Steven S Veach

As part of my Doctor of Theology program at Forge Theological Seminary I am completing several preliminary foundational “seminars,” including writing several articles on various topics.

This particular article focuses on the issue of latency in graduate programs and how this might be corrected. So, let’s jump in and figure out why it takes so long to get a graduate degree….

Latency in Grad Programs

Latency is defined as the time it takes from stimulus to response and this is the perfect analogy to describe the graduate process, what students typically experience in a given advanced academic program in this day and age.

Of course, given the profit motive present in much of academia, with for-profit schools littering the academic landscape and state schools seemingly taking their lead from their profit driven counterparts, it’s not surprising to find in many accredited programs, despite the marketing to the contrary, a great deal of time and activity is spent in grad school on useless and irrelevant endeavors, all in the name of this or that, but really just artifice for boosting the bottom line.

When academics like Sonja Foss, in her book Dissertation Destination, assert that a doctorate student really only need 6-9 months of work to finish a PhD, it makes me wonder why instead the quickest program I could find at accredited institutions was 2 years.

Of course, there are legitimate reasons for such latency in formal education. After all, it is a formulated system fabricated upon the best efforts of fallen and intellectually damaged individuals, all who walk the earth are plagued by persistent and repressive sin, which drives our egos, our self-obsessed natures. On top of this inherent perversion that is the human condition, there is also the issue of increasingly overworked faculty and the demand for researchers to publish or face the real threat of perishing in obscurity or losing their funding or their employment altogether. Plus, research in and of itself, is a tough business. It is a tough endeavor. Add to it the fanciful notion that all credible research is new research just lends itself to exacerbate the problem.

The reality is, it does take time to complete a research program. It takes time to develop the skills necessary to conduct effectual research, and even that is highly subjective. But, the question still nags at me: does it really take 7 years to complete a PhD in Philosophy or Theology?

Strategies to Fix the Problem

The honest answer is no. It does not require it nor should it require such a long commitment. If that’s the case, why do most graduate programs require years to complete? The single answer is: MONEY. Whether it’s free labor for your advisor in his research program in the lab or the university is reaping the rewards of having slave labor to teach undergraduates or for-profit institutions exacting exorbitant amounts of cash from your wallet because we’ve been convinced that advanced degrees are the only way to get ahead in life – they all circle around their god, Mammon.

This was a very big problem for me when I started seriously looking at grad school for the second time. The first time around I took the bait, agreed to several student loans and run up about $25,000 in debt. Before I finished with my Master’s Degree in History I would have over $40k. Luckily after the second semester I had a run-in with one of my professors about a paper I submitted. She was aggressive, insisting, despite getting straight A’s in all my other courses, that the work I was doing was not history. In fact, she just kept saying that again and again. So, after that confrontation, and the subsequent zero, I withdrew from Grad school. I didn’t realize until years later that she was arguing against my work because I was using the Bible as a historical text.

When I finally felt the overwhelming need to return, I knew I needed to not only find a school that would keep me from going into debt, but that would not hinder my research because of their secular presuppositions. The school I ended up finding was Liberty University, which offered a MA in History. I could pick up where I left off, and then go on to their PhD in Bible Exposition. But, to make a long story short, I ran into so many problems financially.

No matter how I worked the system, I could only get the price of the MA program to about $7000. The PhD program would cost another $14k. The reason? Artifice. If left to my own devices, I could design a plan of study that would finish the MA in about 6 months and the PhD in a year. But, built into their requirements were several artificial roadblocks. These obstacles had no bearing on what I would be learning or on what I needed to learn. They were simply there to slow me down, hold me up, so tuition would not fall below a certain amount. If not ham-stringed with semesters, I could finish the PhD for $7000. But, solely because of their artificial barrier, the cost was double.

Luckily, a previous Seminary I had attended several years before, invited me back to finish an alternate program (MTS instead of MDiv), which would only require a few more classes and a Comprehensive Exam. Needless to say, this opportunity saved me $7000. This school (Nations University) saved me so much because they do not put financial roadblocks in the student’s way. I was able to work as quickly as I wanted, based on competency, and I was able to finish the remaining 3 courses + exams in a single 3 month semester.

So, after I completed my MA degree, I knew I wanted to go on to a doctorate program. But, given the status of academia these days, I certainly had no desire to shell out $14k for a degree that would be utterly worthless and quite possibly a target on my back. So I started searching for an alternative.

I knew there were only a few Seminaries I would be willing to work at, and that number is getting smaller and smaller as time goes on. But, at the last minute, just before I gave up on the possibility of a doctorate at all, someone online suggested I look at Forge Theological Seminary. To my surprise, in all my searching online, I’d never come across this school before. Even more of a shock, the school was tuition free and officially stood in opposition of all the cultural insanity infecting most other seminaries today (Liberty included). So, I applied, had an interview, and was accepted into their ThD program to study Persecution and Christian Philosophy.

