Texas: ICR is Disappointed, Again

The Institute for Creation Research is continuing to press to get their pseudoscience degree-granting operation set up for business in Texas. They’ve run into a stumbling-block: the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board wants degrees granted with their approval to actually be based on science. This message went out from the ICR today:

OCTOBER 30, 2008

Dear Friends:

As we indicated to you on Tuesday, ICR’s special counsel, Jim Johnson, and I
met with representatives from the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board
(THECB) in a pre-hearing mediation meeting on Wednesday. The mediation was
conducted by an administrative law judge at the State Office of Administrative
Hearings in Austin.

ICR met with the THECB prior to an official administrative hearing, in hopes
that our graduate school’s application for authority to grant Master of
Science degrees in Texas might be settled prior to any further legal
proceedings. ICR Graduate School (ICRGS) has been offering M.S. degrees from
its California campus for 27 years and last year sought to move the school to
Texas, where our research and communications work now reside.

However, this controversy was not resolved at the mediation meeting on
Wednesday.

The primary dispute turns on the regulatory interpretation of the word
“science,” with the THECB insisting that any science degree or science program
must be evolution-based-without any mixture of “religion” in the program. The
THECB went further to say that their board held ultimate responsibility to
regulate any program that issued a “standard” degree (M.S., M.A., M.Ed.,
etc.). Thus it would not be possible for ICRGS to keep its current program
even if we were to change the degree title to Master of Education, for
example.

The five THECB representatives did concur, however, that a degree program in
Christian education or apologetics was not within their jurisdiction, as long
as the degree title was not “standard” nomenclature, such as an M.C.Ed.
(Masters in Christian Education).

I want to thank you for praying for us during the meeting. The meeting was
cordial and both sides were able to clarify certain misunderstandings
regarding each other’s positions and reasons for the debate.

ICRGS will now continue the Texas administrative appeal process in order to
secure the right to offer its Master of Science degree program in Texas, as it
has been doing for 27 years in California.

Dr. Henry Morris III
Chief Executive Officer