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Louisiana Baptist University
Established	1973
School type	Private/unaccredited
President	Neal Weaver
Location	Shreveport, Louisiana, USA
Enrollment	1,100 undergraduate and graduate
Faculty	65
Homepage	www.lbu.edu

Louisiana Baptist University is a conservative Christian university, founded in 1973, with the physical campus located in Shreveport, Louisiana. The school has no accreditation from the US Department of Education, which makes it an unaccredited university. It has an on-campus program, as well as an extensive correspondence/distance education program, which enrolls students from all over the world . The LBU curriculum offers over 250 ground-based and 400 distance courses, mostly in subjects pertaining to the Bible and Baptist theology . As a non-traditional college, LBU provides a number of mechanisms by which a student may earn credit, including the application of military credit, credit by examination, and life experience credit. The school also has a liberal transfer credit policy.

Accreditation, licensing, and approvals

On December 10, 1998, the Louisiana Board of Regents unanimously voted to deny the University an operating license for its business programs, required it to cease admitting students, and cease advertising . Students matriculated at the time were allowed until December 31, 1999 to finish their degrees. Meanwhile, on April 22, 1999, the Board exempted the University from licensing requirements under a "religious institution exemption" .

LBU is one of five approved colleges and universities of the Baptist Bible Fellowship International, an organization with over 4,000 churches in the United States and several foreign countries. Students who complete their degree in missions through LBU and meet other requirements may be approved as fellowship missionaries.

The University holds full institutional approval from the Association of Christian Colleges and Theological Schools. ACCTS is designed to monitor religious colleges, universities, and seminaries. However, it has no status with the U.S. Department of Education or any other federal agency charged with the accredition of religious institutions .

While the school is unaccredited, the url contains the .edu domain. This may mislead some to think the school has some standing with US government approval. Yet, the usage of the .edu domain was explained by the US Department of Education as "not all institutions that use an .edu as a part of their Internet address are legitimate institutions. Before the U.S. Department of Commerce created its current, strict requirements, some questionable institutions were approved to use an .edu. The current requirements allow only colleges and institutions accredited by an agency recognized by the U.S. Department of Education to use the .edu, however, some more suspect institutions have maintained the .edu addresses."

The University has 65 faculty, but it is unknown to what extent they are tenured, full time, part time, full professorships, or assistant professorships. Nevertheless, only two people on the staff has finished PhD doctoral work from an accredited institution. In fact 25 out of the 65 faculty listed graduated from LBU.

LBU's 2002-2003 handbook stated that the school was listed in the Directory of Postsecondary Institutions, published by the National Center for Educational Statistics of the U.S. Department of Education. However, according to their online system, they are not listed.

Diploma mill

Some assert that LBU is really a diploma mill, as defined by the US Department of Education. First, one sign that a school might be a diploma mill is the "chosen university is accredited, but not by an agency recognized by the Council on Higher Education Accreditation (CHEA )". Louisiana Baptist University and the Association of Christian Colleges and Theological Schools are not listed by CHEA . Nor is the school listed as a charity . Wherefore, making it an unaccredited school. Secondly, the Department warned to "beware of institutions that offer college credit and degrees based on life experience, with little or no documentation of prior learning" as a sign of a suspect school. LBU does this very point, when they "take into account past professional experience and present occupational learning opportunities as we provide the academic courses for a unique educational experience."

Dissertations

Unlike accredited schools and even many that are not accredited, LBU does not make graduate student research available to the academic community. This is considered unusual because the purpose of graduate work is to conduct research, write and publish the results in a graduate-level document (a thesis or dissertation) and add that material to academia, recording and storing the additions to human knowledge in a form readily available to other researchers and interested parties. At accredited schools, a master's thesis is microfilmed and made available for loan from accredited schools, and doctoral dissertations are obtainable in similiar fashion. Doctoral work is required to be deposited in the United States Library of Congress (LOC), where it is made available to interested parties wishing to examine the work. (Since 1940, all accredited universities in the United States have deposited dissertations in the LOC . The practice began in 1870, and many dissertations have been available online from the LOC since 1997 .). Yet, due to the fact that LBU policy does not require these standard practices, it is difficult to determine the quality of graduate work completed at the University, and it is, therefore, also difficult to determine the quality of the instruction.

In comparison, the Harvard Divinity School, for the Doctor of Theology degree, requires that, "once sustained by the Committee, the original dissertation and the first copy, in bound form, together with their abstracts and an unbound, boxed copy for University Microfilms International (UMI), should be submitted to the registrar." As noted on the Library of Congress webpage, since 1999, the UMI has submitted dissertations to the Library of Congress, which are then available for download online .

The writing requirements for an LBU master's thesis or doctoral dissertation are outlined in their Guidelines for Writing Assignments pamphlet, and summarized on the school's page, which describes the standards expected of graduate students.

Notable alumni

• Carl Baugh
• Bob Cornuke
• Bill Gothard
• Thomas Ice
• Grant Jeffrey
• Chuck Missler

See also List of LBU People.

Noteworthy events

• 2005: Governor Kathleen Blanco declared April to be "Louisiana Baptist University Month," citing the school as an "important leader in innovative Christian education in the United States and in the world," while praising it as "an Ambassador of Good Will."

• 2006: Jerry Falwell, chancellor of Liberty University, is scheduled to appear at the graduation ceremony and will give the commencement address.

Contact information

Louisiana Baptist University

6301 Westport Avenue

Shreveport, LA 71129

Phone: 318-686-2360

Email: lbuinfo@lbu.edu

External links

• Louisiana Baptist University
• Library of Congress Doctoral Information Information from the US Library of Congress on PhD dissertations.
• Credential Watch - Lists the Association of Christian Colleges and Theological Schools as a suspect accrediting agency.
• The US Department of Education webpage on Dipolma Mills Includes explanation of .edu domains.
• LBU's Alumni Page

Endnotes

1. *Guidelines for Writing Assignments pamphlet (In *.pdf format)

• Universities and colleges in Louisiana
• Unaccredited institutions of higher learning
• Caddo Parish, Louisiana
• Christian schools
• Seminaries