If I had gone to Liberty instead of these two alternatives, I would be out $21,000, have lost 3 years of my life and for what? Have two degrees that are now worthless because of my worldview and profession of faith? Even if I were to have finished my MA in History at the secular grad school years ago, I still would have had to claw and fight for even an adjunct position with no benefits, barely any pay, and a student body hostile to anything I would have to say. The world is either now very different than when I started this journey 30 years ago, or the world I thought I was agreeing to never really existed in the first place.

Regardless.

We make our own reality, right? Isn’t that the leading mantra in the modern world? So, if traditional academia was really not what I was searching for, then I needed to look elsewhere. I needed to find a Seminary (or just a place) where I could conduct my own independent research, teach (or better, mentor) students in Christian Philosophy, and do it in such a way where I was insulated from all the insanity in the world.

One place I discovered was on my own. Truly independent. I had to be really honest with myself and dig deep to unearth the fundamental desires I had to be a part of academia. Why was I driven to get a doctorate in the first place? What was I expecting out of it? Why was I drawn to teaching? Was this an abstract idea? Was I feeling guilty because I have no presumed need to be involved in the modern Church? I certainly have no call to be a pastor. I loath the idea of teaching in a Church setting. I really don’t want to be around people at all. I don’t have friends (and don’t want them). But I do LOVE to explore knowledge, to decipher, to uncover, to read and unearth the truths about God.

So, really, I want to be a monk hermit, isolated from the rest of the world, but located in a supernaturally limitless research library that has collected all human and celestial knowledge. Then it hit me. That sounds very much like what I have already – and without the direct help of academia. I have access to all knowledge with the internet. I have access to all academic journal and research via my academic account (and Sci-Hub). I’m able to pursue pure research in an area of intense interest for no cost and will get a degree that will hopefully sate the internal drive I have to finish my education.

Along the way, though, I stumbled onto a school that I found very interesting. It is a seminary that cuts through a lot of this artificial latency and allows students to learn at their own pace, provides them with quality research materials, and all for a very reduced rate (albeit not free). But I was never looking at Redemption Seminary as a school for me to attend as a student. Rather, if the school is everthing they claim it is, I would LOVE to work there.

Redemption is based on a competency format, meaning you learn the material and you work at your own pace. There are no tests, no major writing assignments. It’s actually quite an interesting institution. At your first day of study, you receive a LOGOS program with all your course materials that you get to keep. It claims it’s $23,000 worth of materials, which might be close, since the top end is $17,000 without the Mobile Ed Courses (which all their courses are based on). But, better than this, the program is divided up between course mentors and individual student mentors. So you receive a mentor that follows you all the way through the program and then for each course you select an additional mentor just for that course. You meet with your mentors once per week in each class for a 30 minute session. The mentors are in turn paid a flat rate of $200 / student / semester. If it worked out to be dependable, I could replace my current job with just 40 students per year.

Gone are the artificial roadblocks for students. Gone are the bloated administration. Then again, I lean toward independent research, operating my own school the way the Philosophers of old did – simply hang out a shingle and teach. I can do this very easily with a podcast and a blog and online courses. I don’t need administration or other faculty or all the drama and complication.

With the day and age I find myself in, it is quite fascinating how the very roadblocks that are in place to extract wealth from people are the very sparks that might just revolutionize academia – for me. Because, to be truly honest, I’m kind of an outlier, able to live out the ideas of Thoreau and Socrates, just as Jesus said, “sell all you have and come, follow me” (Matthew 19:21). Socrates lived and died on a pension which provided for his wife and a paltry subsistence. Thoreau learned in the woods that it was better to learn to live without something than to try and learn to afford it.

It is entirely possible that Redemption Seminary will not work out for any number of reasons. They may not accept my degree. They may not accept my abilities or my research. They may not accept my worldview or my objection to the insanity we find in the present culture. For as much as I think I might really enjoy it, I might much more enjoy being my own man, teaching my own students at a greater arm’s length, through screencasting and audio podcasting, or simply, in the end, through the written word. Only time will tell.

But, I do know, it will not take me 7 years to finish my doctorate degree. It will not take me 2. I hope to be finished by the end of May and have my dissertation turned in to the committee by June 1st. This is the official day I return to my camp in the woods, and make another go of the solitary life. Maybe, in the end, that will be enough, and God alone will sustain me.

Foss, Sonja and Waters, William. Destination Dissertation: A Traveler’s Guide to a Done Dissertation. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2007.