’s no science in that), or of raising the dead. They don’t keep their kids out of class or demand changes to the curriculum so that their kids won’t learn that dead people stay dead. They don’t claim that the evidence that supports the view that dead people stay dead is “just a theory” and “flawed”. They acknowledge that these things are not generally considered possible, but that they respect that they happened as miracles or articles of faith. </p>
<p>So, my kid can go to Boston College, or Catholic University, even though we’re not Catholic, and I won’t think less of his degree. Liberty University he’d have to pay for himself.</p>
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<p>For some historical perspective, my dad taught at a church-related college from the 1940s through the early 1980s. When he started there in 1949, and up through the early 60s, chapel attendance was required, almost all the students were Protestant Christians, and only Protestant Christians were acceptable as faculty members (sometime about 1960 my dad, by then history department chair, wanted to hire a Roman Catholic and was told he could not). Yet the school was noted for its science teaching - a 1957 graduate went on to win a Nobel prize in physiology and medicine, one of the biology professors was co-author of what was then the leading college intro biology textbook, and a few years after this period graduated the first blind person admitted to an American medical school ([ADA</a> 20th Anniversary - David Hartman '72 with Ralph Cavaliere - YouTube](<a href=“http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ACu2oIvKeqY]ADA”>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ACu2oIvKeqY)). So the two - a Christian emphasis and solid science - are not inherently antithetical.</p>
<p>I wanted to add that while I have very strong opinions about Liberty, if someone has good reasons for attending, such as the OP describes, that would go a long way with me. If I was interviewing an internal candidate, who had proven themselves to my organization, and had chosen Liberty because it fit well with their family commitments, their work commitments and their financial constraints? I’d be much more likely to overlook the fact that the degree came from Liberty.</p>
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<p>Not to mention that when Romney came to speak at Liberty, the students protested merely because the man was Mormon, and how dare a Mormon come speak. If that’s not bubba hicksville thinking - along the lines of “Catholics aren’t Christians” - I don’t know what is. So Creekland, you really don’t have much of a leg to stand on in defending Liberty as a bastion of tolerance.</p>
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<p>Absolutely. And we also have the right to judge those schools as being good or not-so-good according to our criteria. I don’t HAVE to think that Liberty U is “good” or that a degree from there impresses me. </p>
<p>Again, it fascinates me how Catholics manage to put together excellent universities such as Gtown and ND and the evangelical Christian world can’t. It tells me worlds about their approach to logic, facts and reasoning.</p>
<p>…and what’s even more troubling, Pizzagirl, is that despite the protests at Liberty and the widespread belief among evangelicals generally that Mormons are not Christians, this group seems very willing to set this concern aside in order to get their extreme right-wing agenda pushed through at the national level. The fact that evangelicals are now falling in line behind Romney says a lot about their lack of critical thinking and the flimsiness of their “convictions.”</p>
<p>Right. You’ll forgive me for simply not caring about what evangelicals think of anything. Like, who died and made them more important than anyone else?</p>
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<p>Who’s defending the college itself? It’s not one for me or my guys. I’m defending the right for the guy who did his undergrad there to believe whatever he wants about whatever he wants especially since it doesn’t affect his job. That’s where the discrimination took place. I work in a place where there are oodles of different beliefs by both the students and staff. I live among people who have oodles of different beliefs ranging from taste buds to politics, and, of course, religion. I believe in letting others believe whatever they want and if that takes them to Liberty - good for them. If it takes them to Oberlin - good for them. If it takes them anywhere in between - good for them. When they start infringing upon others rights to believe what they want to (whether it’s gay marriage from the Liberty crowd or creation from the Oberlin crowd), THEN I step in to remind them to be tolerant of those who choose to believe differently. Debates? Fine. Personal beliefs? (We all have them.) Fine. Condemnation and bigotry - not fine - esp when it has nothing to do with the job at hand as it didn’t in the stated example.</p>
<p>To our kids who are staunch liberals, I’ll help them see the conservative point of view. To our kids who are staunch conservatives, I’ll help them see the liberal point of view. The vast, vast majority wouldn’t know which way I vote when it comes to actual elections (except I’m pro-life and pro equal rights/tolerance, but neither are my voting priority). I prefer to teach them to see that there are two sides to an issue and while they might align with one, someone equally intelligent might align with another. Wars are started when someone decides that we all have to be alike. We don’t. We just need to tolerate each other.</p>
<p>My kids know they may marry whoever they please. Middle son was going to room with a Muslim he selected. That broke up, not over religion, but over smoking weed (the other kid). My guy doesn’t want to room with a smoker. I’m ok with that. It doesn’t mean they can’t be friends. Mine have friends of varying religions and no religion even though we, ourselves, are Protestant. I have friends of varying religions and no religion. Why should they be any different?</p>
<p>My kids know they can be anything except a drug dealer or pimp and I’d be proud of them and happy for them. I reminded them of that earlier today as we left the Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (great movie BTW).</p>
<p>There’s just no way I would EVER discriminate (even mentally) against anyone on the job and doing well based upon where they did their undergrad or even if they told me they believed anything not related to the job itself. It’s as appalling to me as discrimination of any other sort.</p>
<p>If we’re just talking about the colleges themselves, middle son applied to Alabama (nice safety school since he’s high stats). Liberty wasn’t even a remote consideration. But I still don’t think it matters much for someone needing “a” degree once on the job. It wouldn’t where I work. I’ve seen people who need “a” degree get them from U Phoenix and do just fine.</p>
<p>It’s the discrimination that bugs me. When someone can’t judge another PERSON on their own merits or let someone believe whatever they want to believe about any subject, something is wrong. Who cares if they believe 2+2=5 if they aren’t using math on the job? What harm is it to you? None. It could, however, lead to some interesting discussions at lunch. ;)</p>
<p>The fact is that Liberty ISN’T very good, for a lot of reasons.</p>
<p>And a person’s “merits” include what they believe. If they think it’s OK to sexually abuse children, do you want to hire them?</p>
<p>Creekland,</p>
<p>If I’m hiring someone and I’m taking their college into account, and that’s mostly if they don’t have a lot of experience under their belt, I’m going to look at the caliber of education that I believe that college offers. In my line of work, I want people who can write, who can critically analyze information, who can understand and read research. I don’t believe Liberty teaches those skills, or at least not the latter 2. Now if someone has done things since graduating from Liberty, like getting an MBA elsewhere which was an example above, or in addition to Liberty, such as showing their potential in a job like the OP is doing, then I care far less.</p>
<p>But in reality, employers DO judge potential employees by their schools.</p>
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<p>Well, there’s this little college that was founded by a group whose religion makes Falwell and his bunch look like weak-kneed moderates.</p>
<p>You might have heard of it. It’s called “Harvard.”</p>