Mary Frances Schjonberg has filed an in-depth article at ENS on the financial and curriculum challenges facing church-related seminaries. The set up:
As the year was beginning, a re-configured Seabury-Western Theological Seminary in Evanston, Illinois, had just sold its property to nearby Northwestern University, using the $13 million to pay off its debt and balance its budget.
While it ended its master of divinity degree the year before, Seabury this year began a joint doctor of ministry degree in congregational development with the Church Divinity School of the Pacific 2,100 miles away in Berkeley, California. …
In deciding to sell property, Seabury took a further step on a path that Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Episcopal Divinity School went down in March 2008 when it sold some of its buildings to Lesley University for $33.5 million and entered into a partnership that includes academic program enhancements and shared facilities for uses such as library, student dining and services, and campus maintenance. EDS Dean and President Katherine Ragsdale told ENS that the 2008 decisions involving Lesley mean “we’re no longer in a financial crisis. We face challenges but we’re not in a crisis anymore.”
The 2009-10 academic year ended on word of changes and potential changes at two schools on either coast. Manhattan-based General Theological Seminary announced that it faced a cash-flow crisis and would sell property to make ends meet until other planned sources of income came to fruition. Its trustees also said they would “pursue all productive avenues for conversations with other seminaries and institutions of the Episcopal Church to consider creative collaborations and common programs.”
Schjonberg interviewed officials at several of the 11 Episcopal church-related seminaries about the various pressures the seminaries are under, most pointedly the shrinking student population — fewer persons going into the priesthood, and fewer bishops requiring study in a three year residential program.
Questions: Should seminaries accommodate themselves to these new realities? If not, what’s the path to financial viability of the three-year residential model of seminary education with an Episcopal identity?