The fine is by far the largest ever levied under the Clery Act, a law that requires colleges and universities that receive federal funding to collect data on campus crime and notify students of threats. Schools must disseminate an annual security report that includes crime reports and information on efforts to improve campus safety.
Liberty has marketed itself for years as having one of the nation’s safest campuses. The Washington Post and USA Today reported in October that preliminary findings by federal investigators described a university that discouraged people from reporting crimes and could not provide basic documentation about crime on campus.
The U.S. Department of Education said it identified numerous cases that resulted in the misclassification or underreporting of crimes. And there were several incidents that the university determined to be unfounded without any clear showing that the initial report was false or baseless.
I used to be friends with a guy who was getting a graduate degree from Liberty. He apparently only did it because he was a member of the Falwell family so the courses were free for him.
He was pursuing an “online” degree, which at the time meant that the school sent him DVDs of the lectures and he had to take quizzes and exams online. Neither of us was particularly religious, so he kind of got a kick out of showing me the highlights of the lectures on DVD.
Those lectures were … something else. It really didn’t matter what the subject matter was, biology, statistics, psychology: The first 10 - 20 minutes of all the lectures was basically a church service. There were prayers and Bible stories, things like that. There would be about 10 - 15 minutes of actual course instruction. And they would work in religion as much as possible during that time. All the examples were focused on religion, it was super weird. And then the final 10 - 20 minutes would be wrapping up with more prayers and Bible study.
The quizzes and exams weren’t much better. The “problems” were so simple that you mostly didn’t even need to read the books or watch the lecture to answer the questions. All the open ended word problem were religion/Bible oriented, very hamfisted. You almost had to make an effort to make anything less than 80% on these things.
So needless to say, I try not to judge too much, but I think about my buddy’s educational experience any time I see someone with a degree from that university.