Enrollment at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary stabilized last year, after a 20-year trend of decline.
While one year does not make a trend, the increase of eight students in the seminary’s full-time equivalent headcount as measured by the Southern Baptist Convention’s funding formula signals a positive sign for a seminary recently in crisis.
Southwestern’s SBC FTE was 3,129 in 1992-1993 and had dropped to 793 by the 2021-2022 academic year. Once the world’s largest theological seminary, Southwestern had become only the fifth largest of the SBC’s six seminaries. That dramatic decline happened largely under the watch of former President Paige Patterson and continued under his successor, Adam Greenway.
While seminaries nationwide have seen drops in enrollment over the past two decades, Southwestern’s numbers stand alone in their severity among schools that are still open. And at the same time, the other five SBC seminaries have enjoyed growth trends.
Source: SBC Ministry Reports 2024
For the 2022-2023 academic year, just this week reported in detail through the SBC’s annual Ministry Reports published online, Southwestern shows an SBC FTE of 801, compared to 793 the prior year and 1,126 the year before that.
Put in perspective, Southwestern today enrolls only 10% of the 8,281 SBC students studying at the six SBC seminaries, measured by FTE.
There are multiple ways to report educational enrollment, because not all students are full time. FTE is the most accepted measure of producing a comparable equivalent of full-time enrollment as an average. Within the SBC, another filter is applied to measure the FTE of those Southern Baptist students who are supported by the formula that allocates Cooperative Program funding to the schools.
By that measure, Southwestern remains the most expensive of the six SBC seminaries to operate, with an average cost of $8,173 per student — more than double the $3,974 per student it costs at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in North Carolina. And from a student perspective, Southwestern is the most expensive of the six SBC schools to attend with an annual cost per student (calculated as cost for a married student who lives on campus and pays tuition, fees and books) at $22,277 per year. That compares to about $16,000 at four other SBC seminaries and $20,410 at Gateway Seminary in California.
To illustrate the vast numbers of seminarians who study part time, the total nonduplicating headcount of students enrolled at Southwestern last year was 2,887. The 801 number of the SBC FTE is one-fourth of that. This is not unique to Southwestern; it is the nature of modern theological education.
Source: SBC Ministry Reports 2024
Also indicative of the changing nature of theological education, Southwestern last year awarded only 78 master of divinity degrees — the gold standard degree for pastors for decades. As previously reported by BNG, more students today are opting for master of arts degrees, which take two years of full-time study rather than three or more for the M.Div.
Southwestern last year awarded 307 two-year degrees — nearly four times the number of M.Div. degrees conferred.
Among the six SBC seminaries, there was one exception to this trend last year. Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Kentucky awarded more M.Div. degrees than two-year master’s degrees — 271 versus 148.
Source: SBC Ministry Reports 2024
The other five SBC seminaries were mixed in their SBC FTE enrollment trends last year. Southern Seminary has been losing FTEs the past two years, down last year to 1,979 from 2,762 in 20200-2021. Southeastern Seminary also has been losing FTEs, down to 1,768 last year from 2,068 two years ago. Gateway Seminary has held fairly steady. The only two schools to show growth in FTEs are New Orleans Seminary (up to 1,374 from 1,241) and Midwestern Seminary (up to 1,733 from 1,615).
Among all U.S. seminaries that report to the Association of Theological Schools, all six SBC seminaries remain among the largest. Only 12% of ATS schools in the U.S. report total FTE enrollments of more than 300 students.
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