Christian Institutions Offering Dumbed-Down PhDs Are Compromising Something Essential.

Christian institutions offering dumbed-down PhDs are basically engaging in robbery and fraud because they are selling students something that is not par with traditional standards of education or with standard expectations in other institutions.

I can't help but fear that the Evangelical Theological Society is being hindered in its ability to pursue its academic mission and calling due to the increasing influx of under-educated but over-confident bearers of half-baked, dumbed-down PhDs.

Causes:

(1) Confusion between DMin and various "Prodoc" doctorates on the one hand and traditional PhDs in Biblical Studies, Theology, and Church History, and so on, on the other. Traditionally a great deal more work is required for the latter than for the former.

(2) Seminary leadership models that do not permit faculty control of curriculum. In such cases formal lip-service may be given to faculty oversight, but completely undermined by other factors such as the tacit understanding that a faculty member who opposes the administration's desired dumbing-down does so at the risk of not having his or her contract renewed. (Very often there is no tenure in Christian institutions, a fact that can be and is exploited by administrators to get their own way).

(3) The dumb-down option is obviously an understandable temptation for administrators of Christian institutions in view of the keenness of the competition for students, a situation made more acute by the growing alternative of online education....But that doesn't excuse it!

(4) Administrators who have dumbed-down doctorates themselves, and who therefore have no real understanding or appreciation for the rigor that traditionally accompanies pursing a PhD.

How to know if you have unwittingly signed up with an institution offering dumbed-down PhDs?

Naturally a first step is to check the credentials of the faculty.  Do their doctorates come from properly accredited institutions? However, buyer beware!  Very often dumbing down institutions can deceive incoming students by hiring professors with doctorates from distinguished, even very distinguished institutions, but in reality the hands of those professors are tied by the administration, keeping them from holding their students to the level of academic  performance they would normally expect.  In other words, hiring faculty with distinguished degrees may reflect mere PR eye candy to draw students rather than a true commitment to  academic excellence. Dumbing down institutions also rob believing professors of the ability to freely and genuinely pursue the callings they spent years preparing for.

So, here are things to watch for:

(1) One good way to get a clue whether the institution you signed up for is a dumbing down institution is to ask your professor to candidly tell you whether, if they did the amount of work you are expected to do to get your PhD, their own directors at the institutions they graduated from would have considered that amount anything like adequate as a basis for awarding them a PhD? If the candid answer is no, then you know you may well be in a dumbing down institution.

(2) If  a candid answer is not possible, then keep an eye on the faculty and ask yourself whether they strike you as free and expansive in giving their opinions in all settings or overly reserved and self-protective?  Do you get the sense they are walking on eggshells? Do they lower their voices and look both ways when stating their opinion on what should be perfectly innocuous subjects?  Does the phrase "I just keep my head down" figure regularly into their conversation?

(3) If the work required for a PhD in Biblical Studies is more or less equal to that of a DMin or Prodoc, then you are probably in a dumbing down institution.

(4) Your fellow doctoral students strike you more as people who loved the idea of having other people call them "Dr. So and So," than as people who love learning.

(5) More of your fellow doctoral students than seems normal come across as arrogant and cocksure than you would have normally expected.  Arrogance and  cocksureness are usually (though admittedly not always) well worn down in the face of the standard rigors of a legitimate PhD program. Cheap, easy degrees will naturally attract a different kind of student, a student who wants the degree, the title, more than the knowledge and expertise traditionally associated with the degree. The arrogance and cocksureness arise from the  "Confidence is a feeling you get when you don't fully understand the situation," factor. Thus it is almost expected that under-educated, over-confident bearers of half-baked, dumbed-down doctorates are going to be rendered over-confident and cocky simply by the fact that they have a doctorate, even though its a dumbed-down doctorate. And God forbid the leadership of an institution falls into the hands of a person with such a doctorate and such an attitude, which of course sometimes happens!

Christians believe in a judgment day and on that day, I believe, there might well be a question asked of those who engaged in offering dumbed-down doctorates, in which, after the person responsible has given their Matthew 7:22 "Lord, Lord, Did we not...do many mighty works in your name" speech, God asks:

"Why, in  time when my Church faced such crucial intellectual and spiritual challenges and opposition did you decide not to equip aspiring scholars properly, but instead to take their money and send them forth without the tools they needed to do the tasks they pursued a doctorate to be able to do?"

And on that day, the answer, which is going to have to be honest given the setting, will have to go something like:

"Well. I did for money. I pandered to individuals who loved strutting around having other people calling them 'Dr. So and So' more than they did getting the actual training to effectively serve the cause of your Kingdom."