by Sandy » Tue May 31, 2011 8:36 am
I believe the SBC's way of determining the CP allocation to the seminary utilizes the FTE figure, rather than the total enrollment figure. Southern and New Orleans both have much larger total numbers of students than their FTE shows because of their branch campuses, which have large numbers of part-timers. Also, do the numbers for Southwestern, Southern and Southeastern include their undergraduate level programs? I'm not sure they do, since I don't think those are CP funded.
I don't know if anyone has done a lot of research on the bottom line here, of why the enrollments are declining, or whether the seminary administrations even want to know. The SBC schools have been resistant to the kinds of changes that a lot of higher education is taking, such as distance learning and on-line programs, which are offered in abundance. I would guess that a high percentage of prospective SBC seminarians have opted for Liberty online, because of convenience, and because it is competetive, price-wise, since it doesn't require relocation or finding campus housing. For a long time, the Cooperative Program scholarship, provided to each Southern Baptist church member who enrolled at one of the six seminaries, made a gigantic difference in the cost of tuition and fees. Back in '87, when I first enrolled at Southwestern, the matriculation fee was $400, but if you were a member of a BGCT congregation, they paid $150 of that. The whole semester, books included, was less than $600. DTS as I recall was over $4,000 a semester, not including room and board, and the other two schools I looked at, Moody and Trinity Evangelical, were in the DTS ballpark. Comparatively, SBC schools are still a bargain for Southern Baptists, but not compared to the on-line and distance programs. There are also a lot of smaller, regional schools that attract Southern Baptists because they are run by Southern Baptists, though not convention affiliated, and their advantage is location, such as Andersonville, Mid-Continent in Kentucky, Mid-America in Memphis, and some others.
Comparatively though, are the SBC seminaries in as much of an enrollment decline as those affiliated with other denominations? I was at a conference on the campus of Wesley Seminary in DC last spring, and they have gone through a complete re-adjustment of currlculum, course and degree offerings to arrest a decline of almost 60% of their full time enrollment over the course of a decade. And I know that Reformed Seminary here in Pittsburgh has seen similar declines over the last decate. Their response has been to turn more conservative, appealing to a growing number of Reformed PResbyterian churches in this area, making the switch from PCSUA.