I was talking with my friend about this element of Bible Colleges bothering me.

The school’s handbook states something about how theology is part of the courses at a 1:1 credit ratio. I recall this idea of there being a direct and almost equivalent ratio vividly (and it becomes apparent my confusion that it was only unclear from there).

***

This was clear to me. What was less clear was what 18-24 graduate credits meant.

See I’ll be completely blunt with everyone here (and to my mom I apologize) – in undergraduate, I took 21-24 credits every semester after my first one. I wanted to take as many classes as possible, and after 15 credits, the price didn’t change. I figured taking electives and fun areas of study could be part of making my education worthwhile. And for me, school is relaxing and not really going to stress me. It isn’t often that hard.

The semester prior to attending, I took 11 credits (22 adjusted for theology content) of counseling courses to see if I could handle the amount of work. They weren’t super complicated classes, and if it weren’t for the semester being the one where I finally began showing C-PTSD symptoms, it would have been so much less harmful to my GPA.

22 credits at CCU wasn’t hard. They weren’t complicated credits. They were right, the theology wasn’t strictly graded and most professors would let you write around (or completely ignore) it if you just showed acknowledgement of having read the direction.

The counseling assigments were fine, too. Most of them were normal papers and included really interesting concepts around the thinking of a counselor. I enjoyed the papers there and how the content was outlined. It just didn’t seem rigorous enough for me when the content wasn’t often indicitave of graduate lessons, to me.

I didn’t have a hard time in theology courses for my theological reasons, but for my approach to assessing theology. I remember what I was saying about the professor and that he didn’t like me. People didn’t understand my dilemma was not that they didn’t like my ideas, but they didn’t like the academic sources I had used to justify why my ideas were true.

The credits were hard when I was now expected to perform clinical research for my counseling credits (the only ones which were awarded) and Biblical research for the theology components. I don’t care that they have theology. I do care when theology is only considered theology if you use their pre approved biblical commentaries only and not academic research.

Because to me, 18-24 graduate credits is fine if we’re at least clear about the student population and their ability to distinguish a Biblical commentary from an academic one and know the functional difference in how (and why?) to use one or not one.

My theology professor was telling me, an autistic girlie, that her sources were not sufficient. Bible websites were horrific to him (apparently providing a blog from a Bible publisher and scholar is insufficient levels of commentary) and I needed to use commentaries (which was super obnoxious when that was still unclear).

18-24 credits was fine by me. But if they were clear that although they are not going to own being a theology school, they only want people who use Biblical commentaries and not academic research articles to supplement arguments. So not cool.

Give me classes and credits where it makes sense what’s happening. A 2-credit elective class in counseling should be just as much work as a 2 credit elective class in theology. A 3-credit class in counseling should not be the work of five 2-credit electives. If there’s really such a struggle to teach electives more rigorously, consider streamlining content.

It’s unclear how to gauge 18-24 credits when there’s a mixture of classes where 2 (4) credits is not so much work and some where those same credits are a lot more work for a lot less of an academic or projected/marketed/desired program benefit.

It was also unclear how to know when an assignment would be for which credit.

True, a 1:1 credit ratio means approximately 50% of the end grade should have related in some fashion to each part of the ratio. This was actually maybe true, and because there was no standardized grading practice, I could not verify either way. All I know is that courses were inconsistent amounts of points and so was each assignment type.

With no simple or streamlined way to tell how much relative value each assignment had, it became impossible to know when missing which assignments was going to harm an overall course grade or make needing subsequent 100% scores a condition of passing.

Assignments were given point values in terms of relative significance to each other. They were not awarded points based on relative course mastery. In fact, some assignments on less relative course mastery sometimes counted (some in summation) similarly to a major assignment, which was also a realtively unclear ratio of the overall grade.

Am I now expected to not only plan a disability around course needs but also have an added challenge of not being able to tell when to prepare assignments in advance or when to pre-write some assignments in case it’s a flare up week and school is less important in the relative hierarchy of needs? Because I seemed to be.

I knew clinical programs weren’t mean to disabled students (are not supposed to be), and that often their need to have frequent high point, disparate content assignments is part of how you become prepared for licensure. I know this. I also need to know when the assignments are worth more for the end grade and how much they are worth.

I cannot plan a disability around a degree. But I can mitigate things like GPA and overall grade when I can more easily figure out the relative importance of letting an assignment be a 70% or pushing to get the 95%. A program who says there’s a 1:1 credit ratio owes their students the chance to know more about how to structure disability around courses.

Providing syllabi and course descriptions are great steps. Syllabi need to be streamlined to allow people to gauge relative importance of assignments. Points need to be made a consistent cumulative value and within consistent ranges for types of deliverable.

This allows a course to be designed with the needs of people who don’t have the ability to always get 100% grades to avoid figuring out relative grade value of an assignment or even having to print out syllabi ahead of time and write calculations on them.

Also, to not get theology degree credit for this is obnoxious. I wanted the credit.

It was so unclear why I couldn’t obtain dual credit. I was being told it wasn’t a theology program and also that the work was a 1:1 credit ratio. I was being told it wasn’t a theology program and that academic papers couldn’t be used in theology. It was disallowed to have anything other than a Biblical (or Biblical scholar’s) commentary as a source.

To me, that’s training me as a theologian, telling me the best practices of being one, asking me to engage in coursework… and then not awarding me receipt of entry.

I wanted the academic credit for doing all the theology work.

I wanted the credit for taking the time to learn what they needed.

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To me, a 1:1 credit ratio either means something or it doesn’t. Telling me that it can be up to the needs of the instructor what that looks like is obnoxious and dumb. You can’t be admitting that electives are throw-away classes by the difference in content and rigor in core courses that have almost five times as much work needed to complete them.

To me, it’s important to mention what assignments look like ahead of time, as well.

A mixture of relative importance of assignments is complicated enough when they are all up against different course point values. It’s even trickier when some courses have really hard multiple choice exams and some require a paper. It’s even more complicated when the multiple choice exam doesn’t allow for the 1:1 ratio to encompass both sides.

I don’t mind a school being two degrees at once.

I care when they don’t award credit for both and their presentation that they aren’t one isn’t reflected in the overall course content and grading policies.

Be honest about your program.

Because I would’ve been fine, if it were presented clearly.

XOXO,

Dorothy B