Evangelical University - 500 Million Dollars federal Aid!

[Fat Man]

Well, I really don't know what to say here.

I do know this much, that the Republican party would dearly love to cut funds for educational programming on public broadcasting, such as PBS and NPR, and eventually eliminate all government funds for such broadcasting.

Yet, they don't mind that almost a half-billion dollars is going to a private religious institution. But then, the Republicans support religion, but they won't support education, unless it's for religious instruction in Creationist fairy tales.

http://www.salon.com/life/education/ind ... eral_money

TOPIC:
Education

Tuesday, Apr 5, 2011 11:45 ET
Evangelical Liberty University received half a billion dollars
in federal aid money
By Alex Pareene


Jerry Falwell

Liberty University, the evangelical private Christian school founded by dead apartheid-supporting bigot Jerry Falwell, received $445 million in federal financial aid last year. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting, by the way, received $420 million from the federal government.

That massive sum was thanks to the growth of Liberty's online program, which enrolled 52,000 students last year. The school is the No. 1 recipient of Pell grant money in the state of Virginia. While it may seem like the federal government is basically subsidizing this formerly financially challenged ultra-conservative religious private school, LU's executive director of financial aid sees it differently:

For Ritz â?? a financial aid veteran who got his start at a small Bible college â?? Libertyâ??s use of federal financial aid does not run counter to the universityâ??s conservative values. Liberty does not receive the federal money directly, Ritz said, but through students, who use it to pay for tuition, room and board and other expenses.

â??These funds are authorized by Congress and Congress is elected by voters. . . Iâ??ve always been in the position where I believe Iâ??m a steward of those federal funds. Iâ??m a steward of tax-payer money.â?

And I'm sure ACORN, Planned Parenthood and NPR feel the same way.

Liberty University -- where the biology department teaches Young Earth Creationism -- is, astoundingly, an accredited school of higher learning.

The school was broke and in debt until God killed Falwell for the insurance money.

Yeah! Alright! I know this religious school does not directly receive federal funding.

Liberty does not receive the federal money directly, Ritz said, but through students, who use it to pay for tuition, room and board and other expenses.

So the school only received its funding from government Pall Grants given to the students who are free to choose which college, university, or school they wish to attend.

OK! We get that!

And surprisingly, and amazingly enough, Evangelical Liberty University is actually an "accredited school of higher learning" although, for the life of me, I really can't understand why, because it does not teach real science, but only their moronic Creationist fairy tales.

While in the meantime . . . we have a lot of extremist right-wing whack-jobs in the Republican party who are against public schools and would prefer that only private, or parochial schools existed.

Yeah! Like lets get rid of all the public schools that actually teach science and only have private schools where most people really can't afford to send their children. Nice! Eh?

It will mean that only rich Republicans will be able to afford to send their spoiled rotten little brats to the parochial schools to learn Creationist fairy tales while a real science education will become a thing of the past.

Like, we can't have our children learning real science now, can we! Oh no! God forbid!!!



Yeah! Don't ya just hate the smug look on this fucker's face!

I'm so glad he's bought the farm!

I can hardly wait until Pat Robertson finally kicks the bucket!

Oh gee! I'm being cynical again!

WELL, TOO FUCKING BAD!!!

[ChrisOH]

And surprisingly, and amazingly enough, Evangelical Liberty University is actually an "accredited school of higher learning" although, for the life of me, I really can't understand why, because it does not teach real science, but only their moronic Creationist fairy tales.

As someone who taught at a private community college for eight years, I can tell you that "accreditation" is mostly pure bureaucracy and has very little to do with the quality of education offered.

The college I worked for was a member of ACICS (Accredited Council of Independent Colleges and Schools), which is essentially a self-policing organization formed by private schools that the federal government has accepted as legitimate, meaning the school's students can qualify for federal grants and loans. (Without this accreditation and accompanying financial aid to students, most such schools would quickly go out of business.)

ACICS did a two-day inspection about once every two years. During this inspection, they focused on two main things:

1) The financial solvency of the school, and

2) "contact hours" -- the amount of time each student spent in a classroom with an instructor.

The "contact hours" requirement was a joke and a bone of contention with almost everyone who worked there. Instructors who dismissed students early (from a three and a half hour weekly class), even if the students completed all their classwork, were docked pay and a couple were even fired, while other instructors who goofed off the whole three and half hours, teaching virtually nothing to the students, got full pay. Absolutely no consideration was given for the quality of the education received, only that the hours were put in. (Of course, if we stayed longer, than the three-and-a-half hours to assist a student who was having difficulty, we never got paid overtime -- that was against "corporate policy" )

I taught computer software courses, and the machines we often had to use were so out-of-date it was almost laughable, and I had to teach a networking class with networking software that didn't work -- even the IT guy couldn't figure out the problem -- so the students learned nothing hands-on about networking, which in the computer world, a course without hands-on is virtually useless. Of course, none of this mattered to the accrediting agency, so long as the school was in the black and we got our contact hours in.

When I moved to the Cleveland area, I was so frustrated with the bullshit and hypocrisy that I decided I could no longer continue in the field of education. I had made complaints at staff meetings, conferences with the corporate president, and to the accreditation inspectors, all to seemingly deaf ears.

So, it doesn't surprise me that Liberty "University" is accredited -- probably they slid by with the same tactics that my former workplace did.