SC GOP schools chief nominee Ellen Weaver has earned master’s degree, university confirms

South Carolina’s Republican state superintendent candidate Ellen Weaver has completed the necessary coursework to receive a master’s degree in educational leadership, a spokesman for Bob Jones University said Tuesday.

Weaver, an ardent school choice proponent whose lack of academic credentials has opened her up to criticism throughout the campaign, needs a master’s to meet the minimum qualifications of the position she seeks.

By law, the state’s top schools official must, at minimum, possess a master’s degree and “substantive and broad-based experience” in public education or financial management.

Weaver, a conservative think tank leader and past chairman of the state’s Education Oversight Committee, enrolled in a self-paced online master’s program at Bob Jones University in Greenville this past spring with the intention of completing it before Election Day.

The flexible 33-credit program, which is tailored to people pursuing leadership roles in Christian education and promises to equip students to “be an excellent leader in a Christian school context,” allows students to listen to lectures, participate in discussions and take quizzes and tests on their own schedule, according to the university’s website.

Weaver announced Friday that “by God’s grace (and with a LOT of hard work)” she had completed her degree requirements.

“To everyone who has supported me through this intense process: THANK YOU for your love and prayers,” Weaver wrote on her personal Facebook page. “To everyone who said (or was hoping) that I couldn’t do it: THANK YOU for the extra motivation.”

Randy Page, Bob Jones University’s chief of staff, confirmed Tuesday that Weaver had finished her master’s coursework.

“Ellen Weaver has completed all the academic requirements for the Master of Science in Educational Leadership from Bob Jones University,” Page said in a statement Tuesday afternoon. “Weaver’s diploma will be presented on Friday, December 16, 2022, but she has completed all requirements and earned her Master of Science degree.”

BJU accused of bias

Critics have accused Bob Jones University of letting Weaver cut corners in order to complete her coursework in six months, ahead of the election.

The university, which no longer advertises the program’s 12-to-18-month time to completion on its website, has denied it gave Weaver special treatment and said her timeline for completing a master’s in educational leadership was neither unprecedented nor unusual.

“We would do for any student what we have done for her,” Page said earlier this year. “Any student can take multiple classes, any student can do it as accelerated or as slowly as they would like to.”

Weaver’s ties to the private Christian evangelical university, where she earned a bachelor’s degree 21 years ago, have also fueled speculation that her degree is tainted.

Multiple Bob Jones employees have donated to Weaver’s campaign, including the school’s director of admissions and enrollment, and President Steve Pettit in April posted a picture of Weaver in his home with a message encouraging voters to cast a ballot for her in the Republican primary.

Page, an active member of the state Republican Party and donor to Weaver’s campaign, has declined to answer specific questions about Weaver’s enrollment and degree progress, citing the Family Education and Privacy Rights Act, or FERPA, a federal law that prohibits educational institutions from disclosing student education records without their consent.

The university has not explained why Weaver apparently was permitted to enroll in spring classes well past the registration deadline or embark on a capstone research project — which the university course catalog specifies should be the last class students take — during her first semester and without completing a prerequisite.

In early June, Weaver’s former campaign manager Ryan Gillespie said she’d already begun working on her research project studying how different approaches to discipline impacted academic, safety and other school outcomes.

When asked whether Weaver had gotten permission to start the project early — the class wasn’t offered until the fall — and waive a prerequisite course and a requirement that students teach in a K-12 classroom while conducting the research, Gillespie never responded.

Weaver said in an interview with The State newspaper Tuesday that she’d actually started on the capstone in August, after completing the prerequisite the prior semester, but had not conducted the research in a classroom setting.

“My understanding from Bob Jones is that they have had a number of students who have not actually been in the school environment in a professional capacity and that this is a standard thing they allow those students to do,” she said.

According to Bob Jones’ website, “students must be teaching in a traditional K-12 classroom” during the semester the research capstone is taken. The capstone course offered this past August is scheduled to run from Aug. 29 to Dec. 10, according to the university’s website.

Weaver said Tuesday that she’d already completed her project, which she described as a “very extensive” research paper on school discipline.

She said she’d worked incredibly hard to complete her degree in six months and hadn’t cut any corners or received any special dispensation from the university.

“Bob Jones is a well-respected, accredited institution and it just defies common sense to think that they would jeopardize their academic integrity over a single degree,” she said. “People are looking to hit me because they don’t frankly have anything else to go after, so they’re trying to make an issue when there isn’t one.”

The Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges, or SACSCOC, an accrediting body for degree-granting institutions of higher education in the southern United States, nonetheless caught wind of the allegations that Bob Jones University had violated its policies in dealing with Weaver and opened an investigation into the matter in early July.

More than three months later, the organization said it was still reviewing the case and had no additional information it could report.

The commission’s spokeswoman Janea Johnson said Monday that the accrediting body had asked Bob Jones for information but declined to say whether the university had provided the material it requested.

Page said Tuesday he couldn’t immediately respond to questions about the investigation because the university employees he’d need to consult were out of the office due to fall break.

Even if the investigation turns up no wrongdoing by the university, the fact that Weaver’s degree won’t be conferred until December could still prompt a legal challenge.

State law requires that political parties only certify candidates who will meet the necessary qualifications “by the time of the general election, or as otherwise required by law.”

The 2018 law that established education qualifications for the state superintendent does not specify a time by which candidates must meet those requirements, simply that they must meet them.

If someone were to challenge Weaver’s qualifications after the November election, assuming she defeats her Democratic opponent Lisa Ellis, the courts likely would decide the matter, State Election Commission deputy executive director Chris Whitmire said.

Weaver said Tuesday she would be in full compliance with the law by the time she’d be sworn into office in January.

“I will not only have completed the coursework, but will have the diploma in hand,” she said. “And I promise it will have a very prominent place on my wall when I have it.”