There’s a new largest seminary in the Southern Baptist Convention.
According to just-published comparative data for the six SBC seminaries, Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Kanas City, Mo., has jumped to first place in FTE enrollment of SBC-qualified students. The data were published by the SBC Executive Committee in its annual Ministry Reports.
Midwestern is the youngest of the six schools and since its founding in 1957 has been among the smallest of the schools, dwarfed by Southwestern Seminary in Fort Worth, Southern Seminary in Louisville and New Orleans Seminary in New Orleans.
The last decade has brought about a shuffling of the deck among the seminaries, as Southwestern — once billed as the world’s largest seminary — has fallen to fifth largest in the SBC and Southern Seminary — a perennial second to Southwestern — lately has easily secured the top spot.
But for the 2023-2024 academic year, Midwestern reported a larger full-time-equivalent enrollment of Southern Baptist students than Southern, 1,862 compared to 1,837. That’s a small difference but a significant change.
After years of growth, enrollment at Southern has begun declining while enrollment at Midwestern has accelerated. SBC FTEs at Midwestern have grown 11% in the last two years while FTEs at Southern have declined 13% in the same period.
Never in its history has Midwestern been the SBC’s largest seminary. Nor has it even been the second largest.
Never in its history has Midwestern been the SBC’s largest seminary. Nor has it even been the second largest.
FTEs matter because that’s how accrediting agencies report seminary data and it’s how the SBC allocates Cooperative Program funding to the six schools. An FTE represents the equivalent load of a full-time student by dividing total credit hours taken by total number of students enrolled. The SBC only funds FTEs for qualified Southern Baptist students.
Southern Seminary retains the largest overall enrollment of SBC students in nonduplicating headcount (4,222) compared to Midwestern (3,766). At all six schools, the nonduplicating head count produces a number significantly larger than FTEs because there are so many part-time students.
Based on FTEs for SBC students, the rank of SBC seminaries goes Midwestern, Southern, Southeastern, New Orleans, Southwestern, Gateway.
Southern Seminary is still producing many more master of divinity degree graduates than any of the other schools — 359 in the 2023-2024 academic year compared to 147 at Midwestern, 129 at Southeastern, 88 at New Orleans, 75 at Southwestern and 35 at Gateway.
Overall, for the academic year the six SBC seminaries awarded 833 master of divinity degrees, 189 master of theology degrees and 1,090 master or arts and other two-year graduate degrees.
Total SBC FTEs at the six seminaries combined was 8,362, although the SBC funding formula only funded 6,428 of those.
Combined, the six seminaries enrolled 18,639 SBC students and 6,307 non-SBC students. Southeastern Seminary in Wake Forest, N.C., enrolled the largest number of non-SBC students (1,886).
As for Midwestern’s growth, President Jason Allen said in his report this is the 12th consecutive year of record enrollment. “Though there are likely numerous reasons for our continued growth, one important reason is our faculty,” he said. “Each faculty member is strong in their adherence to God’s word, to Southern Baptist beliefs, and to train a new generation of pastors, ministers and missionaries.”