quick and cheap.
"There's money to be made in shrinking the synod with Church Growth methods."
Lutheran Notes
Friday, June 20, 2008
Dr Jackson Was Right About Shrinking Enrollments at LCMS Seminaries
I was curious about what the enrollment was at Concordia Ft. Wayne and St. Louis these last few years. That's because from reading the LCMS news releases, I got the impression that enrollment was going down. However, when Dr. Jackson stated he assumed that the "fatal enrollment figures" would spell the end of Ft. Wayne eventually, Rev. Scott Stiegemeyer, the Director of Admissions at Ft. Wayne Concordia Theological Seminary chimed in with a comment that the new matriculations were up--as though the thrust of Dr. Jackson's argument were somehow wrong.
After doing some checking, Dr. Jackson is correct after all. While Ft. Wayne's first-year class in 2007 might have sustained a slight bump in numbers, as Stiegemayer noted, the overall trend is that both seminaries have shrinking enrollments. Morover, even in 2007 Ft. Wayne's total enrollment is down nine from the previous year, and down eighteen from four years previous (year 2003). So the slight bump in enrollment at Ft Wayne in 2007 in no way offset the trend of shrinking enrollments there.
The fact that Ft. Wayne's enrollment is down even though their matriculates are up in 2007 means either the graduating class was larger than the incoming class, or the overall dropout rate increased. Also, the fact that the number of pre-seminary students in the Concordia University System (CUS) is shrinking means seminary enrollments will continue to decrease in the foreseeable future. The LCMS synod's site said in 2007:
...the recent decline in the number of students enrolled in the pre-seminary programs at the CUS schools is not a positive trend for future seminary enrollment.
The pre-seminary enrollment in CUS schools in 2007 was 326, and in 2006 was 368, when the average from 2001-2005 was 424 students. That's nearly a hundred-student, or nearly one-quarter, drop.
Given the fact that pre-seminary and seminary enrollments are dropping, the fact that the LCMS seminaries cannot meet their financial aid goals--thereby saddling lots of unexpected federal student loan debt on seminarians, and the fact that LCMS seminaries charge students two to three times as much as other synods' seminaries do, means it is hard to justify the LCMS maintaining two seminaries at two separate campus with all the extra overhead and redundancy entailed.
Having said that, this whole situation also reminds me of another issue--the lack of transparency on the synodical level and how synodical officials keep their cards close to their chests. Rev. Stiegemeyer is a LCMS synodical official, and because he didn't like the fact that Dr. Jackson was telling the truth about the LCMS seminaries, he decided to insert a misleading statistic that was hard to verify or rebut. (One cannot easily find by Googling, or searching LCMS websites, the year-by-year enrollments of the seminaries, much less find the current year's enrollment.)
The lack of transparency that allows synodical insiders to abuse hard-to-verify-or-rebut statistics in order to lord it over outsiders reminds me of how the KFUO listenership was trumpeted to the synod via convention reports, but when Kieschnick didn't like what he heard on KFUO, all of a sudden KFUO's audience numbers were reported as being next to nil using unverifiable statistics. I have more on that at this post.
Below is data that I gleaned from the Web regarding seminary and pre-seminary enrollments. This compilation of data, and much more, should be easily found on one LCMS web page instead of scattered around the Web, but of course, that will never happen because it would be a step toward transparency in the LCMS.
Table: LCMS Seminary Enrollments According to the Accrediting Agency ATS & Change in Number of Students from 2003-4 Base (click image to enlarge table)
[GJ - The table is visible at the original blogsite or just click here.]
In the above table, I figured out the percent of pre-sem students who eventually attended seminary by taking one year's total of pre-sem students and comparing it to the number of pre-sem students who attended the seminary the next four years.
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Pastor Scott Stiegemeyer, Director of Admissions at Ft. Wayne Concordia Seminary
http://www.blogger.com/profile/16673629123931502344
https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=4731298128368779466&postID=3769893275290592817&isPopup=true&pli=1
Pastor Scott Stiegemeyer said...
"The fatal enrollment figures at Concordia (probably at both of them)..."
Wrong. Actually, in Sept 2007, CSL declined from about 120 the previous year to 98. CTS-FW increased from 68 the previous year to 80.
April 23, 2008 2:16 PM
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Date 15 Nov 2000 18:10:57
LCMS enrollment, church-work student numbers highest ever
Excerpt: The figure of 3,048 church-work students at the 10 Concordia University System schools is 131 (or 4.5 percent) higher than for the 1999-2000 school year, which was about 2 percent less than for 1998-99. The number of pre-seminary students is 422, up almost 22 percent from the 347 at this time last year.
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LCMS Colleges and Seminaries Post Record Enrollments, 8 Nov 2001
Excerpt: This school year, there are 3,043 total church-work students at the olleges and universities, five fewer than a year ago. The number of pre-seminary students at the schools stands at 446, up 44 [sic--should be just 4] from last year and 99 more than two years ago.
