Guidelines for Alternative B - T Compliance

In recent years the ABHE leadership has been approached by member institutions with requests for greater flexibility in meeting the ABHE Bible/theology standards for accreditation. The rationale for these requests comes in a variety of forms, but, for U.S. institutions, one of the most significant arguments has been the need for better options for attracting community college graduates into Bible college programs. It has been argued that it is very difficult to plan a good program for such transfer students when they arrive with virtually no coursework in Bible or theology. This results in a situation where almost half of the required work taken with an ABHE member institution will have to be in the form of Bible or theology courses. Unfortunately, since few students are willing to enroll in such a program, our institutions lose the opportunity to impact their lives. Canadian institutions have similar issues with graduates of their technical colleges.

Throughout the history of the Association, people have acknowledged that a standard based upon “seat time” in a subject area does not really provide a good indication that the desired learning outcomes have been achieved. The current standard requires “a Bible/theology component equivalent to 30 semester hours” in curricula leading to a traditional four-year degree, particularly where the program is designed to prepare people for a church vocational ministry. The primary advantage of the standard, as written, is that it promotes “inter-rater reliability” during evaluation cycles. Evaluators can readily count hours to determine if the standard has been met. As a consequence, their conclusions regarding an institution’s compliance with the standard are quite consistent. In the past, versions of the standards actually expressed the desired outcome of the Bible/theology requirements as follows: “The major should enable the student to develop a biblical world-view that includes an appreciation for the historical and redemptive flow of the Scriptures, the ability to articulate biblical principles in relation to contemporary issues, the development of an understanding of essential theology, the mastery of the skills necessary for lifetime study of the Scriptures, and the resultant acquisition of a compassion to serve the needs of the church and to reach the lost.” Of course, this is a good description of what we are trying to accomplish through the standard. If an institution can demonstrate that these outcomes are being achieved, ABHE should be satisfied regardless of the curricular design employed to achieve the outcomes. The problem has been an inability to achieve consistency in assessing whether such outcomes have been truly achieved, particularly when the evaluative conclusion is being determined by a broad spectrum of people. Because of this inability, by default, ABHE has employed its current quantitative standard.

The Commission wrestled again with this issue at its last meeting. We are now circulating its proposal for offering an option that can be used by institutions that need an alternative to the 30 hour Bible/theology standard for some of its offerings. If the guidelines are approved, the Commission would anticipate that proposals to employ the alternative guidelines would be submitted as substantive changes for specific Commission review and approval.

The Committee on Criteria of the Commission will be considering this proposal at its forthcoming meeting. Please provide us your comments regarding these guidelines by February 1 by using the form below to comment. We will forward your comments onto the Commission members for their consideration. ABHE’s “Policy on Changes to the Association’s Policies, Procedures, and Standards” (Manual, pp, 116-117) provides for Commission adoption of these guidelines after consideration of member feedback.

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Please use the form below to submit your comments.