To be counted in this evaluation, seminaries must be ATS-accredited and degree-granting institutions and not departments or houses of studies within universities. Reports made available through the Association of Theological Schools (ATS) provide data for member schools from 1975 until the 2018-2019 academic school year. Given that Fuller Theological Seminary fell from the number #1 position, a progressive Baptist seminary shuttered its doors, and a Seventh-day Adventist school now ranks among the top 10 largest seminaries, there are, indeed, changes worth noting here. And what of those small, progressive seminaries? How have they fared over the last three years? Had they seen miraculous growth or a continued decline? What of those rankings today? I wondered if there have been any significant changes in attendance at America’s largest Protestant seminaries over the last four academic years.
Meanwhile, the smallest accredited Protestant seminaries in the nation included three Episcopal seminaries and two Cooperative Baptist Fellowship (CBF) seminaries. The results revealed that students seeking training for church ministry were overwhelmingly attracted to orthodox, evangelical Protestant institutions. In August 2016, I set out to understand the state of Protestant seminaries in the United States by evaluating student enrollment among accredited schools. For clarity, I am including a chart below comparing the total headcount from degree-granting institutions for the 2018-2019 academic school year.
Correction: This post originally defined FTE as full-time students enrolled when ATS actually defines FTE as full-time equivalent enrollment or “the number of students who would be enrolled if all students were attending full time.” However, the data is still the same.
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