Recently Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary announced that they will become the first mainline seminary to charge no tuition for “students in its master’s degree programs in divinity, marriage and family therapy and religion beginning in 2015.” Rather than cutting costs or quality, the school intends to finance this initiative by increasing its endowment and decreasing the number of students admitted (moving from 150 to 130).
So What?
Many students begin their seminary studies with significant student loan debt incurred with earning their undergraduate degrees. As the cost of education has risen more rapidly than anything else – including medical care (see High Cost of College for more information) – the debt level for seminary graduates has increased considerably. The financial burden associated with the repayment of this debt has limited some seminary graduates to consider calls to congregations and positions in other organizations that offer generous enough salaries to allow for student loan repayment. The new program would, among other things, decrease debt and allow graduates to fully consider answering God’s call wherever that may lead.
Do you think this shift to provide free tuition will
- encourage more people to respond to the opportunity to pursue a graduate theological education
- lead to higher admissions standards as people compete for the limited slots
- lead to a greater number of graduates who accept first call assignments to lower paying positions
- begin a trend whereby other mainline seminaries create similar programs?