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CUS Enrollment Reaches Record Levels in 2003-04
Excerpt: The number of pre-seminary students decreased to 413 – a decrease of 18 compared to last fall [i.e. from 431], but an increase of 66 (19%) over 1999.
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[LCMSNews] Fall 2003 CUS, seminary enrollments, 30 Oct 2003
Excerpt: At the two seminaries, 882 men are enrolled in programs leading
to ordination, which is 56 more than last fall. The college and universities reported 413 pre-seminary students, compared with 431 a year ago.
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Tuesday, November 01, 2005
LCMS E-NEWS: Good News, Bad News
The number of students studying for church careers is down by 137, or 5 percent, since fall 2004, continuing a four-year trend. This year's 2,613 church-work students include 1,439 teachers, 426 pre-seminary, 404 directors of Christian education, 182 lay ministers, 57 directors of family life ministry, 38 directors of parish music, 34 directors of Christian outreach, and 33 deaconesses.
Meyer cites the shrinking pool of high-school students in general, combined with a reluctance on the part of today's young people to choose what are typically low-paying careers in a "church body that is divided by conflict."
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Graduate programs push `headcount` at Synod colleges to record, Dec. 4, 2006
excerpt: This year's 2,406 church-work students include 1,302 teachers (down 137), 368 pre-seminary (down 58), 420 directors of Christian education (up 16), 29 directors of Christian outreach (down 5), 27 deaconesses (down 6), 169 lay ministers (down 13), 31 directors of parish music (down 7), and 60 directors of family life ministry (up 3).
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12.3.2007 LCMS News
Excerpt: This year's 2,237 church-work students include 1,294 teachers (down 8), 356 directors of Christian education (down 64), 326 pre-seminary (down 42), 152 lay ministers (down 17), 35 directors of family life ministry (down 25), 33 directors of parish music (up 2), 21 deaconesses (down 6), 20 directors of Christian outreach (down 9).
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Prospective Seminary Students, (LCMS bulletin) no date
Students Graduating from Concordia University System Schools
The LCMS seminaries have been blessed to receive approximately half of their students from the Concordia University System (CUS) schools in recent decades.
Most of these students graduate from a CUS school and enroll at one of the LCMS seminaries in the same year. The recent data for these students are:
(follow link for table)
Given this data, the recent decline in the number of students enrolled in the pre-seminary programs at the CUS schools is not a positive trend for future seminary enrollment. The data for this decline are:
(follow link for table)
A decline in the population of pre-seminary program students at the CUS schools will have a direct impact on enrollment at the two LCMS seminaries.
Second-Career Students
The recent downturn in the nation's economy and the rise in the amount of educational expenses that must be covered by the student(s) has resulted in a recent and significant decline in the number of second-career students who are seeking enrollment at the the two LCMS seminaries. The data for this decline are as follows:
(follow link for table)
Project Seminarian Support II: A Reference Document
Excerpt:
Financial Support Led to Significant Enrollment Increases
Annual increases in first year enrollments were accelerated at both seminaries in the first several years of the promised tuition support. At the end of the fifth year, total enrollment for the two institutions was up about 40% over levels at the start. But as adjustments were made in tuition coverage, or conditions affecting their impacts, there were in some years pull- back in new enrollment levels. Then, from 2003 to 2005, combined new student enrollment dropped 33%, back to approximate levels before the enhanced tuition support program began. The number of graduates from the two institutions combined, in 2006, was 172, significantly below the number of pastors currently retiring annually. The substantial increases in enrollments for the first several years and the enrollment declines in recent years with increases in net tuition costs indicate significant student sensitivity to changes in net tuition levels.
With increases in enrollments and tuition, financial challenges now exceed the seminaries' capacity to meet promised levels of tuition offsets as well as cover the institutions’ operating costs. By the end of 2003-04 year, both institutions had exhausted reserve resources. In the two years ended June 30 2005, current income at both institutions was insufficient to cover operating costs.
At present, both seminaries are dependent for financial support on a relatively small membership base. For example, in the case of Concordia St. Louis, financial support is received from just 6% of LCMS households.
Concordia St Louis is expanding its Development staff in an effort to cope with the funding challenges. This entails church visits and personal solicitations throughout the United States. A separate problem is that both seminaries are handicapped by the limited communication contacts with LCMS membership. Members' access to seminary and Synodical publications and readership of them also are relatively low. Thus, there is a serious awareness deficit among the presently non-contributing (LCMS) members.
***
GJ - Seminary tuition charges are criminal in light of the way pastors are treated. The divine call is meaningless to District Popes. The fact remains - Lutheran populations are shrinking overall. The Wisconsin sect is closing and merging congregations rapidly. An ELS veteran wonders how long the aging denomination will last with only two larger congregations.
One LCMS pastor wrote me that he would no longer recommend his denomination's seminaries or a vocation in the ministry.
St. Louis may pick up a few students like Paul Kelm, from WELS, who earned his DMin at Concordia Seminary, St. Louis.
