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From Bruce Chuch, Ichabod Research Department:
Summary: The LCMS seminaries have the highest overhead per student of all the accredited Lutheran seminaries in America, in part due to an inadequate endowment fund. However, much of the overhead is a result of choices the LCMS seminaries and synod have made. First and foremost is the facilities overcapacity. One seminary on one campus would more than suffice for the needs of the LCMS (allowing for the expansion of classroom buildings and dormitories, of course). Secondly, there is the over-payment of professors at Concordia St. Louis, which campus has the highest tuition rates, by the way. Third, the federal government deems the LCMS seminaries to be in great financial shape, better off than most of the ELCA seminaries, and they of course charge much lower tuition. In other words, the LCMS seminaries could afford to lower their tuition quite a bit without losing their OK credit rating with the government, and without going broke.
Discussion: In the spreadsheet and charts, I have called overhead any
cost not associated with professor salaries. However, if one wished, one could
add to overhead the amount that he or she estimates the Concordia Seminary St.
Louis professors are overpaid. When professor salaries are subtracted from
tuition, a LCMS seminary student is paying $21,500 for overhead per year, twice
as much as all the ELCA seminary students, except at one seminary. The fiscally
troubled Philadelphia ELCA seminary still has $5,000 less overhead per student
than the LCMS seminaries. Philadelphia also has the highest tuition and fees of
any ELCA seminary, but its yearly tuition still trails $5,000 behind the LCMS
seminaries.
The professor salary ($89,483) at Concordia Seminary, St. Louis, is $22,923
more than the average ($66,560) holding at the nine other Lutheran seminaries
listed. Its associate professor salary ($71,201) is $14,287 more than the
average ($56,914) at the other seminaries. The assistant professor salary
($59,830) is $5,410 more than the average ($54,420) at the other seminaries. If
the amount of this over-payment of professors were factored into the overhead
cost, the overhead cost per student at the LCMS seminaries would be even
greater.
Links of Interest:
With church membership dwindling and more families struggling to afford the
cost of college, many private religiously-affiliated colleges and universities
are slashing tuition and offering incentives to attract new students -- and to
stay afloat.
Concordia Seminary FAQ on its high tuition--It's all your fault!
Dept of Ed Rates Private Seminaries and Colleges for Fiscal
Soundness:
or download 2009-10 report here: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/34974726/0910CompositeScores.xls
ELCA Seminary Fiscal News:
http://www.elca.org/Growing-In-Faith/Vocation/Lutheran-Partners/Complete-Issue/100102/100102_03.aspx
This report's spreadsheet and charts can be found here:
Seminary Tuition Scandal:
6 comments:
Comic mentions LCMS seminaries involvement in the LCMS birth dearth, and St. Catharines Concordia Seminary coming to the rescue:
The LCMS Birth Dearth: A Report
http://ichabodthegloryhasdeparted.blogspot.com/2011/12/lcms-birth-dearth-report.html
For salaries, go to matchcollege.com, or see the links in the spreadsheet (link at bottom of post):
http://www.matchcollege.com/college/206215/Trinity-Lutheran-Seminary/OH
On Trinity Lutheran Seminary's website (ELCA, Columbus, Ohio), it says its finances are great compared to other ELCA seminaries, but the Federal Financial Responsibility Score puts it as the least financially solvent of all the ELCA seminaries (see chart above). With a score of 0.6, the feds require it to jump through more hoops in order to disburse financial aid:
http://www.tlsohio.edu/financial-portrait
Financial Portrait
Snippet: Trinity Lutheran Seminary has a long standing reputation for fiscal responsibility, living within our means, and making a conscious decision to refrain from incurring debt. Trinity is the only ELCA seminary that has no debt and deferred maintenance. This places our school in a strong position for the future...
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The average Concordia Seminary St. Louis professor earns $22,923 more than the average professor at nine other Lutheran seminaries in the US. That drives up the tuition and fees costs for M Div students, and their student loan bill. This is especially bad because in 2011 the Budget Control Act said that graduate student loans would accrue interest from the day they were taken out. Now, it turns out, pastors can't even have their student loans forgiven after 10 years like other NPO workers:
Pastors deemed not to qualify for public service student loan forgiveness program
http://steadfastlutherans.org/?p=21548
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http://www.lcms.org/page.aspx?pid=651
Public Service Loan Forgiveness
Public Service Loan Forgiveness forgives federal student loan debt after 10 years or 120 qualifying payments for people working in certain public service jobs. To qualify for forgiveness, a borrower must make the right type of payments (Income-Based Repayment, Income-Contingent Repayment, or a 10-year standard payment) on the right type of loan (federal Direct Loan) while working in the right type of job (government, nonprofit, etc.). www.IBRinfo.org, is a leading source of consumer information about the programs.
The "Stand Firm" blog has a post on faculty salaries of LCMS and WELS educational institutions. Apparently they do not want to compare themselves to the ELCA, for that would show just how overpaid they are as a group--to the tune of 23 grand per year overpaid.
Unfortunately, Scott Diekmann asks the wrong question. He asks whether the salaries are equitable. In other words, do Concordia St. Louis professors deserve more pay than any other average LCMS professor at Ft. Wayne, or at any of the Concordia university campuses? The real question ought to be: Are the salaries sustainable?
I think the clear answer to the latter question is "no" since the LCMS already had to come up with alternate routes to the ministry since the LCMS M Div degree is overly intensive and expensive. Also, more students then ever are taking the alternative routes since they find the M Div route is so prohibitive, in part due to excessive salaries for faculty members who only work 9 or so hours a week. Recently, SP Harrison said that the LCMS was in danger of hurting a core strength which is having a big pool of M Divs, and is in danger of SMPing the residential M Div program to death:
Faculty Salaries at Lutheran Institutions: Are They Equitable?
http://stand-firm.blogspot.com/2012/08/faculty-salaries-at-lutheran.html
related post:
SynConference Lutherans Are Starting To Realize the Facts Published on Ichabod.
The Glory Has Departed But Not the Debt, August 13, 2012:
http://ichabodthegloryhasdeparted.blogspot.com/2012/08/synconference-lutherans-are-starting-to.html
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