The notion that enrollments at theological schools rise in tough economic times did not hold true for Protestant and Catholic seminaries in North America this academic year. In fact, over the past three years, the total student population slipped about 6 percent””down to 75,500 from a three-year plateau in mid-decade when more than 80,000 students were studying theology.
“The idea of going back to school seems to have worked for U.S. education in general,” said Daniel Aleshire, executive director of the Association of Theological Schools, but not for seminaries, whose enrollment slid again in the past year about 2 percent, according to ATS data released in April.
Mainline Protestant schools have seen enrollments rise and fall over the past decade. Between the fall of 2000, when student bodies totaled 22,651, and last fall, when they had 22,068, mainline seminaries had peak years of 24,133 in 2002 and 24,024 in 2005.
[blockquote]did not hold true for Protestant and Catholic seminaries in North America this academic year.[/blockquote]
Too bad the author make a claim about Catholic seminaries and then offers no supporting facts to substantiate his claim. Other sources indicate overflowing Catholic seminaries in many locales.
Universal Church sees increase in seminarians, reports Pontifical Yearbook
http://bit.ly/95DNt7
Enrollment Is Up at Catholic Seminaries
http://nyti.ms/ctuBD0
Thanks, Timothy (#1).
I was struck by the trend for big seminaries to get an even bigger piece of the student pie. The largest 30 seminaries, making up only 12% of all theological schools in the ATS, account for half of all students. This is similar to the steady trend for very large churches (ASA of 2K or more) to attract more and more of the worshippers on any given Sunday.
It’s sheer speculation on my part, but three key words that may help explain that clear preference for big seminaries might be: Quality, Options, and Efficiency. The big schools generally offer higher quality, more options, and yet do so at a lower cost per seminarian than the small schools could ever hope to match.
I’m also struck that on the Protestant side anyway, the largest 13 seminaries in North America are all conservative, led by huge Fuller (with over 4K students), and two big SBC schools: SW in Ft. Worth and Southern in Louisville (both with about 2.5K), followed by Dallas (about 2K) and Gordon-Conwell (about 1.9K).
This article doesn’t mention them, but I’d bet that also among those biggest 13 are the two LC-MS seminaries, Concordia in St. Louis and the sister school with the same name in Ft. Wayne, IN. TEC tried to keep lots of little seminaries going, 11 of them just a few years ago. But that has proven unsustainable, especially since they lack denominational funding. I think the Missouri Synod idea is better; consolidation makes sense.
I’m also intrigued that Fuller now has SEVEN (yes, 7) regional or satellite campuses. No wonder they’ve grown so big.
The whole field of theological education and training for ministry is obviously in deep turmoil and massive flux. I think the only thing about the future that’s certain is that the way we train clergy tomorrow will look very different than the way we did it yesterday or are doing it today.
David Handy+