ELCA Can Learn from the LCMS System

bruce-church (http://bruce-church.myopenid.com/) has left a new comment on your post "Second ELCA Seminary To Merge, WELS and Missouri C...":

The ELCA needs to learn and implement the LCMS solution to keeping two seminaries with bloated faculties open with a minimum of M Div students. First, have alternative routes to the ministry to gain a sufficient number of paying students, and second, demand a minimum of 137 or 139 credit hours for a M.Div, and raise the tuition and fees to the same as that of prestigious schools like Yale Seminary. As it is now, PLTS only demands a paltry 90 hours, only 18 more credit hours than the 72 the accrediting agency demands for a MDiv. Also, make sure not to tell the alternative route students that they are probably doing enough coursework that they could obtain a MDiv if they had attended other seminaries:

Pacific Lutheran Theological School Handbook:
www.plts.edu/docs/student_handbook.pdf

excerpt: The MDiv degree program consists of 90 credit hours of academic courses.

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GJ - Famed plagiarist and former Concordia St. Louis prez Johnson told me, "A Missouri degree is not worth much outside the Missouri Synod." He had a ThD from Missouri (like Scaer) and earned a PhD from St. Louis U.

Any seminary degree is almost worthless in the job market. An academic version of the MDiv (for example, at Yale) can get someone into top PhD program in various disciplines.

An MDiv from Mequon means the potential doctoral student will need to take a year of make-up classes, the way John (Sparky) Brenner did, before being allowed into a state university program.

Try not to smile when a Sausage Factory graduate brags about his superior education. No one else seems to agree.