I spent my lunch hour today surfing seminary web sites.  It was enlightening.  A few of the things I learned were…

• I don’t have the prerequisite background to pursue a D.Min. (no real surprise there)
• The quality of seminary web sites varies widely
• The information available on seminary web sites also varies widely – but it depends on what you are looking for and who they target as their primary audience — and it is probably not me.  (I have a hand in these things in my day job so evaluating that part was a bit of a “busman’s holiday.”)
• Some detailed facts are easier to find on some sites than on other sites

What I actually started out doing was to gather numbers about various seminaries and their degree programs, specifically the total enrollment in their Masters of Divinity Program.  The ability to find these numbers varied widely between the PC(USA) seminaries.

First, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) lists total enrollment numbers for each of the ten PC(USA) seminaries — You can begin on the list page and navigate through to the specific detail page for each seminary.

To have a look at that size number I started visiting the different web sites and found the availability of that data highly variable — and from my search I can’t tell whether it is not present or just that it can not be reasonably found.  High marks for availability goes to Princeton who has their PTS Statistics clearly linked to the navigation bar on the front page.  For detail, you can not beat Louisville Seminary which under their About Us page you can drill down to a VERY detailed Annual Fact Book – a little harder to find but a statistics freak’s dream.  Austin was a shade harder to find but under their Media Relations they have a nice fact sheet.

On the other end of the spectrum it was difficult to find specific numbers for most of the other seminaries.  For Johnson C. Smith that is very understandable — as a 21 student section of ITC having a robust media unit is probably not a top priority.  But McCormick and Pittsburgh?  In both cases it took some doing to find total number of students and there was no breakdown by program.  And at Pittsburgh I actually found two different numbers — 337 versus “approximately 370.”  (And that is not even counting the fact that McCormick still thinks there are eleven Presbyterian Seminaries.) OK, maybe I’m the only one who really cares about these numbers.

What struck me as I was looking at these was that the PC(USA) web site numbers were consistently higher than the specific numbers reported by the seminary itself:

Seminary	Seminary Reported	PC(USA) Reported
Austin	255	273
Louisville	210	217
Pittsburgh	337	370
Princeton	615	703

So, are they counting different things or are they reporting different years and this is normal fluctuation?

I should say that for Union I could piece together total numbers adding the 300 at the Richmond Campus and the 90 at the Charlotte campus, which is actually higher than the 365 listed by the denomination.

For where I am headed with this what I really wanted was the number of students in the Master of Divinity program.  Searching through the web sites I was able to find the following numbers:

Seminary	Number of M.Div. Students
Austin	123
Columbia	180
Louisville	103
McCormick	154 (All masters programs)
Princeton	411

And as I was looking at these numbers where denominational affiliations were reported PC(USA) students seemed to number about 40-50% of both total students and M.Div. students.

Now looking at all these numbers one fact should stick out — Princeton Theological Seminary is the heavy weight in this system.  Just come to one of our presbytery meetings and that will be apparent.

And now we will let the other shoe drop…

For those who have been involved in preparation for ministry or the call process in the PC(USA) you know that ministers and candidates also come from non-PC(USA) schools, but there is one seminary in particular that trains more Presbyterians than all the other schools… Fuller Seminary.

(Before I go any further I need to put full disclosure in here:  While I have no association with Fuller, it is in my presbytery and I know a lot of people who were or are students, faculty or staff at Fuller.)

For those of you who are not familiar with seminaries in the PC(USA), Fuller Seminary is a multidenominational seminary which is often only half-jokingly referred to as “the largest Presbyterian seminary.”  This school, headed by a Presbyterian president, has a reported “Presbyterian Faculty” of  15 (and I know one that is no
t listed), a Presbyterian student body of around 300 (compared to Princeton’s 259), and Presbyterians are the largest denominational group on campus.

Is this important?  It is a good natured but running argument in our presbytery about whether you pastors are trained at Princeton or Fuller (or both).  But throughout the church we need to be aware that, for good or ill, there is an alternative to PC(USA) seminaries.  In addition, it is interesting to see how this is reflected in the denomination’s statistics.

So now that we have had a look at the seminaries, next time we move on to look at how they are represented “in the real world.”