Just a few relatively salient points I would like to bring up in regards to this latest bit of propaganda that made its way through the mail stream:
And to continue that thought, there are also large numbers of Baby Boomers that aren’t retiring fast enough, embedded like bloated ticks in apparently lifetime positions of District Presidents, MLC/WLS professors, Area Lutheran High School teachers, etc. Some of these guys are so far removed from actual field ministry that their advice/instruction is practically meaningless. Besides, seemingly these high schools have to have at least 6 pastors on staff if not more, otherwise who would teach English and coach football? Certainly not the fully trained teacher graduates from our teaching college in New Ulm.
Wouldn’t a far more radical idea to combat “shortages” be to set term limits on District Prezes, place conditions on professor calls that they have to get back into the parish for a year every three years or so, and perhaps ending the practice of calling pastors to coach volleyball or teach Social Studies? I know that this is shocking outside of the box thinking here.
Under Financial Aid
“Since 2015, 75 percent of MLC students have graduated with debt averaging $25,000.”
Yes, colleges are cash sinkholes indeed. In this, MLC is not an exception. However, MLC is also a limited scope college with practically no job opportunities outside of the restricted field these students are training for. If these students, after all practical consideration, still want to go to MLC to get trained for the teaching/preaching ministry, then I have no qualms about that. Buyer beware and all those clichés, after all.
But perhaps simply here is a way to eliminate student debt: actually provide these graduates with full time positions in ministry instead of handing them one-year calls. Close to 50% of MLC graduate call lists over the past five years consist of grads getting one-year placements. One year. So they spent four/five years in New Ulm and the best during this “shortage” is to provide a temp gig? A temp gig that guarantees no permanent assignment? A temp gig that after 365 days could result in no income stream to pay back these student loans because there isn’t really a shortage, just more than likely bad personnel management on the part of the synod?
Any potential MLC students, please take this advice: Skilled trades are not the enemy here. You can be a faithful Christian and still be a welder or an electrician or a plumber or etc. Ultimately, anything is better than the uncertainty of a one-year call, if you even get that. After four/five years and 5 figures worth of school debt, you still basically have to intern at a church/school that might or might not keep you. So if you enjoy eggshell living, then MLC is the place for you. And remember: there are positions that need to be found for the next graduating class behind you. And at best you’re just a barely remembered memory by the time next year’s May comes rolling around…
Under Facilities
“We need to update our students’ living and learning environments, and we need to avoid overcrowding…construct a new residence hall: Luther Heights…a second facility is the 36,000 square foot Knight Center, which will help us meet the pressing needs of our physical education department and athletic programs…both will enhance our recruitment efforts…we function in a competitive marketplace as we help high school students consider MLC…”
Oh boy. So much to digest and yet throw up on here. Let’s start at the beginning though. They need to avoid overcrowding. Overcrowding. Hm. Yet earlier in this same missive I read “we simply don’t have enough candidates to replace” the aforementioned Baby Boomers. The obvious conclusion is that retiring Boomers must be feeling nostalgic so they’re taking up dorm space in New Ulm to live out their golden years in a Minnesotan paradise. Because that’s the only reason where MLC could be short of candidates and yet worry about overcrowding!
You either don’t have enough people or you have too many, but you can’t have it both ways. Of course the cynical voice might say, “Well you have too many students to take tuition money from, but not enough to actually stick out there in the field because there aren’t enough full-time vacancies” but I won’t say that. The call lists say that already.
Besides, the campus used to have another dorm out there: Luther Manor. Yes, how quickly we forget. And yet it was shut down so the Early Learning Center could be made. So you had a dorm, but MLC shuttered it…because…there weren’t enough…students. Ahem.
And you also want to blow cash on a new athletic facility? I must ask the honest question: who goes to MLC for the sporting programs? You are not Duke or Alabama or even Minnesota State. You are a college for ministry. Yes, you have Phys Ed majors for proper Dodgeball ministries out there, but beyond that, why bother? Are there five-star recruits lingering out there that you are recruiting for your barely Division 6½ school?
The college already blew millions on an unnecessary chapel that was shoved down our throats because apparently nobody watched
The Bishop’s Wife to know that you don’t need an overblown edifice for worship. Yet a chapel, no matter how overstated, at least relates to ministry. A football team (yes even one from Green Bay) has nothing to do with the work at hand that students are there for. If the school wants to organize intramurals, great. But, like the chapel, this is an incredible amount to whiz down one’s leg for students that don’t exist on the campus anyway.
Finally, as far as “enhancing recruitment efforts” go, pardon me as I chuckle dismissively. The vast majority of your students didn’t need to be “recruited” in the traditional sense whatsoever. They had it in their minds for years, probably since grade school, that they were going to MLC. They were sincere or naïve or had a parent that was a pastor/teacher or saw that staff ministry was an easy way to not get a job and filled out the application form back in 7th grade without delay.
I mean, c’mon. Was there any real competition from other schools with the lion’s share of these students? Were they going to switch faiths because that sorta-ELCA college had a better coffee house on campus? Besides we all know that first you go to MLC, then to WLS, then to Fuller to get your almost sorta “doctorate”. One doesn’t skip a step in this synod!
Yes, there are some borderline students that will at least check out New Ulm for six months to a year until they wake up and resubmit applications elsewhere, but for the most part, MLC has a built in pipeline of students who believe they are going to a higher calling.
Is a recruit really going to say, “Golly I was actually going to Princeton, but then I saw that you have a new dorm and an exercise room! Ooooooh!”? If these campus trinkets tip the scales for a possible student, they might not be the best choice for ministry. Not judging here except for that I am judging here.
In conclusion, this school has not enough students but yet wants to build space for more students. There are too many vacancies to fill, yet more one-year calls that lead nowhere are handed out like candy from a parade float. More building supposedly means more recruits despite most of the recruits not caring a fig as far as what facilities are present now anyway. Sounds like quite the exercise in contradiction and futility.
And in that respect at the end of the day, that’s MLC all right.
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| The sects that drank the elixir of Fuller Seminary have enjoyed a calamitous drop in membership and worship attendance. Larry Otto Olson (DMin Fuller) got nowhere in the the parish. People laughed at his numbers, so WELS gave him a call to teach Church Growth at MLC. |
