Steve Levicoff's Name It and Frame It? New Opportunities in Adult Education and How to Avoid Being Ripped Off by 'Christian' Degree Mills (4th ed., 1995) listed Patriot Bible University as a degree mill.[1] The college has varied its policies over the years, but it has been criticized for awarding students degrees based on questionable standards such as "life experience" or "ministry evaluation" that lack academic rigour and merit. It also is criticized for issuing advanced degrees in months rather than years, and for charging a monthly fee (most universities charge a per-credit fee). The school's catalog contains course descriptions but no listing of the school's faculty or their credentials.

The university is not accredited by any recognized accreditation associations of higher learning. It is recognized by the American Accrediting Association of Theological Institutions, which has no recognition from the United States Department of Education or any other government educational organization.[9] The AAATI is itself considered an accreditation mill.[1] The group provides approval to schools for a $100 charge.[1]

Much of the criticism of Patriot is leveled at the controversial creationist evangelist Kent Hovind, who received M.A. and Ph.D. degrees at Patriot in 1989 and 1991 respectively, both in Christian Education.[2][11] Hovind's use of the title "Doctor" in particular has provoked extensive scrutiny of his education credentials and his dissertation.[2]

Doctoral dissertations from reputable institutions are published by the awarding institution and generally lodged with university libraries, as well as being made available to other scholars conducting research in similar areas. However, Patriot will not supply copies of Hovind's doctoral dissertation except with his permission.[12] Although one copy of the dissertation is on file at the National Center for Science Education (NCSE) the organization is not able to provide it on request because of copyright and distribution restrictions.

Various criticisms have been made of Hovind's dissertation, including charges of incompleteness, low academic quality, poor writing, poor spelling, and ungrammatical style.(12)(13) People who have read his dissertation say it is "incomplete," not of academic standard, poorly written, and contains the grammatical errors of a high school level student. The lack of quality was described, in part, by the fact that "the pages are not numbered; there is no title; of sixteen or so chapters in the index only the first four are finished; misspellings are rampant ("Immerged" for emerged and "epic" for epoch are two examples); and the single illustration was apparently cut out of a science book with scissors and fastened to the thesis with glue or tape." [12][2][13][3]