Following a tip sent to us by an Apprising Ministries reader we bring to your attention that The Chronicle of Higher Education is reporting:

A conversation between a student and a senior administrator at Cedarville University, which the student secretly recorded, suggests that the university’s termination of two tenured professors was timed to avoid marring the Ohio Baptist institution’s accreditation process last year.

In the recording, Robert W. Milliman, Cedarville’s academic vice president, says that last spring’s review by the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools’ Higher Learning Commission was a factor in the university’s decision to issue contracts to David Hoffeditz and David Mappes, two tenured professors in the biblical-studies department, for the 2007-8 academic year. The professors were subsequently given notice of termination by the university in early July, after the accreditation was completed.

“We did not want to take these actions before our accreditation,” Mr. Milliman says in the recording. “Because we felt … if everybody’s stirred up, there’s going to be this problem with accreditation”… (Online source)