<p>LOL, there is a lot of Liberty trolling in this thread. I didn’t know there were so many alums on the internet.</p>
<p>I’ve been a long time lurker on this sub-section for months. I just had to jump in when my school (LU) was brought up. I’m usually post on City-Data and Degreeinfo.</p>
<p>I never said LU is highly selective. I said it is getting selective. It no longer is open admissions. The student profile is similar to nearby Lynchburg College which is considered “competitive” by Barrons College Guide.</p>
<p>barrons, do you work for Liberty? Almost every post you’ve made about the school reads like an excerpt from a press release.</p>
<p>Not even close. I have a retirement home in Lynchburg and know some folks there. I work in commercial real estate in Seattle but take time off in Lynchburg a few times a year. I just know stuff as I read the local paper daily. Wonders of the web.Nor am I religious in any organized fashion. More MOR republican.</p>
<p>Well, you are a huge booster. And you are good at cutting and pasting “news” from the school’s website.</p>
<p>Are you saying the news is false? Some come from the local paper but LU generally provides more details and photos.
I’m a booster because I think LU gets an unfair rap by rad liberals and it is basically a very normal group of kids trying to get educated and get a job on a budget. And it has had a huge positive financial impact on the city as Moody’s has said int their reports on the Lynch economy and outlook. Colleges are a great clean industry and city would covet.
“Higher education. Sustained growth at Liberty University and Lynchburg College will offset weakness in LYN’s other service industries. The two institutions have insulated the metro area from broader declines in recent years. The schools’ private status has precluded them from cuts to education funding, an issue afflicting other comparable Virginia metro areas Charlottesville and Blacksburg. Furthermore, Liberty’s distance learning program has the school positioned well for the future. Online programs are threatening the traditional structure of higher education, offering a less expensive and more flexible alternative to on-campus enrollment. Liberty is ahead of the curve; there are already more than 80,000 individuals enrolled in the school’s online degree programs. This student base provides revenue the school might otherwise miss, while acting as a hedge against the long-term transition in higher education” Moodys econ.com 7/13.</p>
<p>No, I am not saying the news is false (except for the “selective” part).</p>
<p>It’s nice that you see the positive impacts of the university on the Lynchburg area. My problem is that Liberty is not “just” a college teaching normal kids in normal ways. It is a place for indoctrination into extreme political-religious beliefs that, in my opinion, are not Christian at all.</p>
<p>That is your lefty media influenced opinion. On the ground it is not like that. Are they more conservative kids–pretty much. They come that way too you know. If you sit around the Starbucks near LU you don’t hear much rightwing political talk. It is vastly more serious discussion of the Bible and christian issues. Or talk about jobs and normal school stuff. Maybe you need to take a trip outside your comfort zone. The Blue Ridge is great in Fall.</p>
<p>"…It is a place for indoctrination into extreme political-religious beliefs that, in my opinion, are not Christian at all…"</p>
<p>I’ve said the same thing about Harvard and many of the Ivy Leagues, and about the majority of today’s college campuses. At least in the case of Liberty, parents and students are fully aware of the kind of indoctrination they might receive. If only Harvard were so forth-coming.</p>
<p>As far as Liberty’s open admission policy (whether former or current), why hold that against them? Community colleges are typically open admission, and open admission policies are what opened up the world of academia to the everyday man. Open admission was and is a revolutionary concept. Are there problems with open admissions? I cannot think of any, as long as schools are transparent about that policy and as long as schools hold to some kind of standard (accreditation helps with that and Liberty is an accredited institution.) A good number of community college students become our nurses, public officers, dental assistants, x-ray and lab technicians. Many transfer in to four-year universities where they end up graduating as teachers, accountants, engineers. Open admission is just that - the door is opened. What students do once they walk through the door is up to them.</p>
<p>No Liberty graduate is going to expect that their resume listing Liberty as their alma mater is going to impress an employer looking for Ivy League. But then are the majority of employers looking for Ivy League anyway? No. Even if every employer wanted a Harvard grad, there aren’t enough of them.</p>
<p>Harvard admits 2000 students a year. In 2010, there were 21 million people enrolled in colleges across the nation. Most employers are perfectly fine choosing their employees from the remaining 20,998,000. There is plenty of room in this world for Liberty graduates. Harvard grads may think they rule the world, but do they really? How could they given their relatively insignificant numbers? Sure, I know. They may run the higher eschelons of society, but they better not forget that those remaining 20,998,000 are their bread and butter.</p>
