My Adventures in Free, Unaccredited & Other Atypical Graduate Programs: Northwestern Theological Seminary

Northwestern Theological Seminary seems to be accredited by an unknown Christian entity and a random former DEA officer. Their website looks like a bad attempt at a diploma mill website circa 1996. It promises the possibility of a 90-day PhD and other too-good-to-be true claims. How bad is it really, though? Well, it depends.

Transfer Credit

Northwestern Theological Seminary has an agreement with Christian Leaders Institute, which helped me significantly reduce the credit hours needed for the Master of Divinity degree. Typically a 90 hour degree, it only required 46 with 25 tied to thesis and its proposal. The transfers were seemingly acceptable, albeit I question if one could count the CLI credits as graduate level.

The 7 classes all required reading a significant textbook or other book. 6 classes required a paper of greater than 10 pages and one required a 6 page paper. Each class also required writing questions and answers pertaining to the book. In all, about 600 pages of reading and 20 pages of writing seems about average for the courses. No other instruction received, but the selections of books were generally good.

The thesis I wrote contained about 180 pages of body text with another 80 pages of references, tables, appendices, title page, table of contents, etc. The thesis was academically suitable and it was approved without issue. I…