How to Destroy a Seminary: 4. Offer Student Government Loans

 Government loans create two problems for the seminary.  This matter applies to American seminaries.  The government student loan programme is supposed to make education possible for students without the funds for study.  Its effect on education has been to increase the costs of an education well above the rate of inflation.  Seminaries have done what they can to keep education affordable, but with government loans as an option, they have allowed their costs to grow in comparable ways to other educational institutions.  That is, they have not solved their problem of the costs of an education as a Christian community should but as an academic institution does.  One result is that the graduates enter ministry with huge debts and, in America, they will already have accumulated educational debts from their undergraduate studies.

A second problem with seminaries that offer student loans for their education is that they open themselves up to government regulations.  If an institution accepts government money in the form of student loan programmes or funding for veterans’ education, the government may argue that its various regulations must be followed.  These regulations may, for example, apply to who can or must be hired.  In this way, the government oversteps any separation of Church and State and manages to make laws that regulate religion.  Even the threat of this happening can influence what a seminary stipulates for its community life.

The solution would be to ask denominations to step up to the game and provide the funding to train its ministers.  Some are much better at this than others, to be sure.  Yet the academic model for theological education allows other denominations to skirt this responsibility, leaves students to pay for their preparation for ministry, and sets faculty up for an academic career more than an ecclesiastical ministry.  This loose relationship between some denominations and seminary training also encourages the growth of independent churches.  A further consequence is that this weakens the denominations and leaves students and graduates with little serious ecclesiastical affiliation.  It distorts how the seminary itself might develop in many good ways as a Christian ministry, and so basing the seminary’s finances on student tuition funded by government loans is a good way to destroy a seminary over time.