<p>I keep reading perspectives through the Christian college thread that claim that employers are going to look negatively upon a graduate of one of these schools, but I never see an actual bonafide example offered to support that view. I am sure there are some employers who do discriminate based on alma maters, along with all sorts of other factors, just as there are employers who would never hire Ivy League grads. But I see no evidence for stating that a Liberty alumnus is at some extreme level of disadvantage for having chosen to pursue a degree at Liberty.</p>
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<p>This is my point. You disagree with them because they don’t agree with your views. That’s fine - no one says any of your offspring need apply there - it’s not the correct fit. Others disagree with you and they are also allowed their fit. ;)</p>
<p>But where it goes wrong is when you continually malign the school without substance (saying graduates will be unfavored and maligning the academic education one will receive there). That’s why I step in. Liberty is not my fit either, but I do know several students who go there and none have had problems like you mention. Liberty makes Forbes top 650 colleges - a quick google search has them at #393 in private and # 636 overall. Since there are more than 3000 colleges out there, Liberty doesn’t even make the bottom half according to that business publication. It’s not the fit for everyone, but the rest of your accusations are pretty much baseless.</p>
<p>This website is devoted to helping parents and students find quality institutions of higher learning for their kids (and yes, a good “fit”). There is no other school of the caliber of Liberty that gets anywhere near the kind of attention Liberty does. Outside of barrons’ world and conservative areas of the U.S., the school has a reputation that is overwhelmingly negative. I can assure you that it is the view of educated people in major employment centers in the U.S. that Liberty is not a respectable institution. Prospective students should know this. </p>
<p>And before you blame the “lefty media,” perhaps it would be useful to blame the founder of the university who used his TV pulpit to expose millions of people to his views, or the academic leaders of the college who host controversial conferences at the school each year. You won’t find the same reaction to a Biola or Cedarville or Wheaton or Hope, because they aren’t involved in the same level of political-religious proselytizing.</p>
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<p>How can you assure us that this is true? Because you believe it or because it happens where you work? Because you heard someone else mention the same online (if it was online it HAS to be true!)? How many Liberty grads do you know personally? If it is truly so bad, why does a Business magazine rate them in their Top 650?</p>
<p>There’s really only one metric that is simple enough to apply to all schools that does a reasonably good job of determining the relative value of the ‘learnin’: Student loan default rates </p>
<p>The reasoning is that an education is an investment that warrants going into debt for (I disagree, but that’s another thread). If this is true, then the ROI for going to school should be enough to place the student in a better position after school, and able to pay back those loans. </p>
<p>If a student borrows a large amount of money but doesn’t complete the course, the probability of default goes up. </p>
<p>If a student borrows a large amount of money for a degree that is not readily accepted in the marketplace, the probability of default goes up. </p>
<p>If a student borrows money, completes the course or gains enough knowledge to increase his desirability in the market, the probability of default goes down.</p>
<p>Default rates for Universities in the US are in the link below. Liberty has a 7% default rate. As a comparison here are other Universities default rates. Baylor University 7%, Texas A & M University-College Station 5%, Texas Tech University 8%, Texas State University-San Marcos 6%, Stony Brook University 6%, SUNY at Albany 6%, California State University-Fullerton 6% and Michigan State University 4%. I just looked at random Uni’s but one could assume all Uni’s around the same rank as LU have similar default rates. </p>
<p>[Arts-Focused</a> Colleges Rack Up Most Student Debt - WSJ.com](<a href=“Arts-Focused Colleges Rack Up Most Student Debt - WSJ”>Arts-Focused Colleges Rack Up Most Student Debt - WSJ)</p>
<p>Also I think the LU number includes all the 1000s of online students who typically have higher default rates than on campus type students.</p>
<p>Thanks for that link, Curtis. A quick look shows the default rate to be very similar to other similar level secular schools. I ordered them alphabetically to more easily find schools. The school my youngest is looking at is 8%… the other two are at a 6% and 1% school respectively.</p>
<p>My pleasure Creekland. I just wanted to put a logical perspective on this subject. If one can claim LU grads are not desirable and that opinion is widespread then a source should be easy to come by. And I got to support my Alma Mater 
GO FLAMES!!!</p>
<p>Another school youngest is interested in has a 12% rate… yikes. I’m mentally moving that one down the list and hoping he feels the same way after we visit. Their stats are higher than Liberty’s (using the 2010 stats I had compiled). They also don’t make Forbes’ list, but I already knew that. Lists aren’t everything around here.</p>
<p>Check out University of Phoniex’s default rate. And any for-profit school that comes to mind.</p>
<p>I saw them - and ITT. Many trade type students choose ITT. Yikes! I actually had it sort by high default rates and went through the top 10 - 12 pages. I want to make sure I don’t recommend any of those schools - or do so with major caution. Most I had never heard of. Who knew that student loans could be used for Golf Academies???</p>