Bob Jones University

Date: Jan 18 2010
Major: Communications (This Major's Salary over time)
I would not attend if I could do everything all over again. I would not send my children there. I would not recommend that anyone's children go there. The faculty were friendly and helpful, I'll give them that. But the overall atmosphere was horrible. A consistent atmosphere of suspicion and distrust pervades the place and students are either: self-righteous and full of themselves, timid and afraid they're going to do something wrong without realizing it, or friendly and unaware of the things that are being done around them in the name of religion.

The university talks a good game, their promotional efforts are usually first class and very convincing. Had I not gone there myself, I would not believe many of the things that actually happen there. All of the promotion and self-aggrandizement sound great, and even the visit times that are scheduled for potential students are carefully crafted to maintain that clean-cut image. It took me two years as a student to be able to figure out what was going on. At that point, I had already invested $25K+ and with credits that couldn't transfer, I felt that I would lose too much if I didn't finish the degree.

Come to find out, most degrees are more or less useless if you're planning on applying to grad school at any reputable university, because Bob Jones University is not accredited by a regional accrediting board. They brag about being accredited through TRACS, but TRACS is a national accrediting body which does not have the same standards as the regional agencies. In fact, TRACS is an accrediting body that was created by a group of Christian educational companies. It has no formal academic basis, per se, it is mostly designed to accept groups that would otherwise be unable to be accredited by normal accrediting agencies. While BJU crows about their TRACS accreditation, it is worthless in the sense of any other accreditation standard. As I said before, nearly all reputable grad schools will not accept BJU degrees, and many employers will also consider the BJU entry on a resume in a less than positive light.

BJU, as an institution, engages in some truly bizarre twisting of the Bible in the name of Fundamentalism. The religious standards are often in conflict with themselves, and the general solution to dealing with problems among the students are to create new rules, many of which are never written down. The contract that an entering student signs states that the student agrees to abide by all rules of the University. However, you don't get to read the handbook until you have already gotten on campus (meaning you would lose your deposits and most-likely some of the tuition you had already paid if you read the handbook and decided not to agree with it [i.e. to withdraw]). What's worse is that so many rules are intentionally not included in the handbook because the administration knows that if all rules were printed and clearly delineated, many student would choose to leave. There is a thick veil of secrecy over much of what the Administration does, and despite a new president being named a few years ago and a number of rules publicly dropped, very little has actually changed for those on the inside.

The faculty are, indeed, some of the friendliest around, but the dirty little secret is that they are ridiculously underpaid (it should be a crime…) and they are overworked, mostly to keep them from having too much time to think about how they are being gouged. Only after faculty manage to leave do they realize how they were controlled, manipulated, and spiritually abused. I say that having talked with a number of faculty/staff, not just from any one source.

All in all, BJU talks a good game and looks pretty, but there are a million and one reasons not to subject yourself and children to what goes on there. I'll sum it up with what a fellow classmate said after having graduated from BJU. When asked what he had learned at BJU, he replied: "BJU taught me how to be a better liar."