bruce-church (https://bruce-church.myopenid.com/) has left a new comment on your post "LCMS Seminary Cost Scandal: Fabulous Costs To Supp...":
'Cost of Seminary Is Out of Control,' Says President of The Urban Ministry Institute:
http://www.christianpost.com/news/cost-of-seminary-is-out-of-control-says-president-of-the-urban-ministry-institute-94751/
NEW YORK – Pointing to research showing that the average cost of a seminary education ranges from $35,000 - $50,000, the president of The Urban Ministry Institute (TUMI), Don Davis, said the hefty price tag has become one of the main barriers to training more leaders for ministry.
"Frankly, traditional education costs too much. The cost of seminary is out of control, $35,000 - $50,000 is the average," said Davis at the "Educate: Empower" conference of church leaders at Calvary Baptist Church in Manhattan, N.Y., on Thursday.
"People come out of seminary and they can't go to a little congregation where on a good Sunday our offering is $27.20. They have to service a loan. They will not go to a poor church. It's a bad system. We train people and none of them deploy to urban poor neighborhoods. None of them virtually," he added.
Classic Ichabod -
http://ichabodthegloryhasdeparted.blogspot.com/2011/09/lcms-seminary-cost-scandal-fabulous.html
bruce-church (https://bruce-church.myopenid.com/) has left a new comment on your post "LCMS Seminary Cost Scandal: Fabulous Costs To Supp...":
Average LCMS seminary graduates owes $30 grand at least. 10% of seminary graduates owe over $50 grand.
The pastors must all be choosing the 30-year payoff option on their student loans (rather than the more common 10-year payoff), since a representative sample of LCMS pastors (between 1 and 30+ years of service) were asked how much student debt they still had to pay off, and the median figure was a whopping $18,100!
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The Pastor Debt Monster
http://steadfastlutherans.org/?p=24918
LCEF conducted a survey in 2011. This was a similar survey to one conducted in 2006. The respondents ranged from newly called workers to those having been in the ministry several (30+) years. This tends to “skew” the medians. The respondents were nearly equally divided into ranges of 0-10, 10- 19, 20-29 and 30+ years in the ministry, The median numbers for those in each category, for example, is not available. However a couple of things that jump out: The median level of outstanding STUDENT LOAN debt was $18.1K. On the surface, that doesn’t appear alarming. However this figure is 20% higher than reported in 2006. In addition, the number of workers that incurred student loan debt increased from 48% to 61%. Those reporting outstanding debt in excess of $50K increased from 4% in 2006 to 10% in 2011. An increase of 250%!....
Based on this data my guess that the average (not median) for my 2009 graduating class was at least $30k per student is probably accurate. That’s over $4 mil for the graduating class of CSL/CTSFW of 2009 alone.